An Educational Feast
View(s):Pizza Hut has become a household name to a great many of us here in Sri Lanka, and I may safely say the trademark has now become synonymous with quality, taste, fun, and even love, to all their customers. The restaurant chain, which is managed by Gamma Pizza Kraft Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, presently consists of twenty six outlets islandwide, and the number keeps growing.
Anushka Ranasinghe (Director HR), Chris Bernet (Manager-Training), and Instructress-Shrimanie Kiran Wanigasekera, flanked by the best performers from the programme.
Approximately six months ago the management of Gamma Pizza Kraft Lanka (Pvt) Ltd came up with the novel idea of gifting their employees with free lessons in English with the intention of uplifting the overall effectiveness of the entire organization. Thus, a sustainable English language training programme was implemented with the hiring of Shrimanie Kiran Wanigasekera (LVCM(TD)HONS, AVCM(TD)HONS, ATCL-UK), an expert on the subject. The programme was not to be simple spoken English lessons. No sir, it wasn’t! This was to be a one of kind language training course where students would learn English correctly, learn correct pronunciation, correct accent, presentation skills, grooming, and overall confidence building.
I spoke to several of the Pizza Hut staff members and crew who had completed the course, and found that they all had basically the same comments to make with regard to the whole concept of employees being given free education by their corporate sector leaders. Everyone agreed that they had had their knowledge of English improved significantly and had overcome the shyness they usually, naturally and characteristically demonstrated when required to speak the language in public. Furthermore, and most importantly, every single student had nothing but praise and appreciation for Gamma Pizza Kraft Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. They agreed that both employer and employee benefitted tremendously from the results of the English language training programme. Gamma Pizza Kraft has indeed achieved much with their unique and selfless idea.
Colombo provides employment to hundreds of thousands of youth from all parts of the island, and shall continue to attract many more in the years ahead. This is all good, but sadly, a vast majority of these people have no knowledge of the English language at all, or exhibit intense discomfort when required to speak the language in public. It is a fact that a great number of private & government entities within the corporate sector of this country face a dilemma when it comes to finding English language qualified personnel to fill in vacancies. The lack of English speaking employees today can be an embarrassment, and even a liability to almost every organization, so it is only pertinent for other companies to take a page out of the groundbreaking book written by Pizza Hut, and adapt the concept of educating its staff, be it English or anything else for that matter.
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