The Foundation for Human Resources Development celebrates the best practices in HR through its Malta People Awards 2010.This consists of seven categories in which participating companies challenge themselves in order to see their initiatives rewarded.
This year, the category that attracted the most entrants is the Learning and Development Award, with 13 participating companies. This award is meant to acknowledge the commitment of companies towards staff learning and development throughout their organisation and in order to prove their involvement, participating companies had to submit a report as well as to meet assessors from the Foundation for Human Resources Development.
Bank of Valletta Training & Consultancy Unit head Paul Gauci explained how BOV prepared for the awards: “The preparation began a year ago, when we decided which initiative we would be presenting for the awards. We scrutinised every area of our training programme and gathered all the information in the report at every stage of the training function. This included training needs analysis, training design, programme delivery and evaluation. The preparation for the awards was useful because it also helped build the training team through everyone’s input.”
Regarding the meeting with the assessors, Alert Communications Ltd managing director Claudine Cassar was pleasantly surprised: “I was a bit apprehensive because I thought it was going to be like an exam. But not at all! It was an open discussion, well organised and very pleasant.” Since last year, Alert Communications has been organising training plans for each employee which has led to a reduction in staff turnover. “People are staying because they appreciate working here,” she said.
Centrecom HR manager Lisa Sultana also appreciated meeting the assessors. “They were very interested and helped in the report that was prepared by the company. This exercise helped us analyse and thoroughly examine the services we provide to our people,” she said. Centrecom is participating in the Malta People Award for the first time. “We thought it could be interesting to challenge ourselves and assess our services through this event, especially because we are a young company” added Quality, Training & Standards manager Diane Micallef. She explained that the organisation has been restructuring its learning procedures over the last couple of years, including the launch of a training programme at the beginning of 2007.
Enemalta Corporation has also changed its training policy in recent years, going from one based on apprenticeship training to one of employee training: “The Enemalta Training Centre was given a new task with different objectives which had to cater for as many employees as possible. The way training was previously organised was completely different, because while it used to be of a repetitive nature, today every course organised requires a custom-made approach for different disciplines”, explained HR Development and Learning manager Ray Azzopardi. Whereas before, the number of apprentices in a scholastic year was about 120 and the number of courses was seven, the Training Centre has planned a programme of training with 42 different courses to cater for approximately 1,600 employees. Over the years, training in the organisation has grown to address the needs of employees wanting to close the skills gap, which was such that requests for training from the shop floor surpassed that planned by the Corporation.
Being an employer of first choice is a priority for the Medicines Authority as well and spokesman Gavril Flores sees the awards as a means of attracting new employees: “Having the best employees in the market has a direct impact on our work.” As a technical organisation, the Medicines Authority has developed different structures to enable its employees to continue learning. The organisation provides a wide range of courses, including collaboration with external experts and training organisations, addressing not only the needs of individuals as employees but also their personal needs. It also offers flexible hours to give employees the chance to continue studying.
Chetcuti Cauchi HR manager Romina Abdilla describes learning and development as a way of life. “We consider our people as our most valuable asset and thus we invest a lot in their development, be it academic or personal. We organise a number of internal training sessions, keep ourselves up-to-date regarding external training that can be of interest to any of our staff members, assist financially, allow flexible working hours to accommodate attendance at lectures and also organise a number of team-building events throughout the year”. According to Ms Abdilla, the success of the firm is directly linked to the quality of service provided by each individual member and therefore the time and expenditure dedicated to employee development is considered a sound investment.
Island Hotels Group Holdings plc is competing for the Learning and Development Award with its management development programme called “Skills for Life”. Christina Galea explained how the programme focuses on managers’ soft skills: “Skills for Life aims at making deep personal changes. It is not just about acquiring new knowledge. We propose that managers work on their behaviour and weaknesses, and this has an impact on all the team”. This is the second time that the company has participated in the Malta People Awards.
This year the Alberta Group is also participating in the Learning and Development Award, for which they describe the investment in training, upgrading, development and learning undertaken in the Engineering Large Projects Department. Foreign and local consultants were involved in this learning and development initiative, which translated into a process whereby the standards applied to drawings, design and plans were raised to a very high standard and recognised with LPCB Certification by the BRE authority, for the first time outside the UK and Northern Ireland. Whole teams of designers, draughtsmen, project managers and leaders were involved in this training and coaching process, which had a holistically beneficial effect on the whole organisation.
According to Paul Gauci and Noel Debono, respectively Head and Manager of the Training and Consultancy Unit of Bank of Valletta: “The awards are not only a professional recognition but also a way of keeping us focused on our primary objective – to provide cutting-edge, continuous professional development programmes for BOV employees, in business, technical and soft skills areas. They are also a way of ensuring a high degree of quality in our training.” The bank’s Training Centre was established in 1975 and has been instrumental in enabling BOV staff to adopt the various changes in the financial services industry in recent years. Today, seven full-time people are employed to prepare training programmes for 1,500 employees. “We want to ensure that we provide our people with the best learning possibilities and we design, organise and deliver courses from induction up to executive development”, said Noel Debono.
The continuous professional development of employees is also undertaken by the Malta Police Force, another competitor for the Learning and Development Award. “The Malta Police Force must be dynamic. Our work is influenced by changes in legislation, the emergence of new problems, the evolution of society etc., so our learning and development process has to follow these changes”, said the Force’s Dr Mario Spiteri. The Malta Police Force is participating in the awards for the first time.
The Foundation for Human Resources Development will present the awards on 10 December in a ceremony at the Intercontinental Hotel in St Julian’s. The award for overall achievement, called the Excellence Award, is presented to a company for achieving a level of HR standards that goes beyond good practice into the realm of excellence. This award is sponsored by Castille Resources. The Learning and Development Award is sponsored by Actavis. Those wishing to participate in the ceremony should contact Nancy Vella on 2137 8895 or send an email to [email protected]
Celine Gransard is a Belgian journalist with the Foundation for Human Resources Development