Availability and quality of skilled workforce is a challenge in the travel and tourism and hospitality industry in emerging economies. Even though billions of dollars are invested in order to develop good infrastructure-airports, roads, hotels, there is no focus on scaling up high quality learning from workplace. A lot of training schools provide driver training but concentrate on hard skills rather than on motivational and behavioural aspects of the driving profession. With an aim to bring about a change in the current situation, GlobalThen has partnered with education visionary Sourabh J. Sarkar, to launch their first flagship product-‘Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya’. To initiate this unique approach OmniDEL (Omni-Dimensionally Engaging Learningware) is leveraging on two powerful forces – interactive technology and multimedia.
“Reaching out to all industries as a chauffeur is the first point of contact that anyone doing business with your company has, our strategy is to reach out to everyone within the travel and tourism and hospitality industry. Also beyond by providing a highly engaging and scalable learning product that is rich with media and technology yet affordable. The key targets in the learning programme are tourism car fleet owners, radio-city cabs that ply within cities, vendors who provide employee transportation for technology companies in India, and government bodies as part of road safety mandate. Currently, we have clients namely Tata Motors, EasyCabs, Wings Travels, Antaeus Rent-a Car, Om Sai Transport, BMC Software, Olacabs, and many more,” said Ram Brindanathan, founder, GlobalThen.
Targeting the goal
Drivers in India do not take pride in what they do and for the most part have little respect for themselves and their customers. The drivers will be trained with the help of basic media equipment such as a laptop/PC, projector and a screen. They conduct sessions either on the premises or as an off-site for the companies involved. To keep the session engaging and appealing the drivers who may or may not have received classroom education before, the entire module has been treated in a filmy way, complete with dialogues, riddles and songs. Issues like punctuality, knowledge, personal hygiene, safety, vehicle hygiene, maintenance, communication and etiquette are dealt with in the course of six sessions, 26 activities, group exercises and a fun filled mix of music, drama and poetry sessions. The learning experience for the drivers takes place in three phases and they are as follows:
Jagrit Pawan: The awakening phase where the driver begins the learning journey through a rich interactive learning experience in a one day workshop on customer service covering six essential concepts like punctuality, knowledge, safety, personal hygiene, vehicle hygiene and maintenance and communication and etiquette.
Abhyasi Pawan: Refresher courses in specific areas will cover road safety, traffic violations and vehicle hygiene in five to six months intervals.
Saarthy Pawan: Continuous learning programme with counselling service, mobile learning modules and driver dashboards.
For the training programme, the company charges Rs 900 per driver for one-day workshop, and if there are 24 drivers the amount is close to Rs 17,500 for seven hours workshop which can be customised as per the company’s requirement. If the group is large i.e. more than 25 drivers the amount is Rs 500 per driver. Volume discounts are available.
Other ventures/ products in the offing
- Building a larger library focused on travel and tourism and hospitality
- Products will soon be converted into other languages (Indian and international) to reach out to more students
- Contact done and process initiated for fresher recruitment solution, competency management and skill enhancement for all top travel and tourism companies
- Contact done and process initiated for marketing programme of leading destination management organisations (DMO) both domestic and international
- ‘Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya’ will be followed by the launch of other ventures which include ‘Well Done Shruti’ and ‘The Care Connection’. These will focus on selling skills and customer service for the industry.
