Deevyani,
Compliment to you for your decision to switch your career from Banking to the field of HR, and above that to get into the field of Employee Engagement or Training and Development.
Employee engagement is a priority for many HR leaders these days, so you are some what justified in making this choice.
Training and Development is an ever green field so your choice to get in there too is justified.
You say you are pursuing an MBA-HR and that it is from Symbiosis Distance learning.
Entry into a field justifies earning an appropriate degree, but kindly note, that acquiring a degree is just the first step, but it's only on the ground that you actual learning starts. That you have also undertaken 1 month practical training in HR practices, wonder what the curriculum was like and what did you actually learn here.
Coming to your need for suggestions about your career development in this field and that too specially - in Training & Development and Employee Relations.
Before I begin or go any further I'd like you to understand that this is purely my thoughts which I share with you and the community, and it is not to either make you or anyone feel over-awed or discouraged by imagining - "Oh! is there so much."
Take this analogy - No swimmer in the world will venture into a pool, lake, river, or the ocean without assessing it's depth, or the current in the case of a river or the ocean etc. He/she does this because he/she is aware of the risks being taken and it also gives an opportunity take necessary training/practice, pre-cautions etc., before taking the plunge.
This is just another attempt on the same lines.
Take a reality check on yourself on the following aspects
- How would you rate yourself as a communicator - oral and written
- How good are your reading habits, if yes, general novel reading, fiction reading will help your vocabulary, creativity, thinking, etc., where as if you were to look at going
ahead in your career do you read business books.
- What is your temperament like - are you cool calm and composed, are you affable/friendly, are you bossy, are you co-operative, are you flexible, are you accommodative,
are you a good listener, etc..
Let's take Training & Development - first then. Do you have the in-puts needed for becoming a Trainer, or do you think that you will be good at developing content for a training. Have you done a course on Training & Development (ISTD - Indian society of Training and Development - which I believe has it's HQ in Delhi, conducts a one-year diploma course on this subject), else there are some Training companies which organize a Trainer the Trainers Programme, which can give you some in-puts on how to get into and start training. In fact, most of the well known Trainers all over the world are known to be great Facilitators, which mean they will throw up and issue or make a statement and will not give you the answer, if fact, they will ask leading questions or provide you with clues that leads to the solution rather than doling it out freely.
This is done, because that the real way a skill is passed on. It's different from the one-way communication we know in schools and colleges.
It's here that your life and work experience, your reading, the knowledge of the industry that you serve that will all go to make a difference, and you can deliver a memorable programme, leaving behind an indelible impression on the participant's which in turn will catapult you to be called a "Super Trainer."
There are a number of such high quality trainers both in our country and abroad too. It'll be worth following them to keep adding value to you career as a Trainer. You might do the same training programme to may be two sets of people in two different locations, while thee will not be any major change either in the structure or the content but the one thing that will count is the delivery suiting to that particular audience - which will depend on their background, culture, etc. So then it's not a bad deal to understand the geography, history and be quite up-to-date on the current happenings in as many areas as possible that can help you carryout a successful programme.
I guess this is enough fodder for you to chew and mull in this area of specialization, and I move over to the other area - Employee Engagement. This is a very interesting and a vast area, which can keep you engaged till your last breath on this planet, which again can leave you with a feeling that you could done something more than what you have.
Here is a mini summary from his book Employee Engagement 2.0, "How to motivate your high performance team," a real world guide for busy manager from New York Times Best Selling author by Kevin Kruse, which I could pick up a couple of days ago from the internet.
Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. When employees care — when they are engaged — they use discretionary effort.
Companies with engaged workers have 6% higher net profit margins (Towers Perrin research) and five times higher shareholder returns (Kenexa research).
The ROI of engagement comes from what I call the Engagement-Profit Chain:
Engaged Employees lead to…higher service, quality, and productivity, which leads to…
higher customer satisfaction, which leads to…
increased sales (from more repeat business and referrals), which leads to…
higher levels of profit, which leads to…
higher shareholder returns (i.e., stock price)
Based on my own experience as a serial entrepreneur leading “best place to work” teams, and on Kenexa’s research on over 10 million workers in 150 countries, there are three keys to driving engagement.
1) Growth and Development. Do your team members feel like they are learning new things and advancing their career?
2) Recognition & Appreciation. Do your team members feel appreciated and that their ideas count?
3) Trust & Confidence. Do your team members trust the leadership and have confidence in the organization’s future?
To remind myself of these three keys, I often repeat the mantra:
This in a nut shell gives you the direction as to what you can do to make a contribution that can make an impact in the organization that you wish to associate yourself with.
This is just a scratch on the surface, you will find tons of material. Just have to query Employee Engagement on Google and in microseconds it will display as many as About 38,500,000 results (0.37 seconds).
The suggestion is keep following the best practices that people share and help their organizations succeed, in that lies their success to for the role they play in Employee Engagement.
I've tried my best for now investing a good bit of my valuable early morning thoughts in putting this together. Go through and do let us know how you are faring when you move on. For now my whole hearted wishes to you for along and great career in whichever the field you might choose to get into, now and later transit into.