LABS - Sustainable, A unique model in skill development at Dr. Reddy's Foundation

 “Visionary companies are not afraid to make bold commitments and big goals, these big goals may be daunting perhaps risky, but the adventure, excitement and challenge of it grab people in the gut, gets their juices flowing, and creates immense forward momentum.”

n  Built to Last (Successful habits of visionary companies)

Back ground

Dr. Reddy's Foundation is a social development organisation, LABS (Livelihood Advancement Business School) is one of the flagship programs in skill development, LABS is a unique model which focuses on imparting the life skills, technical skills and Work Readiness Module to the needy youth. DRF has been successful in this journey and almost 2.5 Lakh youth have benefitted by end of 2012. Till August 2011 DRF partnered with different corporates and government agencies to serve the youth. Over the period the leadership in DRF realised the importance of becoming self dependent and  vision for the organisation has made them take a bold decision to 'shift' their focus towards making LABS as a sustainable model, thus emerged LABS - S (S stands for Sustainable).

Reality check

Just look at the above perspective, it clarifies that the efforts are on the right direction in doing things.

It was a dream for the team when they initiated the discussions on the sustainable model in August 2011. The team wanted to design a model where they would like to see the organization in the new orbit.

The dream has come true, around 3000 students with average B2B (batch to batch) gap of 39 days, an average of 15 students per batch were trained by end of March 2012, an average fees per student was around Rs.2236/- and with 73.1 % of placements. This was possible in seven months.

A difficult path and the journey filled with joy

The leadership team wanted to align all the employees to this ‘shift’. Soon after this bold decision, the senior management team travelled across the country in September 2011 to cascade the intent of the ‘sustainable LABS’ to all employees. They believed, everyone in the organization should be clarified about the intent, because they are not going to experiment it in one or two places but across all the training centers as they were going forward to reach the unreachable with this model. That’s the reason for senior team to travel extensively to address the people across the zones. Since the programme was spread across the country, they deal with different regions; deal with different religions and different languages, the team wanted to inculcate this new initiative as a ‘culture’ across all the training centers.

No doubt, it was a top down approach, they took many efforts to inculcate the culture in each and every employee, and wanted every employee to create this new ‘initiative’ as a great solution to the needy youth and to strengthen the current skill development capacity in India.

They encouraged employees to adapt the most important step which they can take in building this organization is ‘not only an action, but a shift in perspective.’

However the initial results appeared unpromising but there was no disappointment, the team demonstrated strong will and continuously engaged people, trained them, motivated at every level to make it possible, and they continued to do this.

Innovation at every step

Their desire is to bring transformation in communities, especially the life style of the youth which made them think innovatively. Since then the inception of LABS –S, innovation in the organization has become a daily business, they have innovated and came up with models like; LABS Plus, Modular LABS and Satellite LABS. All the models were tried at LABS centers and they have been successful.

There are many talented people in the organization who always brainstormed the new things and come up with such innovations; working with such people puts into a great ‘learning space’.

All the employees in the organization have much freedom to share any new idea at any platform, indeed most of the team members always strive to test new ideas and come up with some fruitful results. They wish to continue doing this.

Success Measures: Functional and Human Elements

LABS, It’s culture – Most of the centers in the country are running for the past four years, they have established centers in Vyara (Gujarat), Kottayam & Alleppey (Kerala), Silvassa (Dadra Nagar Haveli), Puri (Odisha), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Bilaspur (Chattisgarh), Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Kakinada & Karimnagar (Andhra Pradesh), Amritsar (Punjab), Tilak Vihar (Delhi), Shimla (Himachal) and there are around three to four centers in Kolkata, and many more in the country.

All these centers were established in such a way that, now they have become part of the community. The teams in those centers have been serving people in and around these places. Youth in the community are well aware of the activities being conducted by the teams at these LABS centers. These teams have created a benchmark of youth and communities having ‘trust’ on the program. This is one of the key elements in the program and especially at these centers.

Alumni Engagement – the core strength of all the successful centers is ‘alumni engagement’. Most of these centers are successful and achieved the set targets through the strong relationship with the alumni. There was always a question that why these alumni should help the teams in mobilizing the students. Teams reflected that, most of the alumni have seen the value in the programme; they get right solutions for their life. The time spent by the students in LABS was a great value addition to their life to fulfill their goals. It’s not the mere two or three month’s engagement by the students but an ongoing relationship with them.

Most of the alumni come back to the LABS centers to share their success and growth with the students who are being trained in the current batches. They feel, when they share their life with the existing students, they double their joy, which is a great inspiration to the existing students as well.

Teams also believe that engaging alumni in post placement will help them to build the relationship. Alumni get the support from the center teams in terms of career enhancement and exploring better opportunities. Center teams get immense personal satisfaction by doing this. Teams always pay attention to the alumni when they walk in to the center and it delights the alumni.

“Teams have a great sense of serving the youth”

Occurrence @ Vyara (Gujarat) LABS – Center team has got references through alumni in every batch. Vyara team is one of the successful teams and their average B2B was 9.5 days and an average of 26 students per batch in last two LABS – S. Team expressed that alumni are the major contributors in sending students to the programme. For next batch they got 33 prospects and 19 out of them were the alumni references. Teams aimed for zero days B2B in further batches.

 
Training Effectiveness – ‘No compromise’ attitude is demonstrated by the facilitators who are working at the successful centers. Since the student has become a potential customer in this new journey and he/she is demanding the quality of the program, it’s obvious that every team member has to give hundred percent while on duty. They are strict in adhering to the process and bring more and more quality in the program.

Teams believe that, ‘if you compromise on the quality of the training provided, you end up with poor response for the future batches’

The quest for new techniques, methods in day to day sessions / training has always been a delightful for the teams during the journey.

Teams felt that induction (life skills) program is the core for the entire training program. They believed that the seven days life skill training program transforms the life style of the students.

What’s unique in these teams? They love their jobs They have a sense of ownership They have high level of ‘trust’ on each other They accept the new challenges

                                                    
Networking – An ongoing community engagement by the teams yielded better results in the programme. Teams have demonstrated the openness to grab the opportunity of participating in every community event.

Teams believe that, there needs to be a consistency in stakeholder engagement, every stakeholder is important and they should be regularly touch based. By contacting the stakeholders regularly, center teams managed to explain the motto of LABS – S and most importantly the stakeholders are aware of day to day changes in the process and program, quite often the center teams were appreciated by the stakeholders for their efforts and the intent of LABS – S.

Winning attitude, a voyage to serve the needy Reflection of Team Vellore (Tamilnadu):  “With 38 days of B2B in first batch of LABS – S, we struggled a lot to start the batch. There were only seven students with one domain. We decided to shift the venue from the outskirts of the Vellore and moved into the town. There were difficulties like; facing competition from other programs and institutes, since we were new to the community people having less awareness about the LABS – S program. However, we managed to start the batch with mere no. of students. We were focusing on building the networking and continued to reflect on the opportunities. During the first batch, there was a job fair conducted by Mahalir Thittam, Women’s Corporation Department. We have a very good relationship with this Government body since then we started the Grameen project and Mr. Rajashekharan, project officer has supported us a lot. This relationship helped us to access the database of unemployed youth collected by them during the job fair.  Soon after we received the database we called the youth and invited them to the LABS centre. We explained the youth about the program and we have registered 17 students for second batch to which we started with one day B2B gap. The affinity we have with Pudhu Vaazhvu Project (PVP) helped us to register 20 students for further batches. PVP focuses on programs like; village adoption, supporting the SHG groups by providing loans and training on various programs. They also support BPL youth by paying fees to avail skill development training. We met the Executive Officer of Dinakaran and Sun Network, Vellore Dist., as they were conducting a two days educational exhibition where approximately 30 educational institutions arranged their stalls to promote the programs and we explained about our program, we were allowed to share our work during this program, we were proactive and immediately created a format to collect the database of the students who attended that program. In those two days we have got a database of about 500 students. This is a huge data for us to continue the program in Vellore district. We planned to establish one more centre in Vellore district at Thiruvannamalai.”

Teams are strong  in building network with the organizations, they were always ahead in gathering information about the programs conducted by organizations like NGOS, schools & colleges, local community bodies, SHGs and other community based initiatives. They never miss the opportunity of taking part in those programs. Teams have shown enthusiasm in participating in such programs and spreading the information about the LABS – S; mostly they make use of the people gatherings. They also participate in all kinds of fairs to spread the information about the programme, no matter whether big or small.

Above all, there was the ability of teams to quest for building, building and building – never stopping, never looking back, never finishing.

Motivation leads to job performance – Teams at these centers are highly motivated, the analogy for job performance is the compounding of ability and motivation.

We have observed that these highly motivated teams have renewed morale and meaning at work, they have improved their personal performance and demonstrated an enriched quality of work. These qualities have differed themselves from others to have improved customer care and service delivery, enhanced teamwork, with more trust and more fun at work.

The shift in perspective is a ‘joy’ for these teams; every new challenge is a ‘fun’ for them. Teams have high level of self motivation to accept the new challenges and this is the ultimate secret for their success.

 The great work done by all the successful teams is always been appreciated by peers and supervisors, this appreciation has been shared publicly to encourage others to fall in the stream. This is one of the core ideologies of the organization that at every level people are encouraged to ‘appreciate’ the great work. This sense of appreciation encourages these successful teams to share their ‘best practices’ to others which leads to the great performance across the teams and individuals.

Sharing always doubles, triples and quadruples the performance; Team Bhubaneswar shares their great work with others and rejoices the appreciation given by the peers and supervisors; “We have learnt and practiced the below elements to achieve the great results” Never put a full stop to the mobilization, it’s a never ending process round the year Relook into the links which failed to give the aspirants in the previous occasions, nothing stops you to build a database which can be used for future requirements Daily team meeting to brainstorm on focusing on ‘failures’ and ‘new ideas’ is vital for us, this gives us learning for the next day’s mobilization and leads to better results At the end of the day, centre coordinator calls all those persons whom the centre team met during mobilization and extends the thanks for their sharing and valuable time spent by showing interest towards the program. We believe that winning the hearts of people who have shown the interest and importantly the people who have not shown the interest will definitely change their mind and turn positive towards the program. We always focus on the ‘mistakes’ that as a TEAM we work on those to improve the performance Accept the pressure from the supervisors in a positive spirit and start working on that, this positivity made us to improve our admissions from 19 in last to 35 in the current batch with 0 B2B. Counseling of aspirant at the centre has to be handled by a single team member as involving of many team members may create confusion Share the work among the team mates as per their interest, so that they can do it in a successful manner, in case someone is not interested to go for mobilization on a particular day, do not force him / her but ask to stay at the centre and focus on walk – INS. Last but not least, for us mobilization is a journey, just like a cave as much we are getting in, we discover new challenges and experiences.

Way forward:

The leadership team learnt that, there are some important elements which needed to practice to make this journey far excited and fruitful;

• Continue to make bold decisions
• Innovation is never ending
• Encouraging creativity at every level
• Always quest for newer ways to make understand the people the importance of ‘shift in perspective

Acknowledgements:

To teams at Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Vellore (Tamilnadu), Vyara (Gujarat), Silvassa (Dadra Nagar Haveli) for sharing the value of their life at personal and professional front

• To MIS department at DRF for providing inputs
• To My colleagues at DRF, Dwaipayan, Bhaskar Boda, Suman and Rami to add value to this document
• To the CEO, Mr. Jitendra Kalra to inspire at every possible moment

Insights learnt from:

• Built to Last (Successful Habits of Visionary Companies) by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras