Training is an essential part of preparing workers to provide services to businesses. Impact Sourcing Service Providers (ISSPs) are working hard to get residents of economically-challenged areas around the world up to speed on using a computer, keyboarding, scanning and digitization. But as these workers prepare to compete in today’s technology-driven work environment, there are other skills that are just as essential to a worker’s success.
The Power of Training
In its report: Impact Sourcing: Assessing the Opportunity for Building a Thriving Industry, the Rockefeller Foundation and the William Davidson Institute emphasized the importance of training workers in such fields as communication, workplace etiquette, and life skills.
These skills, also known as “soft skills,” give workers the foundation they need to interact with businesses in developed areas of the world.As if to prove the power of training in these areas, IT Enable Services Secretariat of Ghana recently published the results of its Readiness to Work Project. As part of the report, ITES found that many soft skills reached levels of more than 90 percent following training. Ethics, communication, and personal grooming all improved more than 90 percent, while workers’ time management skills improved more than 75 percent.
Learning Through Experience
When ISSPs create work centers that allow workers to have a place to convene each day, these workers learn the general etiquette that applies to any work environment. Being neatly groomed and interacting in a polite, professional manager with associates and employers can not only be taught, but experienced on a daily basis.
Time management, however, is something that challenges even those workers in economically-developed areas of the world. While ISSPs can instill basic time management concepts in workers, these skills must be hone over months of day-to-day work experience. Through the support of ISSPs in their area, workers can gradually learn to manage their time to complete tasks ahead of schedule and balance multiple priorities at once.