Apart from having a well-planned business strategy, a crucial factor in successfully tackling these problems is the quality of a company’s work team.

Last year, Adsale organized an in-house staff training programme entitled“Managing and Leading Changes”, which was aimed at encouraging staff to respond to these changes with a positive mind and to regard each change as an opportunity for further development, to cultivate borderless support as a corporate culture, to strengthen team spirit among staff members, to share experience with others and to enrich their market knowledge.

In an effort to express the importance of staff training, Adsale submitted this training programme to the 2013 UFI Education Award competition organized by the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI) and finally won the award.

Stanley Chu, Chairman of the Adsale Group, says, “We attach great importance to staff development. Since 2005, we have been organizing a two full-day conference each year with the objective of enhancing the leadership of our middle level managerial staff. Past topics covered include benchmarking, blue ocean strategy, vision and mission, corporate values, innovation, motivation, etc.

Last year, our theme was “Managing and Leading the Change”. Fifty-four department heads from offices located in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Singapore gathered at the conference to contribute strategies for dealing with challenges in the future.

The objectives of the UFI Education Award are to appreciate novel results-oriented educational and vocational activities that have been developed and implemented, and to share innovative ideas on concepts of in-house education. As Stanley Chu explains, “That we stand out from several participants is largely due to the fact that our conference had a clearly defined objective and it addressed a defined target group.

"The programme design was innovative and creative. It was successful in having increased participants’ knowledge of the industry and market, strengthened their confidence in overcoming challenges and cultivated team spirit through a series of diversified activities, such as reading, group discussions, interactive games, sharing of China and the industry’s updates, etc.

"The most important outcome is that with the active participation of managerial staff from different departments, some major changes in the exhibition industry in the upcoming three years have been identified; these include changes in Chinese government industry policies, the China and international market environment, exhibitors’ high expectations on return on investment, visitors’ interest in new technology, innovation and brand development, a higher proportion of Generation Y in the company, increasing popularity of online and mobile devices, and more and severe competition.