Up to now SMART Myanmar has rolled out several rounds of the SMART Social Compliance Academy™ which have covered more than 24 garment factories to improve their awareness and practices on social compliance performance. In addition, free-of-charge HR management classroom trainings have been delivered for garment factories and simultaneously target the improvement of their HR management systems. In the whole garment industry a strong demand of hundreds of garment factories has been observed and the SMART Myanmar team understands that there is much more to do. Therefore, in January 2017 SMART Myanmar started a cooperative initiative with BIF (Business Innovation Facility) to transfer knowledge and experiences of why and how to improve HR management practices and social compliance system to Myanmar consultancy firms, to build up their capacities to offer these services to the growing garment industry in Myanmar. This cooperation is planned for several months and includes classroom trainings, in-factory coaching and co-delivery of factory assessments on different aspects of HR and social compliance to ensure a gradual and effective transfer. SMART Myanmar will also support in terms of advising on service package design, KPI development, impact assessment, etc.
In January and February 2017 SMART's senior technical expert, Nancy Feng, and technical experts Hay Mar Oo, Hsu Yin Win, May Mi Kyaw and Ye Hein Htet delivered 7 days of classroom trainings to to 11 consultants from three Myanmar consultancy firms that were selected to participate in the program. These trainings aim at enhancing the participants’ understanding and knowledge on HR basic functions, retention, system establishment, communication, and social compliance both theoretically and practically. Trainings on other topics and practical, on-site coaching will take place in the coming months.
