This B’luru company uses drama, art and music to make corporate trainings engaging

Corporate training can often be boring and fail to engage learners, but a novel approach is changing the mode of training in corporate spaces.

Reflex, a Bengaluru-based innovative training firm, has introduced techniques traditionally used in drama and music in corporate training to make learning more interactive and engaging.

The training involves emphasis on actions and engaging the learners on an emotional level.

“Learning brings changes only if it impacts learners on a personal and emotional level. Our programs help people see the behaviour and feel the impact through theatre, music and outbound trainings,” said Manoj Thelakkat, founder of Reflex and CEO of Flex-I Partners Group, parent company which runs Reflex.

Speaking on how Reflex was set up after Flex-I being in the HR domain for over a decade, Manoj says, “We were thinking of ways to expand the HR horizon. So, the first thing that came to our mind was training as most of us come from a training background.”

Nithya Menon, Business Head of Reflex describes Corporate Theatre to be a revolutionary approach to training through theatre games and techniques.

“The learning happens through dramatics. We blend years of experience in theatre and corporate management of our team with our training. We wanted to move away from the typical classroom training as we felt the retention value was much less amongst learners,” says Nithya.

So how does it actually work differently?

Contrary to the classroom method of teaching, Reflex creates a real-life situation based on the pain-point using the medium of theatre, music or other art forms.

“There was a leadership program for one of our clients. The problem was that the people in their international IT team were based in different geographies across the globe and their major issue was a matter of trust among the members, even though they had been working together for years,” recounts Nithya.

“So, while a section of the employees enacted a real-life like situation in front of the whole training group, everybody had inputs to solve the problem. So, we as trainers do not teach anything, we only facilitate and the learners only come up with a solution,” Nithya says.

In its fold, other than professionals from the HR and allied sectors such as Santosh Kumar P who has 20 years of experience in skill development training, Reflex has renowned personalities from the field of theatre, music and film like award winning film director Nandajan K A.

There are also personalities like Raj Chandran, who has two decades of experience in corporate training and has performed as a musician at All India Radio,  and retired army officer Major James who has 18 years of experience in leadership training.