Safety first

Have you ever heard of a ‘Safety Day’ being celebrated at an office? I can hear many people saying - No. Even I didn’t know anything about it until one of my clients celebrated it. So, what do they do on ‘Safety Day’? The idea is to lay emphasis on the safety rules that everyone should follow in their day to day life. So on this day, they give a T-shirt to all employees that they need to wear on that particular day. They also give Safety Awards, conduct a Safety Day quiz and also have a safety day T-shirt painting competition. All of this is done to keep people alert about safety protocols, else they may forget. They have a very strict safety policy which has to be followed by everyone - starting from the vice president to the office assistant. There is no exception, even for auditors. A mail is sent as a warning to a manager if anyone violates any one of the safety policies. More than two warnings can also lead to banning the person from entering the client premises. Their safety policy mainly includes wearing seat belts/helmets. So out of compulsion, even I started wearing seat belts. It was mandatory to wear seat belts/helmets to enter the client’s parking place. Even in the driving school, they didn’t teach us how to wear a seat belt. So it’s been nearly four years after I learnt to drive a car that I learn to wear a seat belt! In the initial days, I felt they were overdoing things in following these safety policies. Why do we have to wear a seat belt in a country which is full of traffic and you cannot drive more than 40 km/hr during peak office hours anyway? I used to wear the seat belt only for 2 minutes before I entered the parking area. But I realised the need for it after I heard from one of the client who met with an accident. There was severe damage to the car but he didn’t sustain any injury only because he was wearing his seat belt. From that day I’ve started wearing my seat belt every time I drive my car. Why do we find it so difficult to wear helmets if we can wear shoes to work? It mainly depends on our mind-set and how we’ve been brought up. If we follow certain things, our kids will eventually follow it. I strongly believe that we should start fostering these safety measures in people’s minds. Another important but rather weird safety policy followed at my clients place is to hold hand rails when climbing up/down the staircase. I started following it even at shopping malls or any other place where I use the staircase. I was finding it so difficult to let go of that habit at other places as well. The crux here is, we should make it a habit rather than a policy, and then people will follow it. On a lighter note, when a slow animal like a tortoise wears a helmet, then why don’t we use it when we travel at a speed fifty times more than that!!! I believe we should at least encourage people to start wearing helmets/seat belts in all our offices. It indeed does save lives!

Super Sunday

A Super match on a Super Sunday – Wimbledon Men’s Finals - Roger Federer vs Andy Murray. Federer trying to regain the No.1 spot from the Joker, after beating him comfortably in the semis. On the other side, Murray with a strong backing from the British press saying “Come on Andy” will be the first British person in 87 years to win a Wimbledon championship. I was bit late for the match, Murray already won the first set and the second set was tied at 1-1. Murray was on his top of the game and Federer was playing the bad tennis of his lifetime. Murray was giving him a tough fight but still he could not break Federer in the second set. Murray was serving to save the set at 6-5 and Federer broke him when it mattered the most. That’s what we call as Champions Play, snatching those important moments of the match. Score line read 4-6, 7-5 Federer begins the third set with an ace, the confidence of winning the second set. In the same game, Murray hit one out of the stadium. I could sense the momentum shifting to Federer. Before anyone could seize the advantage, there came the rain. It was not so good to see the umbrellas opening and players going back to their locker rooms. I was wondering why they didn’t use the roof even when they had one to cover up the stadium. There was no stopping from the rain gods, so they finally decided to use the roof. Match was delayed by 40 mins. The sixth set of the game which lasted for nearly twenty minutes, brought back the sublime form of Federer. Murray fell down thrice in the same game with the pursuit of sending the ball to the other side of the net, but he failed in all the three instances. I nearly lost the count of the deuces, definitely more than 8. Federer breaks the serve to take the advantage. I could see an old and a young lady jumping out from their seats whenever Murray was winning a point. Well we could assume who they would be. Back to the game. Federer wins the third set with an Ace, just like how it began. Fourth set, Federer was firing the aces down to Murray’s throat and breaks him to take the advantage. Federer was serving for the championship with the score reading 5-4 and there fell Federer into the ground for one last time in the match.

Ten days of cultivation

Everyone at PwC knows about ATP, the Audit Transformation Programme. But the training which we went through recently can be called as TTP. We will come back to its expansion later. Employees in any office will love to attend any training. Not because they get some break from work but they can sharpen their knowledge. I can’t imagine stating this before attending this particular training. I have always been in the other side of the fence, troubling the tutors. Now I got the taste of my own medicine. But to be honest to become a successful tutor you should work your heart out with some sincere effort. I am not going to bore you with too much of philosophy. I am certainly not a Shakespeare. But I would like to shake the minds of my peers with some thoughts like this (shake+peer = Shakespeare). Never mind! Let’s make it interesting. The three most famous things in Pune (which I can think of) are the food items - Bakarwadi, Vada pav and the Hotel Le Meridian (the only person who liked the Hotel was our instructor. So I had no choice other than to bring it in here). Well we are talking about Pune because the training was organised there. Everyone who came to the training had the taste of all three things. I have never gone to a city in India which doesn’t have a road called MG Road. If you really want to do some good shopping in any of the Indian cities even if you are new to the place, you can always bet your money on MG Road. Pune was not an exception. Something about the training now! I have never attended training with so much fun but nevertheless it fulfilled the purpose. There were plenty of firsts I experienced in this training. My first ever training wherein we didn’t extend the scheduled time on any day. That can only happen when we have instructors who can manage time efficiently. Who were the instructors? None other than people who attended the training! We had more than 40 people across offices from India. Every two days we had new set of people visiting us who have previously attended the academy. I could draw an analogy to a hospital where specialist doctors visiting the patients. But no one could actually cure us! We were bit by a knowledge virus – our instructor! We did lots of activities across ten days and learnt many things. It started from how to write a flip chart to how to handle mischievous people during trainings. Before the training everyone knew how to write a flipchart, but after the training we learnt to write it in a way that can draw the attention of the trainees. Our team (called “Desi Boyz”) won the activity of writing an attractive and colorful flipchart proving that even boys can be colorful. We had one more team activity of making an elephant with the things that are available inside the training room. Few teams didn’t find anything to use. So they finally used their own team members. Until then I was under the impression that humans came from apes. But after seeing few team members turning into elephants I had a doubt whether humans came from elephants/apes. Oops! Now I am questioning Darwin’s theory! We also had plenty of technical sessions. One such session was relating to Fraud. The instructors related the number 420 (everyone in India knows about 420) with the International Standards on Auditing which deals with fraud i.e ISA 240. No one can ever forget the ISA number with such references. There was also a picture quiz which was amazingly done. There were 100 reasons to make it amazing. But one of the most important factor was, it was done by our team! During the weekend it was party time with free cocktails. It would look much better for our trainers to move their mouth than to move their legs which was so obvious from the dance party. But we had few people who were good at both. On the final day a collage made by our own instructors brought back the memories of entire ten days together. Now, coming back to the expansion of TTP. It can be called “Trainer Transformation Programme”. It really transformed everyone who attended the training. The next day after the training, when I was getting ready to go to office, I nearly forgot how to wear the tie. During the ten days of training we were wearing only casuals! One of the firsts in trainings I have attended.