Top 3 benefits of promoting vocational education in Africa

Industries and governments in Africa seem to have woken up to the need of skilled labor – and this is why they’re aggressively promoting vocational education and training among their youth. To speed up the entire process, they’re increasingly joining hands with private companies that offer customized vocational education in Africa.


For long, there wasn’t robust infrastructure in place for the development of vocational education and training – but the landscape is gradually changing and paving way for a skilled Africa.


Herein this blog post, we’ll walk through the top 3 benefits of vocational education – here’re they:


#1 Vocational education makes you job-ready

Formal education that you receive in school, college or university is good – but it doesn’t have much connect with skills that you’d need to get a job. But vocational education in Africa has been designed to prepare youth for their choice of industries. Whether it is retail or automobile, insurance or telecom, you can take up a relevant course and enter the industry of your choice.


#2 Vocational education leads to consistent supply of skilled talent for the industry

Industries cannot survive unless supported by a large base of skilled talent. Businesses of all shapes and sizes in Africa have already begun to feel a shortage of technically oriented youth.

The solution lies in promoting vocational education among youth – parents and teachers have to look beyond formal education and encourage their kids and students to try their hands in vocational trades.


#3 It’s beneficial for the economy at large

The world is going to need a lot of skilled manpower in the coming years. Africa has to have a ready force of talented individuals if it is to compete in the global arena. For this, it needs to heavily invest in its infrastructure and run campaigns to reach out to the youth to convince them for pursuing vocationally oriented courses.

Vocational education in Africa needs to be revamped at a large scale – governments and private companies are doing their bit, but what is needed is a more focused approach and strategy.

The next generation of businesses in Kenya is looking at CSR in a new light (and going much beyond environmental wellness programs)

For decades, businesses in Kenya didn’t worry much about their social responsibility. More or less, they were supposed to align their business practices to protect the environment they were operating in to. Things, however, have begun to change on Kenya’s soil.

Foreseeing the level of economic growth that Kenya is likely to witness in the coming years, the businesses there are rapidly reaching out to the societies they operate in and up skill the youth there.

Businesses and government of Kenya have come to realize the worth that skilled manpower is likely to add to the economy. And therefore, they are increasingly tying up with professional vocational training providers as part of their CSR strategy to up skill the youth and make them employment across industries.

They may decide to train the youth for their own business operations so that they never run out of a pool of talented individuals. In this kind of set up, they often engage with a professional company that has experience in vocational training in Kenya and understands the psyche of the youth, has a network to reach out to the youth in the nearby region, and motivate them to take up a program of their choice.

This set up enables the companies prepare a ready pool of talent for their operations; on the other hand, it enables youth to learn skills that enhance their employability quotient; in many cases, they end up becoming economically independent and supporting their families.

When you look at the larger picture, you see everything adding up to the economy – 1) the industry reaches out to the youth and makes them skilled, 2) the employability of the youth goes up, 3) industries get a consistent supply of skilled manpower, 4) the nation grows economically as well as socially (since increased income of a family improves its access to a better life).

Read our other posts on this blog to get to know what Kenya’s corporates are up to when it comes to their CSR obligations.

Vocational training companies and their mission for a ‘Skilled Africa’

Africa contributes significantly to the growth of world economy. Be it agriculture, IT, or industrial growth, Africa has shown to the world that it has the potential to be a world leader. But at home, it has a series of challenges that it needs to tackle really fast. One such challenge is its lack of skilled workforce, especially in these times when the world is moving toward building industries that need skilled labour in massive quantities.

• The government is doing commendable job!

Vocational education scenario has changed a lot in all these years in African countries. Be it South Africa or Kenya, the governments are increasingly setting up institutions to help the youth easily access vocational education.

The government has also brought about significant improvements in its policy frameworks, with a whole new emphasis on promoting vocation education in Africa.

• The vocational education companies are a key player

The leading vocational education & training companies reach out to the youth and enable them to kick start their careers in their favourite fields. Whether they want to pursue careers in jewellery, or automotive, or insurance or BPO, the intelligently developed vocational education in Africa equip the participants with the skills that would help them get a job in their preferred industries.

• The good thing is people have begun to look at vocational education in a new light

The youth as well as their parents are increasingly seeing vocational education in Africa as a lucrative career choice, where they can enhance their employability quotient in a short period of time.

The winds of change has begun to blow across African countries; what is needed now to keep this momentum up and make the employers understand the value that a skilled labor brings to their business and the kind of rewards and recognition that they deserve.

Not sure how to improve the productivity level of your sales force? Well, we can help

You have tried it all, but the sales team just doesn’t seem to give its best. And now you have no idea about how to pump them up and make them believe they can go much beyond their set targets. Here’s the thing that would help you for sure:

Get into their shoes!

Many a times, we are just not able to figure out the reason that is holding them from giving their best performance.  It could be a personal thing or an issue at work place; try to get into their minds and once you spot the reason, face it head-on.

One of the best ways to understand what bothers them is frequent one-to-one communication. One more thing – there would be days when no matter how hard they try they would not be able to bring in significant sales, be kind to them on those days.

Motivate them – do it the first thing in the morning

A little word of appreciation goes a long way. Similarly, rebuking them for their poor performance the minute they come to office ruins their whole day. So be mindful of the timing. Even if you want to discuss something tough with a salesperson, make sure you select an ideal time and setting.

Good training programs transform sales personnel from inside out

We’re not talking about the regular in-house programs wherein you or some other senior member of the organisation comes in and tells them the secrets of selling. We’re talking about professional companies that offer end-to-end corporate training programs such as corporate sales and distribution management and behavioural or communication skill programs.

High end corporate training programs in Mumbai or other metro cities are held only after taking into account the training needs of the participants. Once the needs of the participants are diagnosed, the trainers customize their programs and make them highly relevant for their audience. Speak to a few corporate training companies and see what they have to offer. Ideally, you should get a company on board which understands the ins and outs of your business and has conducted similar programs in the past.

As sales manager, you also need to upgrade your people and leadership skills. The skills would help you communicate your concerns in a much better way and thus, lead your you’re your team more effectively. 

4 steps to a more productive sales force

Build a confident sales force
Confidence shows up in the very way your sales force approaches customers and handles their queries and complaints. And this confidence stems from good dressing style, personal hygiene, deep knowledge about the product, and willingness to go the extra mile for the customers.

Be with them through thick and thin
You lead the team and your job is to get the most out of them. It’s okay. But keep reminding yourself that you are dealing with human beings and not machines. There would be days when a sales person would not be able to sell a single product despite all his or her efforts; those would be the days when he or she would need your support the most. So be there for your team and they will never let you down.

Training is the key to success in sales
A well-structured training program can make all the difference to your team’s sales performance. Arrange behavioural, product, and sales and distribution management training programs for your team. Training does not cost much both time and money wise, but it yields great results.

Take the tough decision
See in the end, it’s all business. Each one of you has to justify your existence. So if a member is not showing improvement despite all required support, you need to speak and tell him or her possible repercussions if he or she does not show results in a given time frame.

There’s more to building a more productive team. We’ll share all that in our coming posts. You can also check out our published posts to know more about sales & distribution management and skill development training programs.

Here’s what customer service training programs do for businesses

Organizations with a large customer base can get a world of benefits from customized and end-to-end customer service training programs. Whether they are branded retail stores or call centres or banking institutions, tailored customer service training programs are designed to help their people get equipped with the best practices, strategies and techniques for an improved customer experience.

Today’s evolved customer service training programs or customer relationship management programs are meant for all, whether they are new recruits or seasoned professionals. Through customized programs, businesses can ensure common minimum standards of service at their retail stores, or call centres, and thus can impact their key performance indicators in a pretty positive manner.

Here’s what a customer service training program comprises:

• Under the program, the trainers provide on-the-job training and audit of the stores, leading to improved customer experience and repeat business
• Trainers also conduct monthly knowledge tests to ensure customers are provided with correct information about products and/or services
• Store managers and staff are equipped to better manage new product launches

Customer service training programs are value for money programs and are designed to impact your business outcomes. But the business must ensure that its people are regularly trained on the required skill sets; one time training may not do much to up-skill your people.

What to do when learning & skill development solutions become obsolete and do not help you with your primary objectives?

Smart companies understand the growth that comes with training solutions. But, they are also smart enough to judge whether the solutions are helping them achieve their primary goals – their desired business outcomes, bottom line, KPIs to name a few. So, what options do they have at their disposal, if the training solutions, say sales and distribution management training solutions, do not impact their business outcomes?

Big and smart companies do not mind spending a great deal of their resources on looking out for a corporate training partner and arranging different training programmes for their people, but they want results. So, what’s the best way out when you’re not seeing results or improved performance among your people?

The very first step should be to “Speak to the training provider, communicate (once again) as to what you want out of the programs like sales and distribution management training, and develop a time frame in which you expect to see the results.” 

If the first step doesn’t help, you can take the other route that is to speak to some other training solutions providers. But this time you should be a little more careful in the selection of a training company. Ideally, you should hire a company that has been in the training industry for a good number of years, and understands your business the way you do. Whether you want the training providers to conduct a series of sales and distribution management training or some other skill development training programs, you must ensure that you’re hiring a company which is professional in its approach and knows what it is talking about.

To be on a safer side, we’d suggest you to visit the website of the training company so that you can understand whether the company is an ideal fit for your training needs. Once you feel the training company is offering what you need for your people, the next step could be to speak with someone from the company’s end. This telephonic/mail conversation should ideally pave way for an official meeting, wherein you’d be in a better position to decide whether you should partner with the training company.

There are more ways to react to solutions that do not help you improve your key business indicators; we’ll cover them in our future posts. So stay with us.