Last Weekend

A student writes about her last weekend

Last weekend, on Saturday, I went to Kilometer 18. I invited my best friend to come with me and my family because he had never been there. However, he didn’t go with us. It took one hour and 15 minutes to go from my house in Jamundi to the place we stayed at for a while. During the drive there, I caught up with all the news about my family. I was told that my cousin had moved to a small town and that my other cousin had gotten married.

My grandmother came to visit us and to see the new house in Jamundi. She said the house was beautiful but couldn’t stand the heat and the weather there. That’s why it was decided that we leave Cali.

On Sunday we went to the “Caña Museum”. It was a nice place where I had never been. My dad gave my grandmother the possibility to choose between going to the “Hacienda el Paraiso” or to the museum. If I could have chosen, I would have decided the “Hacienda el Paraiso”, but it was a great trip anyway.

Anonymous
Company Y

Training People

A student writes about her experience from a Train the Trainers Training

Three weeks ago, I had a training with a few coworkers from the Human Resources area and some other areas of my company. The training was called "Train the Trainers", and from it I learned about some tips and strategies of how to speak in front of a group, how to handle difficult situations during a training, such as: people falling asleep, speaking with each other or just not paying attention to the speaker.

The training implied two days of learning how to train people and I understood that if I had known those tips and strategies when I was working with training people in occupational health, I would have had more successful training sessions.

After these twoo days, my coworkers and I decided to replicate that training to the rest of the Human Resources group, so we prepared a five-hour-session to teach them all the things that we had learned, or at least the most important things that they would need to make a presentation in front of a group.

In fact, we had the opportunity to apply all the things that we had learned in the Train the Trainers training one week ago. Last Saturday, for the whole day, we gathered all the operators, who we call “colleagues”, in Hotel Radisson to receive information about Quality, Safety, KPI’s and Human Resources politics and benefits, which was the hardest part, because they started the day at 8:00 a.m. and the training that we gave was at 1:45 p.m., after lunch and in the middle of a very hot day. We had almost 500 people in the place, divided in groups of 30 people and, in some cases, using a very small room. I think that if we’d had a better air conditioner in the rooms, we would have maintained the people more concentrated on the things that we were trying to teach.

But at the end of the day, I think we reached our goal, which was to use strategies and apply some techniques to handle a group without fears or doubts and to give all the colleagues in the plant information about the new things that we are going to do for them and about their benefits during all this year.


Carolina
Company X

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Write an email to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com with your request.

My First Day

A student writes about her first day at a new company

My first day at Company X was just great. I started on Friday. When I arrived, the Human Resources team received me with a breakfast, in which all of them made a small presentation about their position and something about their personal life, and then I introduced myself to them. At the end, we took a picture with all the team.

Then I started the induction, where they explained to me the most important things about the company, like the philosophy, values, rules, benefits and the products that the company produces.

Later, I had the visit to the plant. It was really amazing! We saw all the processes of all the products.  It is full of colors and forms. Very nice! I also had the opportunity to meet some operators and they were also really nice to me.

I can say that even if I was very happy with my job in Company A, I am really happy here. It is a company that cares a lot about their employees, have great human practices and for that reason it results great for me to work in this area, for this great company.

Carolina M
Company X

Seize the Moment and Write!

To all ESLA Consulting students with an interest in improving your fluency and accuracy in English writing:

Seize this very Moment and Write to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com.

Write about anything that's on your mind and we'll help you edit your material for great, everyday or work related blog posts here at ESLA Bloggers.

Are you waiting for something or are you just not interested in improving your writing? Well, tell us why and we'll make a story about that too!

Of course you can be anonymous if you want!

Starting up in Bogotá

Dear readers, 

This post is to inform you about our expansion progress to Bogotá. We're starting with one company and one consultant this month if all goes according to our plans. We're right now confirming the details about the deal and hope to have everything working by next week. More information will follow. In the meanwhile, if you have any contacts interested in English business language consulting or teaching, in Cali, Bogotá or Medellín, don't hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

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Expatriate Assignments

An interesting topic that I chose to use with all my students concerns Expatriate Assignments. The material used is part of our International Business and Cross-Cultural Management series that inspired interesting discussions about the pros and cons about being sent abroad to work. As I think many of us can imagine, the key thing to have in mind before accepting such an assignment is ones family situation... whether or not the family would respond positively to the new culture and to what extent ones experience in and knowledge of the home market can be trusted to bring results in the new, foreign setting. /JAW