About the company: Delicron (HK) Limited is a garment manufacturing, trading and retail company based in Hong Kong.

So what's the problem? "Finding qualified and experienced employees is not always easy. Can we contribute towards the community by raising the standard of our local workforce and also improving the quality of our own employees?" Edward Lam, Managing Director of Delicron (HK) Limited, thought they would give it a shot.

This was their solution: Delicron began offering 4-month internships to final year university students in business administration 2 years ago. The interns are required to complete a research project. They are also placed in different departments to obtain a sound understanding of the company's various divisions and functions. After each intern finishes a key task or placement period in a particular department, the Managing Director or the responsible manager will give a debriefing to find out what the intern has learned.

Who gained from the project? Interns often bring in new and useful ideas that facilitate Delicron managers to revisit internal systems to check for effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. Also, this practice helps Delicron to select future employees. To these young people internship is an excellent way of preparing for the real challenges of the business world. In a broader sense, offering internships can help boosting Hong Kong's economy by improving the standard of the local workforce.

Looking back. Discussion with interns on each party's expectations, alignment of expectations and good advance-planning helped to reduce the time spent on day-to-day supervision. Resistance to internship programme by long-serving elders within Delicron was then tackled by using a cost-benefit analysis which demonstrated that resources have been saved.