Gearing up for the 2016 HKMA Award for Excellence in Training and Development

Learning and Development is becoming more strategic than ever before—and thus the innovation, creativity and passion needed for training is crucial. Recognising excellence in this respect spreads good practice and this is what the HKMA 2016 Award for Excellence in Training and Development tries to achieve. Anthony Ward Rushton, Chairman of the Award Organising Committee shared his thoughts and expectations for this year’s awards.

As one of the major events in the L&D calendar, the Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA)’s Award for Excellence in Training and Development sets out to recognise the great work done by those in the profession in respect to skills training and development. Anthony Ward Rushton, Regional Head of Learning—Asia Pacific, Human Resources, HSBC—and also the Award Organising Committee Chairman—is under no doubt about the value of these prestigious awards.

He stated, “The awards are about giving recognition to trainers for their hard work and passion towards training and development. To get that external recognition is really valuable and demonstrates how professional the training industry actually is. Getting recognition is a big thing—it’s not just your own organisation saying ‘well done and thank you very much—that was a great training intervention’, it’s also externally recognised that it was creative and innovative.”

Developments and challenges in L&D
With rough economic seas over the past decade, the training industry—like any other—has faced significant challenges. Demands for programmes which are more relevant and cost effective are issues that are difficult to balance in respect to quality. Though according to Rushton, companies have not been deterred. He said, “What I have noticed over the last few years is that training intervention has actually been shorter, sharper, more impactful and creative. More thought is going into what can be done before the programme to make it crisper and cleaner, and then follow-up to make sure training is embedded through ongoing activities.”

In addition to this, L&D professionals have responded to calls for more relevant training. In this respect, Rushton added, programmes have become more business focused by concentrating on live business issues through fictitious case studies that could happen in real life.

What does it take to win?
Now headinginto his third year as Chairman,and with all these developments in the industry, he also recognises thatthe award is certainly not short of potential winners. He commented, “When you look at a trainer’s profile, you can see their passion in the industry. They want to do the best possible job whether it is designing a programme, the prep work, the dialogue they have with the business or the delivery, 100% of those people doing those roles are passionate and want to create impactful training interventions.”

If those competitors want to win though, Rushton simply had one trait he and the panel are looking for: passion. He explained, “When contenders are presenting in the preliminary rounds, you can see the ones who are truly passionate about their training interventions. This is done in a professional way of course but we look for the genuine desire to do a really good and successful training programme. They should also show that they have kept in mind what is driving this training initiative, what the business impact is and how they have kept that at the forefront at all stages of the training programme.”

He added, “To win the award, companies who are invited to present their programme need to think really carefully about the audience listening to their presentation. Being successful requires you to know the programme inside out—the audience are most likely hearing it for the first time. They need to ask themselves: does my presentation make logical sense? They need to approach it from an ‘outside looking in’ perspective—and it is useful to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, not to a mirror on the wall, but to people hearing it for the first time.”

What to expect this year?
With the awards being so prestigious and authoritative, one would expect only the biggest companies with the best resources to be decorated with all the prizes. However, according to Rushton, “What I really gets me motivated when doing these awards are those unexpected winners—those from fairly small to medium organisations who are up against the big players—those are the ones that stick out for me.”

He added, “So this year, encouraging small to medium organisations—those organisations with 500 employers or less—is a big focus. We are hoping we’ll see again a further improvement in the wide variety of organisations taking part. The trend has always been positive these last several years in terms of more small to medium organisation but we want that trend to continue and we want that to be even more prominent.”

The Hong Kong Management Association: Award for Excellence in Training and Development 2016 - Award Schedule

Campaign Awards

Individual Awards