AGI motivates SMEs to improve business skills
The first session of a two-day business edge training on motivation for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) ended in Accra on Tuesday.
The training was sponsored by the International Finance Consortium and took 14 Managers and Supervisors of SMEs through various theories of motivation that would help them motivate their staff.
Mr Samuel A. Appenteng, Vice President of the AGI, said there was the need to change the perception of the ordinary people that SMEs in the country were not performing.
He said the AGI was good at providing ideas to SMEs business operators to improve on their business skills.
Mr Appenteng said Ghanaians were good at creating businesses but needed the required managerial skills to make the businesses prosper adding, the cost of non-quality was high.
He called on Government to support the AGI through the National Accreditation Board to be accredited to run business courses for SMEs and other business entities.
Mr Appenteng said another training session would be held for in two weeks time and hoped that at least the AGI would organise four of this training session before December 2012.
Mr Jacob Ainoo-Ansah, a facilitator at the training, noted that Ghanaian SMEs business operators were resourceful but needed to be taken through motivational and managerial skills training to sustain their businesses.
He said the AGI will be thankful to see transformation in the businesses of participants and hoped that the skills acquired will be used to improve their motivational and managerial performance.
Mr Ainoo-Ansah said there were 55 strategies to learn and adopt to manage businesses and hoped that another opportunity will be provided by the AGI for managers to participate.
Participants gave testimonies of the knowledge they had acquired and were awarded with certificate of participation.
The Association of Ghana Industries has entered into a cooperation agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to provide training for SMEs.
Source: GNA
This is a step in the right direction. Kudos to AGI & IFC and more grease to your elbows. Theories of motivation are important but lets not forget the importance of quality management practices which are necessary to get our SMEs that competitive edge over their counterparts in business. A key factor that gets our SMEs contracts in the Oil & Gas industry is whether they have a quality management system like ISO 9001 in place, not necessarily certification, but practicing quality management principles. I hope subsequent training will cater for this gap which is so missing in our SMEs. Thanks