Management Development Programme: Custom Made

Companies are opting for customised management training programmes for employees.

- Sonal Khetarpal

Every year, as many as 30 employees from Pidilite Industries (maker of the ubiquitous Fevicol range) spend a total of 20 days on the campus of S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), spread across a span of five months. Known as Capstone, it is one of the many management development programmes, or MDPs, run by the company where high-potential middle managers are trained on leadership, change management, self-development and fundamentals of other business functions to prepare them for bigger roles. The faculty of the Mumbai-based B-school (it ranks fourth in the Business Today list) conducts the course along with Pidilite’s leadership team, including its CFO, CMO and CHRO, who teach company-specific values and processes to their future leaders.

“In the current business environment wrought with fast technological changes, companies want tailormade programmes to build a deeper understanding of the concepts and skills related to their specific businesses. It is the time of niche learning; broad overview of concepts does not work anymore,” says Rahul Sinha, President, HR, at Pidilite. According to him, 95 per cent of the company’s retraining is carried out through customised MDPs.

If digging deep into rapidly evolving industry segments is a non-negotiable requirement, trimming the huge cost of staff training is the practical ramification of a sluggish economy. After all, expenses could easily run into crores of rupees if company executives are asked to pursue full-time general management courses. Understandably, data from the Top 50 Indian B-schools (as per