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A word

L&d is revolutionizing – slowly, but it is!

This is a ROI-driven world where establish-ing the value of something is critical, espe-cially in the business parlance. Organiza-tions today are looking at innovative ways to translate their commercial strategies into

business outcomes, especially in terms of the investments made in talent acquisition and management. And if talent stagnates, the business stagnates. But keeping them adroit and skilling them timely is an en-tirely different game-play. Leaders, of late, have started to look at the L&D function for this particular reason and have started to make decent investments in this function as it is now seen to affect the bottom-line.

In a commercially driven business world, the paralysis of talent shortage has forced organizations to develop its talent internal-ly. Coupled with this is the fact that every new generation has different set of com-petencies, different workforce expectations and different learning needs. This is the day and age of the Gen Y, but we still have the Gen X working on a single organizational platform along with the anticipation of in-cluding Gen Z. Thus, the success of learn-ing and development has become directly proportional to employee engagement, re-tention and even leadership development.

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Today, organizations are reimagining the art of learning and development. L&D functions are trying to create new playbook for the new times and for the new work-force. They have revamped their learning agendas and have imbibed the mantra of ‘engaging the learner’ to the core. It is not unknown that the more we try to engage and involve our employees, the more they perform and the more successful organiza-tions are in differentiating themselves from the others. Skill and capability building are now the priorities and business-critical top-ics for companies globally.

With innovation as the new need and aim, L&D functions have headed towards absorbing new learning solutions like inte-grating content platforms, MOOCs, mobile learning, cloud-based learning systems, collaborative & social learning, device-ag-nostic learning and what not. The learning technology market has grown by 27 per-cent and is now a $4 billion industry. And with learning analytics slowly coming into the picture, the dynamics of learning and development seem to be metamorphos-ing. L&D analytics will prove to be a game changer in the coming years.

In 2013, People Matters Media started the first L&D Leadership League, which provided insights into the best learning & development practices of Indian and glob-al organizations along with the challenges they face. In its third year, we have aspired to cover the L&D insights shared in the 3rd Annual L&D Leadership conference, in this book. This book is a collection of the iden-tified Big Questions or challenges of the L&D function and their most appropriate solutions.

Share. Learn. Grow.

Ester Martinez, Editor-in-Chief, People Matters

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About L&D Leadership

League

This is the biggest platform for L&D professionals to connect and discover about

the new age practices in the space of Learning & Development. L&D Leadership League serves as an interactive platform for high level of thought leadership.

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An initiative that provides

insights into the best learning & development

practices

An year long initiative that has multiple

touch points with members

Connects 2000+ L&D professionals

through online activities and conferences

L&D Awards recognize and reward

the best learning practice

Recognizes talent management teams

that are creating solutions for

business problems in the L&D space

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Rooted in Learning

In a rapidly trans-forming business

world, learning and knowledge enhancement has emerged as a deter-miner for organizational

successBy Pallavi Sharma

One of the most critical aspects to nav-igate business change is to transform the organizational attitude towards learning. The need to continuously de-

velop and evolve with learning has emerged as an instrumental factor for organizational success.

The opportunities today for the learning professionals are immense. The L&D space is seeing significant enhancement in terms of maturity, rapid and constant upgradation of learning systems. Today, traditional training and formal classroom formats are giving way to mobile and e-learning solutions combined with gamification. All of this is characterized by faster access to content, diminished lines

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However, defocusing the attention from the internal learning vertical of organizations to in-clude factors such as the global market, tech-nological advancement and changing work-force, it becomes necessary that the new age CLO wears different hats in rotation. The role of the CLO has changed dramatically over the last few years. Increased focus on ‘no one-size-fits-all’ within the Learning & Development space has led innovation to take a pivotal role when it comes to framing development techniques for employees. Further, with the growing number of HR and learning technologies entering the market, the scope for innovatively customiz-ing learning for each employee has increased exponentially. L&D professionals today are ex-pected to be not only learning experts but also fluent technology purveyors with the ability to select the best fit-for-purpose and cost-effec-tive learning solution. Therefore, the modern CLO must take on a bigger and more impor-tant role.

Capability builder: “While there are many emerging trends within the L&D space, a prom-inent one observed in organizations in gener-al is an effort to move to a competency-based framework,” says Jerry Nine. Rather than just training people and running the L&D organi-

between personal and professional time, and greater reliance on tools and technology. Gen Y joining the workforce is also contributing to these fast-changing trends.

This is where the role of the Chief Learning Officer becomes critical to architect an organ-ization’s learning and development culture. With a number of different learning tools be-ing scattered, it is the CLOs who need to iden-tify the business problem at hand, thread the needle and leverage all tools at their disposal. “Leadership at the top has to set the tone when establishing a learning organizational culture,” says Dr. Parul Pandey, Head Talent & Develop-ment, Deutsche Bank India.

Role of the Chief Learning OfficerThe Chief Learning Officer, while formulating a learning module, needs to align training and development outcomes with business outcome. “Alignment is the first and foremost thing that CLOs need to understand; they need to be able to successfully align learning with the strategic objectives of the company. CLOs who can do that are the ones who get the seat at the table and have a say when it comes to budgeting pri-orities,” says Jerry Nine, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Skillsoft.

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zation, CLOs need to focus on understanding the detailed capability requirements of critical positions in the company. “The Learning officer should not only be wearing the policing hat but should also monitor as to whether enough time is being spent on the right kind of learning and how employees are taking to such train-ing,” says Dr. Pand-ey. Companies that focus on capability building are most likely to outperform those who deliver skill-based training.

Driver of change: A key differentiator between a high-per-forming organiza-tion and its competi-tors is its ability to adapt to and create change. CLOs play an integral role when it comes to not just change management but also change creation. Through management of training and development, CLOs have become the back-bone for employees adapting to organizational change. But this can be successful when CLOs formulate an innovative approach to training and development. “CLOs need to have a sus-

tainable people-centric approach to talent ex-pansion in order to become more effective in their roles. Those who are looking to success-fully change the way learning works in organi-zations and can successfully improve, quantify and optimize the performance of their people will be key catalysts to improving the organi-

zation’s overall per-formance,” says Jerry Nine.

Measuring busi-ness significance of learningTechnology today has taken a center-stage within the learning space and the corporate world

is being driven by Big Data. CLOs therefore not only need to cover L&D, but they also need to understand technology and communicate out-side of L&D and talk about outcomes that are in the language of business rather than around adoption. The role of the CLO has metamor-phosed. Measurement of values added by learning and development initiatives taken by learning leaders can help business leaders un-

CLOs who can successfully align learning with the strate-gic objectives of the company, are the ones who get the seat at the table and have a say when it comes to budgeting priorities

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derstand the benefits of learning and whether these can outnumber cost.

Learning and development is one of many actions that an organization can take to im-prove its performance and profitability. More-over, L&D is a great source of motivation for employees to think differently and make the most of emerging opportunities along with de-livering on bottom-line objectives.

The step-by-step approach to analyze and measure the impact of training is:

Engagement: Engagement monitoring is one of the first moves that organizations need to take to understand whether the training and coaching programs are transforming into out-comes. To ensure a high engagement level, it is crucial to adopt tools and technique whose usage comes about intuitively and can be rolled into employees’ daily work schedule. For in-stance, use of Whatsapp or Facebook groups can be a useful platform for sharing training and development content. “Today, social portals like Whatsapp or Facebook groups are very effec-tive in the learning process since these portals are already an existing part of employees’ daily lifestyle. Employees share content, articles, vid-eo clips on a regular basis on such networking groups making learning more non-tradition-

al and decentralized,” says Anup Lewis, Head HR, Schneider Electric. Even inserting calendar notification for training and coaching can be a great way to ensure engagement.

Knowledge and skill enhancement: While engagement comes in the initial stage of learn-ing effort transforming into outcomes, it is important for companies to keep track of the actual benefits that are emerging from employ-ees’ engagement with various learning tools.

Key factors to trace are new skills, knowl-edge, as well as attitude. For this, gamification can emerge as a highly effective method, espe-cially when it is tied together with rewards and recognition. “There’s a strong linkage between engagement and the outcome from an em-ployee’s perspective i.e. what are the benefits and rewards for the employee attached to it? If these two are married, there can be a great partnership between engagement, learning and skill enhancement. Learning becomes larg-er and more impactful when rewards & recogni-tion are associated with it,” says Amith Prakash, Global HR - Employee Engagement, HCL Tech-nologies. Therefore, companies today need to work on the push factors by aligning benefits, rewards and compensations and thereby at-tract employees to participate in training and

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learning programs.Application of learning: Skill and knowl-

edge expansion become meaningless when they cannot be woven into everyday function-ality; this is not just about showcasing profes-sional skills but also includes demonstration of behavioral and attitude change in and out of the workplace.

Business outcomes: Lastly, the application of both soft and hard skills in day-to-day activities needs to re-flect in business out-comes of the organ-ization. In absence of identifying busi-ness outcomes from training and devel-opment, evaluating the ROI on such programs becomes vague and irrelevant. However, evaluating effectiveness can become particularly challenging when the targeted outcomes involve softer skills such as improved collaboration, decision making, inno-vativeness and the ability to think strategically. It is difficult to assign a hard-revenue value to such skills, or to show a correlation between the learning initiative and the acquisition of the tar-

geted skills. In such cases, learning profession-als need to work with senior leaders, HR and talent management professionals to mutually identify ROI measures that are linked to the or-ganization’s strategic objectives or its KPIs.

SMACing learning initiativesSMAC is the buzz word today and is the key to creating an organizational culture of learning.

“The demand for so-cial, mobile, analytics and cloud is ever-in-creasing, however, how can companies get there? What are the parameters?” says Madhuri Sen, Managing Director and Vice President

at Waggener Edstrom, India. The trick is to en-hance accessibility of learning resources and to create a continuous learning environment by adopting and leveraging technology that is al-ready on the fingertips of people today. “When learning is integrated in employees’ daily rou-tine, it’s likely to increase employee efficiency and boost business results,” says Vinay Pradhan, Manager, Skillsoft India. Today, social networks

When learning is integrated in employees’ daily routine, it is likely to increase employee efficiency and boost business results

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and connecting portals have become a part of the personal lives of people. Therefore, lever-aging such tools can encourage an increase in learning engagement.

Further, it is also important to create con-tent that is easily accessible for the “mobile” employees of today who have rapidly taken to remote and virtual work-life. This kind of work environment has led to an extensive focus on e-learning. Research by the Impact Instruction Group conducted last year, showed that invest-ment in e-learning continues to be high at 87 per cent. However, there has also been rapid adoption of cloud-based learning systems to make content easily accessible to the mobile workforce. “There’s been a lot faster adoption of the cloud in the last few years; so that’s really working. Even institutions that have traditional-ly been concerned about security like financial institutions have rapidly taken to cloud-based

systems,” says Jerry Nine.With smartphones being the handiest tool

for both professional and personal use, the focus on mobile learning has also increased greatly. For instance, Whatsapp as both a formal and an informal platform to share content, links and/or video bites, has been largely adopted by employees. Further, the Skillsoft Study on the role of mobile learning in India reveals that 72 per cent of learners and decisions makers agree that mobile learning is likely to increase engagement.

Technology is a driving factor for organ-izational efficiency and accuracy and it is no longer an option for organizations to adapt out of choice; it has emerged as necessity in almost all spheres of businesses and verticals.

Going forward, we look at some of the best industry practices from the finalists of People Matters L&D League Awards 2015.

Note: People Matters L&D Leadership League Awards is a year long initiative in partnership with Center for Creative Leadership, Pearson TalentLens, SumTotal Systems, a Skillsoft company and Great Lakes Institute of Management. The awards culminated in an annual conference on 9th October 2015 in Bangalore. The Best L&D practices were recognized and awarded in the conference.

F pallavi-sharma/37/2a7/430M PallaviSharma04

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BuILDInG A CuLTuRe Of

COnTInuOuS LeARnInG

Positioned at the forefront of procurement

business, Beroe Consulting ensures that its analysts have

access to continuous learning and exposure through initiatives like

the Beroe UniversityBest Practices by

Beroe Inc

In recent times, the complexity and ambi-guity in procurement as a function has in-creased manifold. While Beroe Inc promises

to provide procurement teams with continuous competitive advantage, the “continuous” part of its promise has become critical to its clients. Therefore, it has become imperative that its an-alysts know their industry well, and be abreast with the latest in sourcing, procurement prac-tices, analytics and client context. Mere knowl-edge is not enough today; ability to translate knowledge into actionable insights which can deliver practical and significant savings in cost, improvement in process or reduction in turn-around times is crucial.

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Need for continuous learningSince Beroe operates in the knowledge/intelli-gence industry, the future of its business de-pends on its ability to attract, hire, develop and retain people with category/industry expertise. Hence, providing continuous competitive ad-vantage and staying true to its belief of “Advan-tage Procurement” is possible only by ensur-ing that the company’s analysts have access to continuous learning. If Beroe would have left these concerns untouched, it was likely to lose its cur-rent and potential client accounts. This would have led to its brand reputation falling and employee morale dropping, leading to high attrition.

Making learning a continuous process was the only way Beroe could ensure a sustainable solution to its business problem. For this, it was important for Beroe to drive a culture of learn-ing within the organization by shaping and rendering the vast amount of existing, useful knowledge within the company. Creating a cul-ture of continuous learning would also give the

analysts a competitive edge. Further, the initia-tive would also result in positive spin offs on all other employee lifecycle (Talent Management) processes such as engagement, recognition and performance.

Developing strategy for continuous learningBeroe began the initiative by first identifying

behavioral and tech-nical competencies for all the unique roles across levels in the organization. After this, it per-formed a capability/gap analysis to arrive at the training needs

for every employee in the organization and identified trends in learning needs across levels. The company then re-evaluated its organiza-tion structure to create rewarding career paths for individual contributors and people manag-ers. Beroe also initiated ‘Career Conversations’ (a continuous and ongoing process) with every individual to identify career aspirations and provide guidance; including diagnostics to help analysts discover their areas of strengths and 1:1

Beroe identifies trends in learning needs across levels by performing capability analy-sis for every employee

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coaching. All these efforts led to the creation of a platform to consolidate and disseminate con-tinuous learning in the organization in the form of Beroe University. This platform also focused on live practical industry situations that the an-alysts were expected to encounter in their cur-rent and future roles.

Under the university program, Beroe iden-tified a set of mandatory courses that were compulsory for analysts to undertake and clear them satisfactorily in order to be eligible for lev-el movements. Here, all courses were custom-ized to suit the needs of individual career as-pirations. The university also provided elective courses for employees so that they can pursue learning in areas of personal interest as well.

Under the of this learning platform, Beroe undertook a complete revamp of its onboard-ing and induction process. This has resulted in higher employee engagement and increased job satisfaction among the employees. Further, the onboarding process has also become very robust and the company has not seen a single case of non-confirmation after probation. Client feedback scores have also organically increased.

Adapting changes into learning systemsSince the workforce at Beroe is geographical-ly dispersed, the company now plans to take learning to the next stage by investing in origi-nal digital content. Beroe is working on creating self-learning tutorials and videos with period-ic access to trainers. It is also working to make content available across devices so that em-ployees have control over the place, time and pace of learning.

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BuILDInG enTRePReneuRIAL

MInDSeT ThROuGh

GAMIfICATIOn

With a mission to ac-celerate value creation

through a diversified global portfolio, Mahindra Partners

developed its talent by building en-trepreneurial and agile mindsets

through gamificationBest Practices by

Mahindra Partners

Mahindra Partners, the private equity and venture capital division of the Mahin-dra Group which explores avenues for

investment and incubates new businesses, has been looking to create robust portfolio compa-nies and to cross pollinate ideas between them. Its portfolio spans across multiple industries and the division’s mission is to accelerate value creation through a diversified global portfolio of emergent businesses. Moving towards this goal, the division has outlined its vision 2021 as “Accelerated value creation through a diver-sified global portfolio of emergent businesses driven by constant innovation, prudence and creative business models.” For this, the core fo-

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cus for Mahindra Partners has been to work to-wards disruptive innovations and mental agility.

Need to build entrepreneurial mindsetIn the absence of agile entrepreneurial mind-set for disruptive innovation, Mahindra Part-ners was missing out in terms of its portfolio companies (both topline & bottom line); it was also losing opportunity to build synergy be-tween businesses. As a result, Mahindra Partners noticed that the retention and overall engagement of young talent was below expectation. Even the possibility of talent fungibil-ity (lateral movement of employees) between portfolio companies was negligible in the com-pany. All these factors were likely to lead to stagnation of revenue in the companies.

Strategizing interventionMahindra Partners at first acknowledged the prospect of running an intervention in each portfolio company through an external consul-tancy firm as it involved outside perspective on

how the company’s objective of talent devel-opment could be achieved. Further, high cred-ibility brought by top-notch consultancy firm would ensure commitment from stakeholders. However, this framework was cost and time in-tensive since understanding business intricacies would take a long time.

Mahindra Partners instead adopted gam-ification; it created an initiative named ‘Mind

Games’ for talent development. Here teams of three em-ployees (across functions) from each portfolio company choose live business cases of other port-folio companies and

devise innovative yet viable solutions. Mind Games was not only low on cost and high on return but also increased interactions between employees from different companies.

Building agile mindset through gamifi-cationMahindra Partners kick started the intervention by approaching each portfolio company to state the operational business challenges that they

Mahindra Partners adopted gamification approach as it was low on cost and high on return

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were facing. The division placed a very high fo-cus on implementability of solutions so that the initiative would not just end in ideas but lead to tangible business impact. Ideas developed un-der Mind Games have had a significant business impact on numerous portfolio companies so far. In addition to the business outcomes, Mind Games also substantially improved employee engagement within the organization; develop-ment of talent with increased talent fungibility is another area where all the companies bene-fitted from the adopted intervention.

Taking Mind Games to the next stageIn order to develop Mind Games to the next stage, feedback from jury and participants were taken for Season 1. The responses reflected a few opportunity areas for improvement; one of these was that interactions with the company buddies (designated to help the participants with their ideas) were limited. The organizing team therefore decided to pre-calendarize calls with these buddies and the teams so that in-teractions were regular and fruitful. As a result, Season 2 of Mind Games saw multiple interac-tions between every single team and the com-pany buddies. Through such interactions, the teams were able to ensure that their ideas were

viable and implementable. Further, Mahin-dra Partners has now introduced high impact awards (to be given eight to ten months after the grand finale round) in Season 2. Besides the three evaluation rounds of the competition, this will include rewards for the team which actually gets their ideas implemented and creates the greatest business impact.

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CeLeBRATInG DIveRSITY AT

The WORkPLACe

For creating a foun-dation of diversity and

inclusion, Snapdeal rolled out special diversity initiatives that also enabled a culture of

innovationBest Practices by

Snapdeal

Celebrating differences and not getting entangled in divergent opinions leads to the creation of a truly diverse work-

place – an essential element for the success of any business organization. Today, Snapdeal has been relentlessly trying to build a culture that fosters inclusiveness and promotes diversity. The focus has been to create a foundation of inclusivity and a landscape for diverse thinkers to work together and create brilliant experienc-es for buyers and sellers in India’s digital com-merce ecosystem.

Diversity integral to creativity and inno-vationInternal innovation and business growth were

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found to be the key metrics that needed im-provement. The scope for creativity and inno-vation depended on diversity of age, gender, abilities, cultures etc. in the workplace. Without diversity in the workplace, the team’s perfor-mance was likely to stagnate and become aver-age as ideas would cease to be out of the box. Therefore, Snapdeal sought to look at diversity as a prerequisite element for success and not just a “nice to have” attribute that can be associated with the brand.

Putting the framework for di-versity in placeInitially Snapdeal considered two separate diversity programs; one, increase female employees through fo-cused recruitment, and also create opportuni-ties for people with disabilities as these were found to be the segments that needed atten-tion. Second, focus on experience as a key fac-tor and build teams based on fresh minds and people with experience as this could be a way to build a diverse team without overlooking gen-der and other factors. However, since diversity

of all types is crucial for success, the company decided to create a mixed approach wherein all essential diversity elements were to be focused upon. Snapdeal therefore worked towards hir-ing people from diverse backgrounds, thinking, traits, gender and experiences who filled the gaps identified in the teams in terms of diversi-ty. At the same time, the company also ensured that it did not overlook gender based issues

which is still a major improvement area.

To bring all di-versity initiatives to-gether and make it a success, Snap-deal has undertaken many special diver-sity initiatives. ‘Advit-

ya’, a diversity sensitization initiative, was put in place in order to create awareness about what diversity truly means and why it needs to be embraced. The company tried to spread aware-ness on inclusiveness by introducing various campaigns. Diversity sensitization session and a Reasonable Accommodation Program was planned on how to create a diversity affirmative and inclusive workplace were held for all man-agers in the organization. Further, Snapdeal also

The scope for creativity & in-novation depends on diversity of age, gender, abilities, cul-tures etc. in the workplace

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created ‘women returnee ship’ program, which helps talented women ease back into careers after a sabbatical. Apart from these initiatives, Employee Parental Care program was launched which provided extended maternity and pater-nity leaves. The company also ensures inclusion of people with disabilities while hiring.

Ever since the diversity initiative at Snap-deal has been put to place, the company has grown exponentially and has established itself as an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employees at Snapdeal today represent different cultural backgrounds, gender, age groups, experienc-es, knowledge and perspectives. The workplace has been found to be creative, innovative and driven to succeed and internal innovation has gone up a notch because of the presence of workplace diversity. The philosophy to create an unparalleled experience for buyers and sell-ers in the digital commerce ecosystem has also got an incredible boost after the diversity based initiatives started showing positive impact.

Capturing learnings and challengesApart from the existing initiatives focused on women and differently-abled people, Snapdeal

is also looking to launch campaigns that involve technology and social media tools to reach out to the masses regarding need for diversity in the workplace. Widespread awareness about these measures will bring substantial changes in terms of making the hiring process inclusive and build a culture that focuses on celebrating diversity.

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CuSTOMIZInG LeADeRShIP

ACCeLeRATIOn

In order to build a leadership pipeline

not only at the senior management but also at the

grass-root level, Lupin developed a strategy for developing leaders with the changing demands of

the enterprise.Best Practices by

Lupin

A t twice the rate of the pharmaceutical industry, Lupin has grown rapidly. As a result, leadership development emerged

as one of the core focuses for the company. Lupin sought to accelerate its leadership development rate at the same pace as its growth rate. The company needed to build leadership pipeline at both the senior management and the grass root level so as to nurture leaders from within the company. In order to match the rising needs as a fast growing company, it had to ensure that the requisite skill sets match the company’s as-pirations. This called for capability building to manage growth, identify existing skills gaps and making the work force future ready. Customizing development

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At first, Lupin considered procuring talent from outside. While this was thought to bring a fresh influx of talent, it involved risk of non-alignment of talent with the company goals. The compa-ny thus realized that there can be no simple or a single template for developing leaders. Acknowledging that organizations see most success when they tailor leadership develop-ment systems to the realities of business, the company developed a strategy for devel-oping leaders with the changing demands of the enterprise.

Leadership devel-opment at Lupin to-day follows a three-pronged approach which utilizes the collective capacity of all mem-bers of an organization to accomplish critical aspects such as alignment, scale up and em-ployee life cycle management. Putting it to-gether, the company framed an intervention called Leader Plus. Through this initiative Lupin helped front line supervisors build leadership skills. This would equip employees to handle the transition from managing self to managing others.

The right strategyTo put the Leader Plus initiative in place, Lu-pin partnered with a pool of outsourced train-ers who imparted training and thereafter the in-house team stepped in to continue with the reviews and impact measurements. This result-ed not just in development of home grown tal-ent as leaders but also increased effectiveness and led to innovation at workplace. Leader Plus

built action learning by ensuring that the employees take up continuous on the job improvement projects directly im-pacting the bottom line. Some of the outcomes of the

program as identified by Lupin are increase in savings, cost reduction, and improved produc-tivity and system. All of this as a whole resulted in improved business outcome.

Making learning adhesive Going forward, Lupin plans to institutionalize learning interventions by harnessing the advan-tages of various technology platforms through integration. A gamut of initiatives have been

Leader Plus, at Lupin, is pri-marily focused on helping front line supervisors build leadership skills

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implemented using a plethora of training deliv-ery methods depending on the audience pro-file, the kind of intervention, the expectations of the target audience and the intended impact. Moreover, in order to capture and share learn-ings from the program, the company shares the best 20 projects across all locations through its common portal every year. As knowledge re-pository, Lupin converts the best 3 projects into white papers so that it can circulate it across locations to share knowledge that can be hori-zontally deployed.

There is also a Bi-Monthly Newsletter titled ‘Lakshya – Enabling Leadership’ that is circulat-ed across locations.

All these implementation projects have been preserved & uploaded on a Knowledge Man-agement Portal. The L&D Team has designed an in-house Knowledge Management Portal; titled GYAANODAYA, which functions like a search engine. This has further made more em-ployees aspire for getting their Implementation Projects uploaded on this portal. And above all, it has also significantly enhanced the focus on effective implementation of projects. GYAANO-DAYA; delves on the principle that: “The strong-est form of learning is learning from each other; learning from past success”.

Lupin has started taking a more strategic view of the training and development practices. The company is now concentrating to ensure a sustained execution of these strategies over a period of time that will lead to results that impact not only the bottom line but also act as a panacea to many of the issues that have been plaguing the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.

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DIveRSITY fOR IMPROvInG BuSIneSS MeTRICS

In order to lever-age the potential of a

diverse employee base, Aegis framed a diversity

model that provided its employ-ees access to progress, devel-

opment and opportunitiesBest Practices by

Aegis

A t Aegis, diversity goes beyond the con-cept of equal employment opportunity. The company intends to serve, value,

and make the fullest possible use of the diverse backgrounds, skills, talents and perspectives of all of its employees. Acknowledging the varied perspectives and approaches brought on the table by diversity, Aegis embarked on the jour-ney of diversity in 2009. Since then the compa-ny has been able to integrate its philosophy on diversity successfully across its business strate-gy and practices.

Business need to channelize diversityHaving grown in a multi-fold way into a glob-

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al organization with footprints across nine na-tions, diverse nationalities, culture, languages, customs and traditions have been absorbed in Aegis’ system. Thus, a focused approach was essential to leverage the potential of this diverse resource base in order to channelize its efforts in a concrete way. A diverse workforce would help understand the foreign markets and its customer needs, enhance customer service thus leading to customer satisfaction, adapt to new market changes and increase organ-izational flexibility thus leading to en-hanced competitive advantage. tThus in anticipation of these needs and changes, Aegis institutionalized the Diversity Framework.

Building the six-dimensional diversity strategyOwing to the above needs, Aegis first looked at a two-dimensional diversity framework in-cluding age and gender diversity. However, the model had a limited approach and focus to-wards diversity. Therefore, the company framed

a unique and contemporary six-dimensional diversity framework encompassing six different facets of diversity and inclusion. By adopting six streams of diversity, Aegis endeavored to craft a work atmosphere that would provide every employee access to progress, development and opportunities. By constructing an inclusive workplace, the company pursued to leverage its global team of people who are rich in di-

verse experiences, aptitude, talent, ide-as and philosophies. Both of these strat-egies were aimed to create enhanced employee motiva-tion and business growth.

The six-dimensional diversity framework was rolled out as a change management ini-tiative through which Aegis created an organ-ization structure that empowered diversity & inclusion. The program involves top-to-bottom leadership including the Global CEO who is the executive sponsor in the program and the Global CPO, Mr SM Gupta, who is the organiza-tion change leader towards the diversity move-ment. Diversity Managers were nominated at

Aegis leverages the diverse experiences, aptitude, talent, ideas and philosophies of its global team

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the corporate level as well as at the business/country level. Their role was of an organization-al change agent to lead in diversity related in-terventions and coordinate for the related initi-atives. Appropriate budgets were sanctioned to enable accessibility for persons with disabilities, which is one of the most important facets of Aegis’ diversity model.

Taking diversity forwardAegis has experienced an exponential out-come of the adopted framework. The company has witnessed a significant revenue and profit growth, including global presence and diverse customer base. There has also been an increase in the market share and customer satisfaction, and the average tenure of top clients has ex-panded. There has also been better employee relations climate in the company; the overall at-trition has reduced and the company has been positioned as ‘Employer of Choice’. All of this has led to improved corporate culture and com-petitive advantage in labour markets. Moreover, presence of multiple voices has led to creation of new ideas, new services, new products, and out-of-the-box thinking.

In order to make sure that the learnings from the diversity model are captured, Aegis con-

ducts an annual Employee Engagement Survey and Diversity Scan Survey which enables the company to measure its impact on overall busi-ness strategy. Further, the company also runs a diversity tracker through which all facets of diversity are monitored regularly against the commitments laid in the six dimensional diver-sity model. Based on the results of these sur-veys and trackers, Aegis aims to design innova-tive practices to attract, hire, train, promote and retain the diverse workforce; allocate budget to further promote accessibility to workplace; and conduct employee sensitization programs.

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K eva’s is a nine-decade business heritage company that spans across fragrance, flavor and aroma ingredients and has

established a strong foothold in the domestic market. In the last decade, the company has ini-tiated a number of interventions to fuel its busi-ness expansion plan—beginning with the con-solidation of business units, strengthening of management team by hiring professionals and leveraging technical expertise. Keva made its first oversees acquisition, set up manufacturing units, established Creative Development Centre for Fragrance India business, and Fragrance In-ternational Business which set the pace for the transformative journey of the group to rebuild

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ReenGIneeRInG STRuCTuRe AnD

ORGAnIZATIOnAL CuLTuRe

For reinventing its business, Keva trans-

formed its organizational culture by developing pro-

grams that aimed to reposition the structure, operations and

ways of workingBest Practices by

Keva

on the foundation.

Organizational transformation for rein-vention of businessAlong with Keva’s expansion and transforma-tion plans came various challenges that need-ed immediate attention. The company’s aim was to consolidate and grow revenue in India and expand and strengthen foothold in South East Asian markets. The challenge was to manage multi-gen-erational workforce including expat em-ployees and ensure cultural integration of oversees acqui-sition. Therefore, strategic investments, global expansion and alignment with the change of lifestyle, custom-er segmentation, called for a complete trans-formation of the organization’s culture. The company needed alignment of the workforce towards new culture of working to accomplish the organizational vision.

Continuation of traditional attitudes, ways of working and behavioral patterns would have decelerated the ability to embrace the renewed

vision of transformation at a global platform. Had it not been for adoption of culture change, Keva’s dominance in domestic market and vi-sion to expand in the export market would have been a failure.

Strategic repositioning of structure and operationsCulture transformation at Keva was all about

repositioning the structure, operations and ways of work-ing to drive business and outperforming organizational vi-sion. Keva thus initi-ated a phase-driven approach. The first

step was to prioritize the key areas for inter-vention and kick start the journey in develop-ing policies, practices and programs. Instead of hiring external partners, Keva took the initiative forward by investing in hiring professionals in HR and at senior leadership level. This hired team, along with the leadership team, designed and rolled out initiatives with their diverse cul-tural orientation. The entire team brainstormed and carved out an intervention framework for

At Keva, the core goal is to become ‘Future Fit’ through ‘Right Hiring and Right Sizing – Right People at Right Place’

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change agenda. The change intervention was designed by

articulating the core values of the organization. The model included all aspects of organization-al and individual aspirations; focus being on key HR verticals such as talent acquisition, perfor-mance management, rewards, compensation and benefits, communication and internaliza-tion, capability development and talent man-agement. The main goal of this initiative was for the organization to become ‘Future Fit’ through ‘Right Hiring and Right Sizing – Right People at Right Place’.

Progressing as ‘Future Fit’ organizationThe intervention rollout has marked a notable shift; Keva is now marching progressively in line with its strategic objectives. Employee engage-ment score has improved and attrition has gone down. Further, the company has witnessed sig-nificant cultural shift. The business performance has improved, and processes and people have come together in synergy which has ensured overall well-being of the organization and its employees.

Keva is now aggressively working on stream-lining initiatives that have launched organiza-tional transformation to keep them relevant and impactful. As the company moves forward year-on-year, it seeks to ensure that the impacts of the change interventions are being closely monitored. Taking the initiative forward, Keva is building on its on-going agenda and bringing sustainable and dynamic programs forward. Further, the company is also looking to soon kick start Talent Management process for iden-tifying key talents to support the organization’s growth needs.

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LeADeRShIP & GROWTh fOR A TRuLY GLOBAL

PReSenCe

To address the need for building capability

that enabled leadership on a global scale, WNS rolled out the ‘Geo Leader Develop-

ment Program’Best Practices by

WNS Global Services

During 2014-15, WNS Global Services for-mulated its business strategy around the themes of ‘Growth’ and ‘A truly Global

Presence’. With a global strength of more than 29,600 employees, the company has grown rapidly in the past few years. This aggressive growth has also brought about a need to build capability that enables leadership on a global scale across cultures and economies, and tak-ing up bigger and challenging roles has be-come an imperative. The company realized that although its leaders interacted with internation-al clients and managed integrated businesses across geographical divides, there was a lack of cohesiveness and synergy amongst leaders which was beginning to hurt the business.

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Need for ‘truly global leaders’To lead its large, diversified global workforce, WNS Global Services has been working towards creating a robust internal pipeline of lead-ers. WNS felt the need to roll out a program which could effectively build global leadership capabilities within the organization. Core func-tions that the company was looking at devel-oping were senior and strategic leadership to drive the organi-zation’s growth and transformation agen-da, and global leaders who can effectively move across locations, cultures and business contexts.

The immediate challenge was that while new business was coming in thick and fast, development of new sites with capable leadership was becoming a growth impediment, thereby restricting the global expansion of the business. Moreover, this was adversely affecting business dynamism and inorganic growth of the company. In order to meet these challenges, the Learning and De-velopment team at WNS initiated a ‘Geo Lead-

er Development Program’. The pool comprised of geographical heads that are tasked with not only managing and leading the organization to business success, but also managing a talent pool with its unique cultural specificities.

Framing the right strategyWNS Global Services first considered working

on its existing lead-ership programs and adding value to it by providing the leadership pool with some global expo-sure through as-signments. However, there was very little scope of structuring global assignments,

since it was highly dependent on factors such as opening of a global position, succession plan-ning, etc. The company therefore decided to accelerate its leadership through a customized global leadership development program. The program focused on individual needs through creation of individual development maps, aligned to the career aspirations of the individ-ual as identified through career conversations.

The ‘Geo Leader Develop-ment Program’ is an indi-vidual development map, aligned to the career aspi-rations as identified through career conversations

33

It incorporated self-reflection, reflective conver-sations with coaches and formal learning, and also included individual assessments, devel-opmental feedback, a robust executive devel-opment plan aligned with coach and mentors from the organization.

The result of the program was phenomenal; it helped leaders deal with diverse cultural and economic environments while managing inte-grated business processes across geographical divides. The company witnessed higher leader engagement. The success of the program also resulted in greater opportunities of business with a strong pipeline of global leaders.

Institutionalizing leadership capability programWNS is now moving towards institutionaliza-tion of this program on a much larger scale. Learning from the experiences of the earliest adoption days, it plans to roll the program after meticulous ironing of the intricacies involved in making the program a success. To capture all of the loopholes, constant feedback from the business and the leaders is netted to help monitor the challenges and development while moving forward.

PLACInG DIveRSITY AT The

CenTeR

NTT DATA curbed the effects of gender

imbalance in the organiza-tion through WIN – Women’s

Initiative program that aimed at unleashing the potential of wom-

en and providing them with a cohesive work environment

Best Practices by NTT DATA

NTT DATA, a global IT Innovator that de-livers technology-enabled services, cre-ated its footprint in the Indian market in

2010-12 when it acquired multiple multinational IT companies. Each of the acquired companies had their own organizational cultures, and had to effectively collaborate under the umbrella of its parent organization. The diversity and her-itage that they brought, opened the scope for building synergies, and there was a strong need to manage change in a controlled and phased manner throughout the course of mergers.

Identifying diversity challengesDuring the course of business expansion in In-

35

dia, NTT DATA noticed that the rate of women taking career-breaks due to personal reasons were significantly higher in the region. This was mainly because of their multiple roles outside of work, which limited their capabilities to deliv-er justice for their true potential. Not all wom-en at mid-levels showed interest in vying for growth-oriented and demanding roles at work, which was unlike their male colleagues, where a greater number were interested in these enhanced roles as they got created. The reduced career sustainability among women at mid-man-agement level affect-ed the proportion of active participation of women in implementa-tion of organizational change strategies. The continued effect of gender imbalance was likely to limit the composure of decision making; ca-pability to cater to diverse business challenges would have become difficult in the long run. If these challenges were not smartly addressed, it would also have increased the career breaks, absenteeism and impediment to optimum po-tential of talents.

Creating a “WINning” strategyRight from the start NTT DATA overlooked tra-ditional approaches to diversity initiative as it lacked adaptability to the changing trends of the employee base. Instead, the company worked on creating a customized framework named WIN – Women’s Initiative at NTT DATA. The aim was to help women overcome the unique challenges they face, thereby uplifting their

professional lives. Through this initi-ative the company helped in unleash-ing the potential in women and estab-lished a cohesive work environment. It was envisaged to

also result in more women taking up leader-ship roles and the organization benefiting by having better gender ratios in the workforce, resulting in well balanced and holistic work culture. The main objectives of WIN were to make NTT DATA “Employer of Choice” for the women workforce, retain women talent, lever-age women’s potential to enhance their career and to educate women on subjects like health, work-life balance, self-defence, among others.

Under WIN, the company has made concrete policies around maternity, safety, self-defence, & sabbatical leaves

36

Kick starting the initiative, location specific WIN committees were established across regions to plan and manage the regional level activities.

Under WIN, the company made concrete policies around maternity, fitness and stress, safety, self-defence, sabbatical leaves, etc. which were welcomed by the women employees. As a result, there has been a significant increase in satisfaction among the targeted group. A right combination of these factors has resulted in a notable rise of women in mid-level manage-ment. Further, the average tenure of women has risen and gender gap in the professional space has minimized significantly. NTT DATA now has higher employee satisfaction ratings among women employees. There has also been an increase in participation of women inNTT leadership roles.

Taking WIN to the global platformThe remarkable success of WIN in India has now paved the path for creation of a Global WIN team. The main objective of this initiative is to get high potential women connected at an international level, draw synergies using the

NTT DATA’s global platform and leverage tech-nology to connect them.

To ensure that the expansion of the pro-gram reflects success, NTT DATA has a dedi-cated SharePoint portal for WIN which is inte-grated with its gamified Learning Management System (LMS). This has been designed to cater to the nomination, assessment and tracking of the program that are specifically designed for women. The main objective is to monitor the results achieved by the initiative and also cap-ture feedback that helps fine tune the program.

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MAkInG eARLY CAnDIDATe eXPeRIenCe enGAGInG

In order to provide a standard streamlined

experience to candidates, HCL adopted an onboarding platform which consolidated multiple legacy applications

Best Practices by HCL Technologies

In India, within the IT industry, the gap be-tween releasing the offer and the person joining can be as high as three months. If

the candidate is not engaged within this peri-od, the chances of losing the person to oth-er employers increase drastically. The first 90 day period after hiring is when majority of the employees make up their mind about staying with an organization for a long-term. Ensuring that the pre-joining experience is extended to the first few weeks after joining is a crucial and challenging aspect of hiring. Providing a stand-ard streamlined experience to candidates is thus very important for building a discernible employer brand. However, with induction loca-tions across locations, it had been an arduous

38

task for HCL Technologies to provide this level of standardization for all candidates.

Onboarding - a key metric in early can-didate experienceDue to ambiguities and delay in the onboarding process, billable loss was one of the key metrics affected in the entire process at HCL—directly resulting in loss of revenue. For instance, when an employee is not equipped within the first two days of joining, he/she cannot be deployed and this adversely ef-fects the bottom-line. Further, verification during volume hiring poses various oper-ational challenge; for instance, identify-ing fraudulent docu-ments. The legal list for valid documents is long and there are combination of documents which can be applicable to all the lists. Undergoing all the verification and ensuring legal compli-ance of all documents is thus a challenging and time-consuming task.

As a result of the stretched onboarding pro-cess, candidate experience was taking a hit due

to delay in getting the appropriate documenta-tion or induction. When candidates renege be-cause of poor onboarding experience, finding a replacement becomes a time- and cost-inten-sive effort. All of this has an adverse effect on the employer brand.

Identifying and adopting a strategic platformIn order to meet all challenges associated

with onboarding, HCL adopted the platform from Suc-cessFactors, since it provided a central solution for not only onboarding, but all HR processes.

The tool has been configured catering

to the key issues faced in the organization when onboarding the employees. The processes un-derlying the technology has now enabled all stakeholders in the organization execute their respective actions (in terms of seat allocation/ laptop/access cards) in time enabling a better experience. This ensures that the new joinee is ready to be productive on Day 2 with all admin-

Providing a standard stream-lined experience to candi-dates is very important for building a discernible em-ployer brand.

39

istrative activities completed. Moreover, Suc-cess Factors’ robust modules are in sync with all the legal requirements, thereby complying with the statutory requirements. As a part of the technology suite, HCL has also created candi-date portals where new joinees can learn about the organization and its culture. Personalized SMS are now being sent out to candidates and Skype calls allowed senior leaders to communi-cate with the employees on induction day.

The adopted platform has helped HCL build a standardized process for all the involved stakeholders across all geographies HCL op-erates in. SuccessFactors’ e-verify module also allowed the verification manager to complete the verification and re-verification being han-dled within the system and the relevant notifi-cation reaches the people concerned 180 days before the documents expire. Therefore, doc-ument maintenance has become a lot simpler as they are all digitally stored; system defined logic makes it easier to purge the documents after employee has exited the company.

Taking onboarding platform and pro-cesses globalThe US launch was the first phase of HCL’s on-boarding program. Therefore, teams involved

in the launch in US have underlined a log of issues that cropped up. The teams have devised the programs based on such learning in order to avoid similar mistakes for other geographical launches. A configuration workbook has also been maintained which archives all the techni-cal requirements, which will act as a reference point for any future changes being made.

40

CReATInG COMPeTITIve

eDGe ThROuGh CuLTuRe BuILDInG

For translating cul-ture change to busi-

ness outcomes, Raychem RPG built a cultural transfor-

mation strategy through work-shops

Best Practices by Raychem RPG

Raychem RPG had initially created its business strategy around Product (P) and Delivery (D) and created a compet-

itive edge through these two elements. It was not until two-three years ago that the compa-ny realized that it was easier for its competitors to copy these two elements and dent its profit margin. Strategy was therefore reviewed and it was suggested that the company include Ser-vice (S) and Experience (E) both of which re-quired a very supportive culture. Thus, there was a growing need for a culture which gives the company competitive advantage of having a PDSE strategy.

41

Building supportive culture for increas-ing profit marginIn absence of a supportive culture for PDSE strategy, the company’s profit margin was get-ting affected. Market share and customer sat-isfaction index were also suffering. If the issue continued, non-relevant R&D products would have made the company redundant in market. Since competitors could easily repli-cate its products, the company had a low margin because of similar products available in market. As a result, Raychem was not seeing a sustainable growth of busi-ness and risked losing customers.

Identifying right cultural transformation strategyAt first, Raychem considered continuing with its PD strategy and work towards maintaining its customer base. By doing this, the compa-ny would focus on innovation of new products and work towards improved and efficient deliv-ery. This would help the company maintain its

existing customer base. However, since prod-uct and delivery would not ensure sustainable growth of business, Raychem decided to create a culture driven PDSE strategy since it would ensure sustainable growth of business. Culture imitation is moreover difficult as compared to product or technology replication. Further, cul-ture also provides the greatest source of sus-

tainable competitive advantage.

Moving towards this goal, Large Scale Intervention Process (LSIP) workshop was organized to help the managers un-

derstand, align and build ownership around the new strategy. For LSIP, Raychem RPG engaged the LSIP Expert, Mr. Kanti Gopal. This workshop also helped managers understand the cost of pursuing strategy without building desired cul-ture. Based on this, formulation of the required business behaviors with action plans, long term commitment, sustenance and review mecha-nisms was necessary. The strategic transforma-tion exercise followed a step-by-step approach. First, the organizational roots were revisited, fol-

Culture provides the greatest source of sustainable compet-itive advantage

42

lowed by context setting and storytelling. Voice of customers, partners, employees and markets were all taken into consideration. Through this, a case for change was established and strate-gy was then shared, following which business behaviors were formulated. Thereafter, LSIP de-veloped a new set of cultural pillars that would lead the company to sustainable and profitable business result.

Translating cultural change to business outcomeThe outcome of the initiative was phenomenal wherein the company witnessed a marginal rise in the customer satisfaction index; customer re-tention also increased by a large per cent. Cu-mulative score of all managers showed a posi-tive growth and the business target achievement increased significantly. Raychem also witnessed increase in its new products and market share and its profit margin saw a significant expansion. To take the initiative to the next level, measure-ments and assessments were conducted across all managers. Those whose reports cards were in red have now been assigned coaches for im-provement. Further, few of the processes de-veloped to enable the company’s cultural pil-

lars are being reviewed and necessary action is being taken to improve them. New comers in the company are also being inducted through corporate induction.

Raychem is continuously reviewing the pro-gress made by the company through this in-tervention and capturing its journey of cultural transformation. The company has document-ed its progress, presenting it to the leadership team on regular basis. From time to time, the papers on cultural transformation have also been presented to different forums in order to capture external feedback.

43

BuILDInG A WIDe LeADeRShIP

PIPeLIne

With a focus on build-ing leadership capabil-

ities at all levels, Vedanta Limited adopted a framework

of external guidance and internal involvement for leadership devel-

opmentBest Practices by

Vedanta Limited, Jharsuguda

Every organization is prone to disintegra-tion and losing its way in absence of a strong leadership acting as the guiding

and motivating force for the entire organization. Vedanta Limited, Jharsuguda commenced op-eration in 2008 as an aluminum and power com-pany in the manufacturing sector. To emerge as a leader, the major challenge for Vedanta Lim-ited, Jharsuguda was to strengthen the leader-ship capability of this technically-strong pool of employees for creating a sustained leadership pipeline. Though the workforce was technically strong, the competency gaps on the leadership front existed which required to be bridged es-pecially for the middle-level and first-time man-

44

agers in terms of competencies like developing people, being a team player, thinking and act-ing strategically, managing external and inter-nal environment, etc.

Attracting and retaining the right quality of leaders was a major challenge. To counter this, creating a strong leadership pipeline internally and incorporating it in the organization’s DNA became the need of the hour.

Identifying the right strategy for de-ploymentAcknowledging the benefits of tried and tested models, Ve-danta initially looked at the option of out-sourcing leadership development to a third-party with ex-pertise in L&D solu-tions. However, this involved a major drawback in terms of the extent of customization. Therefore, Vedanta strategically developed a talent management framework for leadership development which combined the internal expertise of people de-velopment team with external expertise.

The combination of external guidance and internal involvement for leadership develop-ment was designed to build leadership capa-bility at all levels. The biggest benefit of such a framework was its ability to adapt to the growing organization’s changing requirements. While the internal L&D team was well aware of the organizational challenges and require-ments of the leadership development model, the involvement of third-party brought with it tested practices.

Putting leader-ship develop-ment model in placeThe adopted tal-ent management framework sought to address the chal-lenge of leadership development from

the nascent stage by involving internal recruit-ers trained on competency-based interviewing. The model then helped to classify both existing and new employees in one of the six stages of the career stage model. These employees were then imparted trainings to prepare them for

Potential leaders are provided executive coaching & global exposure to internalize capa-bility-building & leadership development

45

the next career stage. This model also includ-ed Competency Assessment of employees both internally by managers and also through exter-nal Development Assessment Centers in asso-ciation with reputed third-parties which acted as the base for segregation of employees in the 9-box performance-potential matrix.

The crux of the framework was in leveraging developmental interventions like the 70:20:10 learning principle where 70% of the learning for leaders would happen through tools like action learning projects, cross-functional expo-sure under secondment for stipulated period, 20% through mentoring, coaching and reading engagement/desktop study and 10% through training and also involving leaders in leading and implementing the Total Quality Manage-ment approach. Individual development plans

were designed for leaders and performance was reviewed by managers on quarterly basis.

Building a pipeline of leadersVedanta witnessed numerous benefits, ranging from financial figures and perception scores, to benefits like transformation of culture and increase in trust of people. With the objective to sustain and increase these benefits, Vedanta has identified cross-functional coaches across the Aluminum & Power sector who can act as mentors to the identified pool of talent to be groomed as future leaders. In addition to all of these, potential leaders are also being provided executive coaching as well as global exposure to internalize capability-building and leadership development as part of the Vedanta culture.

46

InTeGRATInG neW CAnDIDATeS InTO ORGAnIZA-TIOnAL CuLTuRe

Macquarie Global Services recognized the need to enhance

the onboarding experience for new joiners and established a consistent and standardized

orientation program for allBest Practices by

Macquarie Global Services

Onboarding is an important process. There is a high correlation between on-boarding and future employee reten-

tion. Macquarie Global Services recognized a need to enhance the onboarding experience for new joiners. With an aim to enhance and refresh the company’s orientation program, Macquarie focused on establishing a consistent and standardized orientation program for all employees regardless of their business or team.

Getting new employees to settle fasterThe goal was to create an end-to-end experience over a six-month probation period. Through this initiative, Macquarie sought to increase produc-

47

tivity by ensuring that the new employees were equipped in their roles, but also developed an understanding and appreciation of Macquarie’s culture. The program also sought to increase engagement and retention to make employ-ees feel valued and reaffirm their decision to join the company. Another important aspect of the program was to ensure the new employees were aware of and aligned to Macquarie’s prin-ciples, culture and values. Macquarie recog-nizes the correlation between onboard-ing and future em-ployee retention so it was important that the process was well structured, transpar-ent and enabled the employee to settle into their role faster, and ul-timately made more productive.

Putting onboarding strategy in placeMacquarie has initiated a 180 day onboarding program for new joiners in its Gurgaon office. The program has been designed to help new joiners understand the business and culture, establish their bearings around the office and also learn how to make their mark in Mac-

quarie’s fast paced growth. The 180-day on-boarding plan has been designed using the 3E methodology of learning from Experience, Exposure and Education. The plan is therefore a combination of various classroom sessions, on-the-job learning, e-learning programs and networking opportunities with senior leaders as well cross functional teams. This provides new joiners a holistic understanding of Macquarie’s culture.

• Some of the key elements cov-ered in the 180 day on-boarding pro-gram include:• P re - jo i n i ng connect with a new starter along with a

buddy from the team • Mandatory Day 1 orientation providing an

extensive overview of the organization’s business operations, global presence and culture

• Cultural awareness to promote healthy working relationships despite globally dis-tributed workforce

• Functional orientation to provide a team specific induction

The onboarding plan is de-signed using the 3E method-ology of learning from Experi-ence, Exposure and Education

48

• Overview of performance management processes and mandatory objective setting in alignment with organizational goals

• Apart from these, the 180 day program also covers sessions on diversity and inclusion, networking for success, working in a matrix environment and the art of communicating effectively.

Capturing benefits and learnings to improve the programAfter the launch of the onboarding program, Macquarie saw a sustained and significant im-provement in the feedback from new employ-ees on the efficiency of the process as well as the overall experience of joining Macquarie. Leadership interaction and engagement with new joiners have risen significantly which has provided the joiners at Macquarie with expo-

sure to possible career growth and opportuni-ties to enhance internal networks. As a result, there has also been a drop in the attrition rate of employees within the first year of joining. The learning curve for new hires has also re-duced leading to improved productivity and overall engagement with the organization and its culture.

Macquarie is now looking at persistently im-proving the 180 day onboarding program. Vir-tual floor walk of corporate and regional offices at locations outside of India for new joiners is an initiative that Macquarie is looking to launch soon. The company hopes to include new join-ers who have successfully undergone the pro-gram in the planning process to bring improve-ments to the program in terms of content and methodology.

49

SeAMLeSS COLLABORATIOn

fOR BeTTeR PRODuCTIvITY

To enable seamless collaboration, con-

nection and interaction between employees, Wipro adopted an enterprise social

platform, YammerBest Practices by

Wipro

Reengineering and reinvention are the drivers of business relevance and growth in today’s context of ever-changing cus-

tomer needs. Organizations need to be agile and responsive when it comes to meeting cus-tomer demands. In this context, Wipro is well positioned as a partner and co-innovator for its clients in their transformation journey and facil-itate their foray into new sectors and markets. However, to differentiate itself and stay ahead of its competition, Wipro has sought to demon-strate superior growth through high productiv-ity. The aim has been to quickly solve clients’ business problems using deep domain knowl-edge and expertise in bleeding edge technol-ogies.

50

Connecting, collaborating and interact-ingWith its huge employee base, the struggle for Wipro has been to put a mechanism in place which allows employees to seamlessly col-laborate, connect and interact to tap their full potential. In absence of such a mechanism the business metric that suffers most is the or-ganization’s profitable growth. The core focus for Wipro was organizational productivity im-provement by captur-ing transformational deals, for which the company was looking to establish a collab-oration platform. If a collaboration platform was not established at the earliest, the com-pany was likely to see delay in formulation of solutions leading to customer dissatisfaction. Further, in absence of a seamless platform for collaborating, learning, sharing and solving, the individuals/teams were also likely to lose moti-vation.

Strategic development of enterprise so-

cial platformWipro initially kick started the project ‘My Or-ganization World’ for which an enterprise so-cial platform was built in-house. Since it was time-intensive affair to build a rich set of fea-tures, the platform was not mature enough; hence it was not very stable. Therefore, various chat sessions with senior leaders were held, af-ter which the CIO team, HR and L&D team joint-ly decided to adapt a well-established tool like

Yammer as an enter-prise social platform which is accessible from all devices. The goal was to enable employees to partic-ipate in real time dis-cussions, share their thoughts and opin-ions, find answers to their questions, offer

help to others and stay connected.The social learning and collaboration initia-

tive was built around a mature and stable plat-form which emerged as the biggest advantage to the company. The benefits were augmented by the fact that the company received high fo-cus and support from its solution partner. The

The social enterprise plat-form promoted and facili-tated learning and collabo-ration opportunities through an enterprise wide standard platform

51

adopted social enterprise platform promoted and facilitated social learning and collabora-tion opportunities through an enterprise wide standard platform. It also handled large multi-media contents in a structured framework.

Through the adoption of a mature enter-prise social platform, Wipro now hopes to achieve greater transparency though real time collaboration. The platform can emerge as a great tool that is capable of tapping into the collective wisdom of the vast employee base and increased employee productivity.

It can also be used to gain visibility into var-ious teams working across the globe which can help in making faster and better decisions. The social platform can also connect the company’s remote and mobile workforce. Cross-pollina-tion and exchange of ideas on the platform can result in better innovation. Other benefits that

can emerge through the use of the platform are cultural integration, efficient channel of com-munication, better and simplified project and change management. These benefits can fur-ther result in improvement of the onboarding experience and can lead to higher engagement and retention.

Capturing learning from the initiativeIn an aim to capture the learnings from enter-prise social platform adoption, Wipro has for-mulated provision for documentation of strat-egy right from its initial stage of design to the final implementation stage. Case studies, use cases, white paper, documentation of content from internal forums, Tweet chat sessions, pa-per submissions etc. are all part of Wipro’s ef-fort to ensure that learning from the initiative can be used for on-going and future reference.

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LeARnInG fROM eXISTInG

WeALTh Of knOWLeDGe

To harness and retain the depth of

knowledge, skills and expertise, Wave Group

established learning through EDMS

Best Practices by Wave Group

Wave Group has a diverse portfolio in various businesses. When it ventured into Real Estate with the launch of

mammoth projects - Wave City, Wave Estate and Wave City Center, there was an immediate need to hire resources that had experience in the field of real estate projects, sales along with other operational functions. The resources that were taken on-board brought the best practic-es and expertise. It was imperative to harness employee knowledge and expertise. However, it was becoming difficult to retain this knowl-edge for future use as it was getting lost with attrition.

A clearly defined process of storing and re-

53

trieving data was the need of the hour, so as to bring the consolidated and organized data in one place.

Secondly, it was imperative to create contin-uous learning as the organization already had a wealth of knowledge and human expertise.

There was a continuous challenge to stream-line smooth and effective continuity of business.

Wave Electronic Documentation Man-agement System (Wave - EDMS)Wave Infratech first worked on estab-lishing an Electron-ic Documentation Management Sys-tem – a digital library on the company’s internal server, where the re-quired data is digitized and uploaded. Besides its numerous advantages, one major benefit is - once a task is worked upon, other users can see the utility of the exercise. We classified the repository in two parts:

a) Corporate Repository: To include digi-tized documents, videos and other materials from the corporate functions like Marketing, Public Relations, Human Resources, Procure-

ment, etc.b) Project Repository: All the digitized doc-

uments, drawing, maps, customer records in-dexed and uploaded in the EDMS, under the respective projects.

EDMS driven learning & developmentThe company proposes to use this as an on-boarding induction tool for its new joinees: for example, if an employee joins in the Mar-

keting - Events de-partment, he is giv-en access to all past events to give him a foot-hold on his first day at work. EDMS also serves as a great repository for exist-

ing employees for ready and quick reference.

Eliademy - On-Line E-learning ToolWave has provided a digital learning tool called Eliademy for the continuous training of Front Sales and Post Sales staff. Eliademy is a technol-ogy-enabled platform that ensures continuous learning and growth without the requirement of a trainer. Employees can undertake the training as per their convenience, attempt the evaluation

Eliademy is a technology-en-abled platform that ensures learning without the require-ment of a trainer

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and get real time results. It is also easy for the company to track employee performance with ready results available at the platform. This has 3 elements – Video Lessons (recorded sessions of live coaching on sales techniques); Readings (readings compliment and correspond to video lessons); and Tasks (Content from video lessons and readings are applied in homework tasks).

Performance Preview System for Train-ing NeedsLike other organizations, Wave also has a 180 degree annual performance evaluation and the training needs are identified during per-formance counseling. With the aid of SAP and other software in place like Microsoft Dynam-ics, Adobe Marketing Analytics, Wave has been able to launch a unique Performance Preview System-for Training Needs system which is in-tegrated in such a way that the employees get assessed on their goals directly from the sys-tem. On the basis of evaluation report, the skills and knowledge gaps are identified and relevant trainings are planned.

Performance enhancement through easy learningThe above mentioned digitally-driven initiatives that are closely linked to L&D and resulted in huge return on investment. Once the system was put in place, a clear transformation from human capital to knowledge capital has hap-pened. Moreover, employee performance has also improved significantly along with over-all knowledge enhancement after adoption of these initiatives.

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AnYTIMe, AnYWheRe

LeARnInG fOR The ‘MOBILe’

eMPLOYee

For maintaining con-sistent performance,

Pfizer adopted modern workplace learning practices

including mobility, gamification and social learning

Best Practices by Pfizer

Pfizer in India is ranked in the top 10 phar-maceutical players and has showcased an impressive performance. The core fo-

cus for the company is therefore to maintain its performance. For this, Pfizer has sought to aggressively improve learning and training for all its employees.

Balancing business priorities with learn-ers’ needsWhile Pfizer has put great focus in maintaining business performance, the company has found it challenging to translate commercial strategy into business results by improving sales repre-sentatives’ capabilities. Enhancement of coach-ing skills of the line managers thus became

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crucial to provide meaningful metrics that link learning and assessment results to business performance.

To take learning to its geographically dis-persed sales representatives, Pfizer sought to create cost-efficient engagement by leverag-ing mobile. To embed learning into the daily workflow of sales representatives, the company aimed to convert idle time of sales representa-tives into learning time during work hours. For this, Pfizer required modern workplace learning practices in-cluding the use of video, mobility, gam-ification and social learning for its large millennial workforce. The core goal was to balance the business pri-orities with the needs of the learner i.e. rele-vance, flexibility, recognition and performance support.

In absence of an effective learning model which is embedded in the sales representatives’ daily workflow, sales target were taking a hit, engagement was at a low and attrition was in-creasing. In this context, Pfizer faced a potential risk of increase in financial cost.

Identifying the right ‘mobile’ strategyPfizer at first considered adoption of asynchro-nous e-learning strategy with deployment on mobile devices since the learner’s familiarity with mobile devices would make the process simpler. Moreover, such a strategy would also make it possible to track completion rates and assessment scores. However, this model lacked flexibility in linking the LMS with local systems and build custom specifications on it. The

company therefore adopted a mobile learning application with custom specifi-cations built on the cloud which acts as a mobile first, quiz and assessment-based

sales proficiency builder.Named ROKET (Return on Knowledge

Transfer), the adopted mobile learning appli-cation provides ‘any-time, any-where and on any-device’ learning and meets the demands of the modern learner. The application also provides the option of using micro-learning content i.e. short videos, infographics, PDFs ar-ticles etc. along with game mechanics to make the content and assessment process engaging.

The adopted mobile learn-ing application provided ‘any-time, any-where and on any-device’ learning

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ROKET is based on the premise that if sales rep-resentatives are engaged in a meaningful, fun, competition-driven and challenging way, they will seek to learn more about the products and improve their selling skills. They will also be en-couraged to ‘pull’ the required learning content rather than be ‘pushed’ to taking training. The key business objectives of this project are:

• Create a mechanism for constant im-provement of product knowledge of sales representatives through quizzing, coach-ing and on-the-job assessment

• Create a mechanism for sales managers to provide feedback to their representa-tives and suggest corrective action

• Create a mechanism through which a monthly proficiency dashboard can be provided that reflects knowledge assess-ment scores and on-the-job application performance

Escalating ROKET to next phase of prod-uct roadmapAdoption of ROKET has increased user adop-tion and average sales proficiency scores have improved. Adherence to coaching by managers has also increased. This has created a positive impact to the overall business metrics. Further, Pfizer India has been positioned as a center of excellence for innovation in learning and new technologies.

Taking ROKET to the next phase of the prod-uct roadmap, Pfizer aims to link the overall pro-ficiency scores that the company gets from the mobile app to the ‘sales effort data’, which will enable to produce a sales effectiveness index. This effectiveness index will further get linked to the actual sales performance.

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The Big Rocks of learning and

development

Learning and development is trans-forming – for organizations and for employees, both. To deal with the eco-nomic changes, demographic changes

or anticipated changes in the expectations of the learners - many organizations are adopt-ing pragmatic approaches to mold their organ-izational learning and development and are doing away with the traditional modes of ap-proaching L&D. From device-agnostic learning to wearable devices, learning is now geared to-

wards accommodating all needs of the diverse learners, from the yesteryear generation to the millennials, from social learning to collaborative learning, and from micro learning to cloud-based LMS’s.

But at the very outset, establishing the value of the L&D function and translating that value in business outcomes is the main challenge that the L&D is focusing on today. Getting the man-agement buy-in and dealing with rapid chang-es has posed many challenges to the function.

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Best Practices by J Jerry Moses

& Jafar Rehman

With so much that is happening on the L&D front, there are challenges that the L&D func-tion has to counter and devise ways that assim-ilate the best of approaches to tackle the chal-lenges that pertain to delivering learning to the diverse needs, L&D professionals calibrating themselves, challenges related to cross-cultural learning, accelerating personalization in learn-ing and others related to the use of technology for learning and development.

1) L&D for L&DThe challenge within L&D is principally rooted in the mindset that the personal experience within the function is the best education. The function has also seen a lack of investment by business-es, lack of mentors and lack of a comprehen-sive framework. While the best practices across industries include shadowing, use of online and offline training, access to business publications, building in-house libraries, capacity building through diplomas/workshops and building per-sonal networks and communities through fo-rums and conferences etc, there has not been a coherent strategy to deal with the problem. Thus there is a need within the community to build its own platform for both awareness and for road

map building. L&D professionals also need to ask deep diving questions to understand the ‘whys’ of the efforts undertaken. They can also make use of simulations as a way to improve their understanding of the business and ensure that they get feedback from business leaders. This will help them understand the business con-text and enrich their own learning experience.

2) Contextual learning challengesIn an increasingly globalized world where busi-nesses are constantly expanding beyond bor-ders, there are problems of training cost, in-frastructure and standardization across the industry. Indian leaders find it hard to deal with multicultural clients and that can be a setback for the organizations. Although the use of exist-ing practice of digital asset management system plays a vital role in making leaders ready to take up global roles, there is an urgent need to bring in other interactive platforms which can enable learning to be delivered without too much cost. While some organizations have experimented moving employees across global offices, it is technology that can play a key enabler role in supporting and making the whole process of learning much faster and efficient.

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3) Technology in learningWhen it comes to learning, technology has been a major aid for organizations. Howev-er, the pace at which technology is develop-ing poses a challenge. Today, there is a need to design software that can be integrated into multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Windows etc., and create new digital content that is both scalable and integrated socially. While compa-nies are using learning kiosks, different learning management platforms and programs, the val-ue that the product gives must be more than freely available content online. The benefits of technology in learning include easy access, saved time, scalability and on demand learning facility. In order to make technology implemen-tation successful for a mobile first generation, professionals must focus on making programs meaningful and fun by focusing more on gam-ification and social learning.

4) Efficacy of Behavioral trainingBehavioral trainings have not had the de-sired impact; the challenges as a result can be mapped right from pre-intervention stage to the mode of delivery followed by monitoring and measurement. Best practices across indus-

tries include assessing learning needs by includ-ing them as a part of RFP to clients, learning from others in peer groups, use of educational reimbursements and use of assessments etc. Despite the already existing practices, there is a need of multiple approaches to make sure that these trainings are impactful and meaningful to the organizations. One method companies can use is to reverse engineer (by stopping training temporarily) in order to assess where training is required. Since motivation is the key to be-havioral learning, organizations should align the programs with the learner’s interests. Com-panies should also introduce learning models where learning from each other is encouraged.

5) Building the right learning cultureA learning culture is about both, formal and informal learning. In order to build a condu-cive environment for learning, it is important to align business strategy and employees must have access to a wide variety or learning chan-nels including e-learning, mobile apps and live training. While organizations have experiment-ed with mentoring within the company and by focusing on capability based learning and eval-uation, there is a need for better parameters to

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screen employees and give more choice to in-fuse a spirit of innovation. Some organizations are taking the need to build the right environ-ment a priority by making it a cost canter, this helps better manage training as a function.

6) Return on InvestmentIn a ROI driven world where more business leaders are looking towards learning leaders to provide them with talent insights for business strategies, it becomes imperative for them to understand and look for “Returns on Learning.” Most of the learning professionals are asked by the business to justify or explain the need to in-vest in an intervention along with proving as to how much impact learning has on the bottom line. With roles of learning practitioners evolv-ing into organization as innovation agents who now have a seat at the table and play an advi-sory role to the business, the ROI for learning is an important factor that the leaders need to assess, evaluate and prove.

7) InnovationThe fast-changing corporate business environ-ment demands innovation especially in learn-ing & development. In today’s day and age,

where the millennials form the largest part of the working populations with reduced atten-tion spans and knowledge being available at the click of a button, the L&D also needs to re-invent, rethink and innovate. L&D profession-als are challenged on a daily basis to strategize and deliver creative and innovative solutions to cater to the industry they serve. But more and more organizations are taking uncharted paths to deliver to the need for innovation in learning and development.

8) ImplementationWhen implementing L&D strategy, the chal-lenges that are faced pertain to insufficient articulation of the goal or purpose of training, ambiguity related to what is to be achieved or the goal of the training and the inability to de-ploy training interventions across platforms and across training methodologies. These are issues that are fundamentally seen across industries. However organizations are adopting some in-novative ways through practices like bite-sized learning, social interaction, self-directed learn-ing etc. But the foremost way to make L&D pro-grams effective is to include and increase busi-ness knowledge for L&D professionals so that

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they are able to gain more business insights to create effective L&D programs.

9) Leadership DevelopmentLeadership development has evolved and has gone through various facets of technology so-phistication and leadership redefinition. But in developing leaders, training plays may be ten or less than ten percent role in leadership de-velopment. And for an effective program, it is about on the job experiences. More organi-zations are countering the challenge by inter-weaving learning experiences with participants and business goals. Leadership programs need to be tightly connected with succession plan-

ning and culture building in organization to effectively manage the challenges related to leadership development.

10) Big DataBig Data applications are experimented with every day to enable professionals to make the right decisions and maximize effectiveness and efficiency of implementing such applications. Learning leaders too need to leverage the pow-er of Big Data analytics to solve several chal-lenges pertaining to understanding learning requirements, on-the-job feedback or in de-termining organizational learning strategy and determine its RoI.

A look at the challenges on effectively deploying behavioral training and its practical solutionsBy Shashir Shetty, National Sales Manager, Pearson TalentLens

Experts say that the holy grail of all Learn-ing & Development initiatives is to bring about small to significant improvements

in skills, attitudes and behaviors of employees that improve productivity, performance & busi-ness impact. While historically it has been easy to measure improvement in skills and knowl-edge and their impact on business, behaviors and attitudes have been tough nuts to crack. So we, a group of 18 HR & L&D professional repre-senting various industries including hospitality, media, BFSI, IT, ITeS, construction, HR Services & manufacturing went about trying to answer this question – ‘Do behavioral trainings really have an impact?’

The universal opinion of the group was that Behavioral Trainings have not had the desired impact in their respective organizations irre-spective of industries. Attitudes & behaviors being industry agnostic, the challenges were also universal. These challenges can be classi-fied into 4 broad categories:

Pre-Intervention: A large majority in the group felt that the primary issue for the lack of desired impact through behavioral trainings came down to the following two reasons ‒ un-scientific needs assessment & poor expectation setting, and communication with the learners. The inability of the L&D leaders to involve the business stakeholders to understand & de-

Behavioral Trainings – Do they really have

an impact?

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fine leading indicators of business success and break it down to behaviors that contribute to this success is an impediment.

Learner Motivations: Marshall Goldsmith, in his article ‘The Truths of Behavioral Change’ states that “meaningful change is hard to ini-tiate and even harder to sustain. Change has to come from within. It can’t be forced upon.” While the overwhelming opinion in the group was also that learner motivation was key to bringing about desired behavioral changes, very few organizations are making an effort to align interventions to the learner’s interests & motivations. There is very little to almost no in-volvement of the learner in the design process. More often than not, L&D leaders fail to com-municate to the participants on what will occur during the learning process.

Mode of Delivery: Consistency of training delivery seems to be the biggest challenge. The scale at which most organizations deliver training programs in India has made it practi-cally impossible to be consistent. Despite the practicality & popularity of eLearning courses, research has proven that best behavioral learn-ing takes place through direct experiences or observation of others. Research also says that instructional techniques like learning in a social

context, through activities, connecting new in-formation to existing knowledge & repetition appear to be more effective. Given this back-ground, organizations are still trying to figure out the right blend of classroom-based and eLearning solutions & instructional treatments for desired behavioral impact.

Monitoring & Measurement: In IBM’s an-nual marketing survey of chief marketing of-ficers, the No. 1 metric of 2015 was ROI followed by brand awareness and customer satisfaction. In a similar survey conducted in 2010 by ASTD, 96 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies responded on learning investments. The No. 1 most valua-ble metric was business impact followed by ROI. In spite of increasing business & financial pres-sures, very few companies in India have been able to define variables to measure behavioral changes let alone its impact on business. The primary reason for this has been the inability to provide an ecosystem to apply learnings, mon-itor progress & define the relationship between expected outcomes and business results.

What has worked on the ground to solve these challenges?During the course of the discussion, members of the group discussed various practices in their

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respective organizations for improving effec-tiveness & impact of behavioral trainings. Some of the practices were unique and could be ex-plored and implemented by other organizations too. Here are some of the practical solutions: 1. Learning agenda as a part of the RFP :

One of the leading BPOs in India headquar-tered out of Bangalore includes the learning path as a part of every RFP they present to their clients. This approach allows the busi-ness leaders and learning leaders to come together to define a learning plan more closely aligned to the needs of the business. This also ensures the outcomes of learning paths which are directly tied to business re-sults and outcomes which makes monitor-ing & measuring impact that easily.

2. Focus group, Learn from others: Research has proven that learning from others is one of the biggest enablers for behavioral change. One of the world’s largest Business Services & Document Technology Company regularly conducts peer-led focus groups. The objective of such focus groups is to ensure that there is a common platform to share experiences & challenges, and ways to overcome them. The peer group discussions provide access to varied experiences & situ-

ations and effective approaches to deal with challenging situations.

3. Educational Reimbursements: One of the world’s largest web portal and technology companies has an educational reimburse-ment model for training. The annual training budget of every employee is built into the CTC. The model is pretty straightforward. The onus of choosing the learning modules is on the learner. The learner after delibera-tion with his/her manager submits preferred training programs to the L&D team. Once approved, the learner pays for one’s own training. The training fee is reimbursed by the company post successful completion/certification. This model ensures high learn-er involvement, engagement & motivation since the learner takes ownership of one’s own learning.

4. Top Down Approach: One of world’s larg-est beer manufacturing companies, took a top-down approach to bringing about be-havioral changes in their organization. The hypothesis was that a change in leadership behavior trickles down to other levels in the hierarchy. This organization also used a per-ception mapping technique to map the rev-enue index to the people index. A group of

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80 leaders met every quarter to map revenue against perception of talent in the organi-zation. This is a very basic way measuring impact to see if there is linear relationship between revenue & people practices.

5. Using Assessments: Pre-assessments help in gaining buy-ins from learners on the needs to change. Regular assessments & evaluation help learners track progress. This ties in with a study – “Assessments do more than keep score. Characteristics and consequences of adult learning methods, a meta-study published in 2009, concluded that trainers need to give adult learners a framework to evaluate their performance. If you give learners a way to see their deficits, they’ll be more motivated to work on them.”

What else could be done in a not-so Utopian World?In the final segment, the discussion revolved around solutions in the absence of any con-straints – time, money, resources etc. A lot of interesting suggestions were put forward, some of which definitely merit mention. Here are some of the unique blue ocean strategies sug-gested by the group:

Reverse Engineering: Exploring reverse en-

gineering and behavioral training practices to understand effectiveness. The idea is to stop all behavioral training/learning interventions for a regulated period and to carefully monitor the areas of business that are being adversely im-pacted. This allows the learning leaders to link the impact back to programs that were working and the ones that weren’t and make necessary strategic changes to the learning strategies.

Learning styles based interventions: Moti-vation is key to behavioral change. When learn-ing interventions are aligned to the learner’s interests and motivations, behavioral change is initiated and sustained. One of the participants suggested using learning styles questionnaires like Peter Honey Learning Questionnaires. These assessments help in understanding learner preferences and also allow the learning leaders to classify learners into homogenous groups with similar learning styles rather than classifying them on the basis of business units or functions. Learning leaders could then adapt instructional design & delivery techniques to the learning styles of groups for maximum im-pact.

Death of the Competency Framework: Many large organizations worldwide and in In-dia like Adobe, Accenture, HCL, Infosys have

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done away or planning to do away with the bell curve appraisal. And many believe that the Competency Frameworks could be the next to go. Most organizations today derive their be-havioral training frameworks from competen-cy frameworks. The general feeling is that the better approach is to have behavioral indicators for training derived from expected business outcomes. Even Henry Mintzberg, author of “Managers. Not MBAs” in his book has pointed out that contrary to the assumptions on com-petency frameworks, there is neither a linear, nor even causal, relationship between compe-tencies & job performance.

Learning from Marketing: In marketing, one of the best ways to predict how some-one will behave in the future is to look at what they’ve done in the past. If one was to relate it to experiences on Flipkart or Amazon, you would notice that product recommendation advertise-ments are similar to products previously pur-chased or browsed. They typically use various complex multivariate analysis & algorithms to make these predictions. Similarly on Facebook, articles that pop up on your wall follow your previous reading pattern. In the learning space, what could be a game-changer is an algorithm that tracks one’s learning path on an LMS and

makes future learning recommendations based on one’s previous courses and certifications. This can make learning linear, consistent and sequential thus bringing about greater impact.

In conclusion, it can be said that one would notice that most of the best practices or blue ocean strategy recommendations are focused on better needs analysis, learner motivations and delivery. Very little work has been done in India on monitoring and measuring applications & business impact of behavioral trainings. The role of L&D has moved from being a support function to an enabling function. However, to establish L&D as a key business enabler, learn-ing leaders have to invest in aligning learning practices to desired outcomes to business re-sults and find ways to monitor & measure the same. It is widely believed that we are currently in the Talent Economy and Analytics is definitely coming to HR. There is still hope!

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Big data and its applications in learning can help organizations understand the learning requirements across the board and also support in learning implementationBy Smitha Murthy, AVP & Head OD, Infosys BPO

Big Data in L&D

After his first term of office, the US presi-dent Barack Obama decided to use Big Data for his re-election. The campaign’s

efforts focused on three aspects: registration (collecting data from committed voters), per-suasion (effectively addressing hesitant voters) and electorate’s vote (making sure that support-ers would vote). And for the first time, the field, digital and communication teams worked with a unified strategy. The most effective actions of-fered by the technology platform included col-lecting data on the field and providing very fast feedback via e-mails by the online team (with improved time and efficiency), or detecting the niches where TV advertising would work best,

cross-referencing voter data with demographic data and information on audiences, advertis-ing prices, and programs (thus improving the impact and segmentation). Through analytics, Obama’s 100-member team optimized commu-nication and improved the response of Dem-ocratic voters, and avoided wasting resources, time and money on voters who did not support their party.

As in politics, Big Data applications are be-ing experimented every day and the aim is to enable professionals to make the right deci-sions and maximize effectiveness and efficiency of implementing those. Learning leaders too can leverage the power of Big Data analytics to

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solve several challenges. The group focused on two of these challenges:1. How can Big Data be used to understand

learning requirements and for reinforce-ment or feedback on the job? Big Data can be used to determine the learning requirement from several sources of information (work and projects assigned, new role, popups on the screen, clicks on various links and tools etc.) so recommend-ed learning can be suggested to employees. Additionally, it can be added in the layer of performance management, when perfor-mance gaps have been identified and col-lated as inputs for the learning requirement gathering. Also, data can be gathered from their group membership, history on the so-cial media, Internet among other sources.

2. How can Big Data be leveraged to de-termine organizational learning strategy and determine its RoI?In terms of what data is required for learn-ing leaders to take decisions on learning

strategies, the following were highlighted by the group: Balanced Scorecards, SLAs, Customer Satisfaction surveys/scores, Pro-ductivity of an individual (from his previous experience and also his current role). The ROI would similarly be linked to parameters of importance to the organization, the data collection and consolidation would come from not only standard systems but other indicators like number of iterations of an email to close a decision, delays in project schedules aggregated and sliced and so on.

The Way forwardSince this is a newer field, it might be useful to design small pilots using Big Data mostly with data that is already available to solve a very clearly defined problem that is persistent e.g. dropouts from training after confirming their registration, failure to turn up for a reinforce-ment intervention after the main program de-spite agreeing to it etc.

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Demystifying Big Data

Big Data is defined as the usage of extremely large data sets, structured and unstructured, that may be analyzed computationally using advanced methods & predictive analytics to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions. Gartner, and now much of the industry, use the “3Vs” model for describing Big Data. Volume: Big Data doesn’t sample. It just observes and tracks what happensVelocity: Big Data is often available in real-timeVariety: Big Data draws from text, images, audio, video; plus it completes missing pieces through Data fusion

The 6Cs of Big Data

Generally Big Data systems tend to be characterized by the 6Cs1. Connection (sensor and networks)2. Cloud (computing and data on demand)3. Cyber (model and memory)4. Content/context (meaning and correlation)5. Community (sharing and collaboration)6. Customization (personalization and value)

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Building a robust and sustainable approach to L&D for learning professionals is the foundation for innovation for the functionBy Goutami Dutt, Head of L&D, OLX India

The diversity of the industries and expe-rience helped in framing this list of ‘Top 10’ challenges of what is stopping L&D

professionals to focus on their own learning growth. This list serves as a good starting point for us to deliberate on the topic, and also at-tempts to offer some solutions and way outs.

Why does L&D not focus on its own L&D? This is primarily for the following reasons:1. Difficulty in managing business responsibili-

ty with own learning2. The perpetual halo of ‘I Know it’ associated

with L&D3. Daily fire-fighting that leaves little or no time

to focus on learning4. Own inertia, and ‘nothing more to achieve’

attitude5. Personal belief that experience is in itself a

way of learning6. Any extra effort to learn could mean work-

life balance going for a toss7. The ubiquity of learning sources on the web

like Google, MOOC, makes us delay the learning

8. IDP discussions not followed through, hence all plans for self-development go awry

9. Lack of mentors who can truly guide on ‘What Next, What more’

10. Lack of willingness of organizations to in-

L&D for L&D

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vest in development of L&D team as priority would be crucial for groups like Sales/Tech-nocrats/Manufacturing employees.

11. Lack of a comprehensive Competency Framework that includes the functional & sub-functional competencies for L&D pro-fessionals can be attributed to not having a robust assessment criterion for a concrete Development Plan for L&D professionals in most organizations.

Solving the challenges of L&D for L&D Here are some ideas on solving the challenges of L&D for L&D used by different organizations & other readymade solutions already available:Business Catch up Sessions: Businesses organize regular catch up sessions with their learning counterparts to help them understand and grasp the big picture, the chal-lenges, and the strategy. These catch up ses-sions really help the L&D to understand the business from a wider landscape, and provide a great way for learning to take place.Planned L&D interventions:Learning Leaders to be held accountable for creating a Learning Plan for L&D professionals

and ensure that it is implemented the way L&D does for the businesses they support.• Robust Staff Development Plan for L&D staff

– sponsored by CLOs & driven by the learn-ing leads through EDP/IDP discussions.

• L&D is encouraged to form their own ‘Man-Days’ for self-development & growth, much before the usual training calendar is rolled out.

• L&D is encouraged to opt for short-term business roles, sort of ‘shadowing’ key busi-ness role which proves to be an enriching and lifelong learning for the L&D.

• Encourage L&D to pursue courses over the Internet or video conferencing facilities.

• Special focus on equipping the L&D with consultative skills, so that the role becomes more business focused.

Leveraging Social & Tech• Reliance on usage of consumer & social me-

dia platforms that encourage collective and collaborative learning. Using platforms like Google+, wherein a lot of information ex-change related to the business takes place, which helps the L&D to understand the ‘Big Picture’.

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• Encourage L&D professionals to leverage the social web to build a personal learning network. This enables them to connect with learning professionals from a range of in-dustries. Examples include participating in tweet chats, social communities etc.

Peer Learning• Being part of communities like ATD, ISTD Fo-

rums, attending L&D or related Conferences are also good source of learning for L&D.

• Benchmarking L&D practices across indus-tries.

• Sponsoring selected L&D staff for upskilling based on their current expertise and future aspirations that can be leveraged by the or-ganization.

• Professional memberships to CEB, HBR, ATD, Books 24 x7 from Skill Soft, Bersin Deloitte, People Matters etc.

• Leverage internal expertise of HR, OD, & Tal-ent Management professionals.

Leveraging External Partners• Organizations could focus on growing the

capability of the internal L&D Team for de-veloping simulation-based assessment (can

be patented)/up-scaling the facilitation skills that outsourcing training design & delivery demand.

• L&D Professionals could be nominated by the employer to conduct training programs/talks in other organizations or management colleges as guest speakers.

• Organizations could enable capability build-ing by offering partial/full company spon-sorship for enrolling for a diploma in T&D from ISTD, Training ROI from XLRI, best in class Instructional design/facilitation skills/other relevant certifications etc.

Best Practices Here are some of the best practices in organi-zations that keep L&D up-to-date with the re-quirements of the profession.OLX India • Operates an internal library stocked with

close to 100 books across genres, subscrib-ing to world class magazines like HBR, Econ-omist etc.

• Organizes reading sessions, book reviews etc. to ensure that the culture of learning is kindled.

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• Organizes compulsory monthly ‘All-Hands’, a huddle where in every business leader shares the business outcome & more im-portantly the challenges. The idea being that any function can come up with an idea or solution for the challenge. This cross func-tion pollination helps the learning person to have a very good idea of the business, and also feel empowered to suggest solutions as well.

• For culture building, disseminating values is a key responsibility. Hence, the use of en-gaging interactive modules, instead of staid presentations is a great way that L&D can contribute to its own learning and that of the organization as well. OLX has a very en-gaging calendar around its six core values.

Pfizer• Member of the ATD (Association of Talent

Development) Forum. The ATD Forum is a consortium for senior training and learn-ing practitioners and their organizations to connect and collaborate in a confidential environment. Member organizations share evidence-based and proven ideas to rapidly improve organizational capability in an ex-periential environment.

• Pfizer also runs a global initiative called “Modern Workplace Learning”. This is a learning track for all Pfizer trainers globally to learn about the new learning practices. This blended learning track includes e-learn-ing, community-based discussions on the internal social network, virtual classroom sessions, infographics and video based ses-sions.

• In order to upskill trainers on the changing role of the learning function, Pfizer India partners with Jane Hart (a global expert on social & modern workplace learning) to run a 5 week long workshop on social & collab-orative learning.

Biocon• Biocon organizes a 2-3 hour session every

month within L&D team. One of team mem-ber has to learn & train other L&D team members on “one new L&D topic’. They also allow L&D team members to pursue at least one new Certification Course every year aligned with IDP.

• ATD, ISTD, Training Journal, publishes good learning materials related to Training & De-velopment and can prove to be good source of learning.

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Blue Ocean IdeasWhat new strategic moves should be taken to create a leap in thrashing the L&D challenge & add value to the company?

THEMES START STOP IMPROVE

Business Context Un-derstanding

L&D takes the initiative of facilitating sessions on AOP/Vision meets. L&D leads attend at least the basic level technical training programs to under-stand the skills requirement, criticality etc.

Prescribing ‘train-ings’. First under-stand the symptoms, its causes, and its effect.

L&D needs to make use of busi-ness simulations as a way to improve the understanding of the business & its workings. This will also help in improving the business context and its various repercussions

Technology/Platforms as enablers

L&D must start building its own awareness of platforms. Post that building a sort of road map with clear cut charters of where you are and what is it that you want to achieve is important. Technology is not a spectator sport. L&D needs to jump in and walk the talk. The only way to understand consumer platforms is to expe-rience them first hand.

L&D must stop being apprehensive of technology, and stop focusing on staid methods to dissemi-nate knowledge.

Focus on improv-ing the deliverables from your learning partners. Make them look towards platform based solutions. This will improve the learn-ing delivery mech-anisms as well

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Customize Learning - Build Context within Con-tent

Start taking a ‘Big Data’ ap-proach before jumping on to building content. This research will help in building the con-text. Also initiate the process of mapping the content with the current business strategy with the business leaders to check the relevance.

L&D Must start asking the vendors/partners & self a question - What is the impact & assessment done (Cost, Time, Quality, ROI, any value crea-tion) post each training.

Can it be substantiated or at the end of the year we would just represent Training man-days, employee coverage etc.

Look at designing simula-tion based games to assess the learning of behavioral / techni-cal trainings after 21 days

Stop focusing on the ‘Rituals of L&D’- Training calendar, man days, off the shelf solutions etc. Stop being the ‘quick fix’ solution giver to any or every people or performance related issue

Improve upon the skill set of asking questions & doing a ‘deep-dive’. Take efforts to go the ‘Why’ way, to truly understand the ‘What’.

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Challenges of implementation of L&D strategy come from different areas, but eventually success of an L&D plan will come from the leaders’ ability to make an impact on the skills/behavior of the individualBy Mayank Kapoor, Director - Human Resources, Head Snapdeal Academy

The types of challenges when it comes to implementation of L&D strategy start from an insufficient articulation of the

goal or purpose of training to start with. The ambiguity about what ought to be achieved or what is the goal of the training is the first el-ement that creates a challenge for a success-ful learning implementation. The second chal-lenge that comes in the way is the ability to deploy training interventions across platforms and across training methodologies (on the job training, peer learning and classroom learning). These are issues that are fundamentally seen across industries.

Here are some of the best practices that

organizations are leveraging to manage these implementation challenges: • Shop floor training. Each of the manufactur-

ing lines need to have a process expert and when any new agency enters, the SME gives the product/process training.

• Incentivizing and recognizing trainers. • Strengthening the reporting manager. • Trainer board. Where the list of trainers is

given. • Month-on-month metrics to track OJT (On

Job Training) progress. • Publishing the metrics on the competency

assessment - specific to the business unit, function etc.

Implementing Learning and Development

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• Creating a code of conduct theater scripts around various cases of code of conduct vi-olations.

• Adapting learning to the needs of different generations: Different generations have dif-ferent methods of learning. Old methods don’t work for the millennial generation. They want learning to be at their own dis-cretion and time. Even if we don’t give them formal learning opportunities, they will get the learning anyway.

Here are some of the new ideas for the future to alleviate further implementation challenges: • Create a repository of the learning program

and how the challenges were addressed. It will work as a ready reference for learning.

• Sharing knowledge through social interac-tion (intranet)

• Bite size learning for all employees through interactive content

• 1 - 2 percent of the L&D budget should be invested on branding L&D

• Committed hours from leaders to conduct learning sessions

• Implementation of MOOCs will help em-ployees learn at their own pace and on their own devices

• Use social networking tools to identi-fy knowledge trainers and use them as a source to impart training

• Self-directed bite size learning to employ-ees every week (of max 5-8 minutes) on the competencies that need to be developed with reinforcements. Quiz in the end to challenge assumptions.

• Create a mixture of self-directed learnings (with e-learning, video-based learning, we-binars, seminars, whitepapers and articles, books, social learning & attaching a mentor) at an established frequency to help the em-ployees get acclimatized with their learning styles.

• For leaders in critical roles – one of the best practices is to develop talent through rein-forcements from external coaches as well as technology experts (people working in oth-er industries but having considerable knowl-edge in the area) – as mentors.

• Just before an important breakthrough ini-tiative of HR takes place, have the buy-in of the Leadership team, have the leaders prop-agate the idea –through personal touch with the employees, videos disseminating the importance of the initiative, Town halls and answer to the question “WIIFM” (What’s

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in it for me?).• At Snapdeal, a bite size learning (2-3 minutes

write up) is sent on important competency developments just a month before the initi-ative (example – If the Performance reviews are scheduled in October, a bite size learning in September around the competency of say “Giving and receiving feedback” – 4 modules over 4 weeks as reinforcements is sent).

• Simulation-based learnings for critical com-petencies like business acumen and develop-ing direct reports. Game-based simulations and theatrics help best in such situations.

• Leaders develop leaders – Shadowing a leader for some time (for top management) and having an executive coach helps best in learning.

• Story Telling is a huge influence in the de-velopment of managers. Get the most pro-ficient and ambitious leaders to tell their ca-reer stories and the challenges they faced moving up the ladder. Get them to address the employees when there is a crisis within the business which is a huge learning for the young managers.

• If you have a powerful LMS – then build the momentum by building academies – com-petency and function-based, and top it up

with 2-way communication, Google search. Add SMEs who are available as mentors for each function/competency and build apps to support mobile learning.

• Build a culture of “learning circles” like HR Learning week, Operations learning week, Finance learning week and so on.

Eventually, a lot of the challenges of imple-mentation can be overcome if L&D incorpo-rates lessons learnt from the business insights. L&D needs to partner and co-design the inputs for training with relevant team members who can contribute in terms of the practical aspects of the business and sharing best practices. For L&D leaders to be able to do this effectively, they will be required to be equipped with suffi-cient business knowledge. Currently, businesses see L&D as an outsider. L&D for L&D is missing. This means focusing on the big picture, where employees continuously acquire new knowl-edge and skills, which in turn has an impact on business performance in the long run. The fore-most way to make L&D programs effective is to include and increase business knowledge for L&D professionals. they are able to gain more business insights, it will help them to create ef-fective L&D programs.

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L&D has evolved over the years and has moved far ahead from conventional ‘Instructor led trainings’ to leveraging technology and creating ‘Immersive Learning’

By Parul Pandey, Director L&D at Microsoft

Innovation in Learning and Development

Need for innovation in learning & devel-opment really emanates from multiple factors like the fast-changing corporate

environment at a speed that can’t be matched with conventional thinking. In today’s day and age, where the millennials form the largest part of the working populations, attention spans only reducing, effectiveness is akin to speed, knowledge is available at the click of a button, open source is the mantra, successful strategy is designed for ‘Prosumers’ more than ‘Con-sumers’, L&D also needs to reinvent, rethink and innovate!

Innovation and technology are almost syn-onymous in today’s context. That’s probably be-

cause all major life-changing innovations over the past few centuries have been technological advances is some form or the other.

Innovation in learning technology is a beast L&D folks have been taming on a continuous basis over the last few decades. As the world embraces technology, L&D is one of its most ardent ambassadors. From desktop computers to mobile devices, we have explored all pop-ular technological advancements and adapted our courseware to match the times we live in. How many of us use Computer-Based Train-ings (CBTs) delivered through CD/DVD-ROMs anymore? How long ago was it when you ex-perienced your first CBT? Pondering over these

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questions will tell you how far L&D has evolved over the last two decades.

The L&D requirements across industries and sectors are diverse and complex. Yet, the ba-sic processes to conceptualize, design, devel-op, implement and evaluate training remain the same. L&D professionals are challenged on a daily basis to strategize and deliver cre-ative and innovative solutions to cater to the industry they serve. The ability to see beyond the obvious and challenge the legacy learn-ing methodologies is what differentiates the more successful L&D professionals from the rest. Learning from our counterparts in other industries makes the journey a lot more fasci-nating. A few years ago, the suggestion to use mobile learning to train miners at a mine site would have been scorned upon. After all, who would have imagined tech-savvy blue collared workers? Innovation in L&D doesn’t necessarily mean creating a multi-platform application or a piece of hardware. Let’s leave that to our more tech-savvy friends.

Innovation in the L&D space could be as sim-ple as substituting legacy learning methodolo-gies with more effective and simplistic methods, with or without the use of technology. Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project, which involved

leaving computers embedded in walls close to lesser privileged children and youth, proved to the world that kids who never attended school could teach themselves when they were given access to learning material. Imagine what ed-ucated professionals can do when given con-venient access to the most appropriate train-ing material. Yet, we have mandatory trainings bookmarked on our calendars!

As you read this article, miners in the re-motest parts of the globe are completing their refresher courses on tabs and smart phones; medical students in the middle east are learn-ing to perform life-saving surgeries through augmented learning; technicians in offshore oil rigs are fixing machinery with the help of just-in-time NFC-enabled learning; fourth graders are learning Physics through gamification; tour-ists are appreciating the history of a city with a storification apps; researchers are discussing the next breakthrough technology on a social learning platform; employees of a multi-nation-al company from six continents are interacting with their trainer in Nairobi through a virtual learning environment; future fighter pilots are getting trained on simulators; a ninety year old great-grandmother in Japan is taking a course on analytics from a MOOC; bankers are learn-

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ing about inclusion and diversity through a theatre performance; and millions of learning experiences are getting captured on the Expe-rience API.

The L&D world has made the best use of technology available in the market, which has in turn made learning experiences more intui-tive, engaging and appealing. We will elaborate on how innovation in L&D is impacting learner experiences with appropriate examples in this article.

Blue Ocean Ideas NFC- for just in time learning “The ability to learn faster than your compet-itors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage” says Peter Senge the author of the Fifth Discipline. In a fast-paced changing business environment where information can quickly become obsolete or redundant, staying on top of training can be a mammoth task. The challenges in learning for today’s organizations are geographically dispersed learners, incred-ible growth, need for knowledge on demand and expensive training logistics. Instead of ask-ing employees to take time away from work to sit through traditional class room courses, Top IT Global players are moving towards Just-in-

Time learning using technology for self-paced learning, bite sized learning, social learning, mobile learning that allow participants to focus on ‘snippets’ of information as needed to per-form specific tasks and resolve issues as they occur. Electronic learning is big at IBM. Last year, the company saved $200 million in inter-nal training costs related to traditional training sessions and time away from work, according to Rick Horton, general manager of IBM Global Services’ Learning Services group.

To promote active learning and allowing learners to access information, mobile learning has made content, information, updates pos-sible through Just In time learning. Technol-ogies like Near Field Communication (NFC) to share the file or content to the learning with-in the proximity, DropBox application, iBeacon are small, low cost devices that work using the Bluetooth inspire new modes of learning where a job aid or a skill brief can be shared.

While Just-in-Time learning enables bite size learning to quickly become productive, it will only work up to a certain point. Therefore, organizations need to offer content with wide range of tools, techniques involving mixed de-livery methods.

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Goof-Up SpaceHow many of us remember the voices from our childhood; “Be careful, you will fall’, “don’t write on the walls”, “pay attention, no silly mistakes”…Today those dirty hands and writings on the wall have come a long way and entered the corpo-rate space. Those voices have been replaced by newer ones, the words disguised in newer avatars of, “No room for errors”, “Innovate but make no mistake”, “It’s too risky, it won’t work”.

The question we need to ask ourselves is, ‘Are we killing innovation?’ ‘Are we becoming the torchbearers of the age-old conditioning of – “there is no room for mistakes”?’ Till you actually touch the fire, you don’t know how hot it is and what it can do, but once you touch it, it will teach you how to use it with caution and care. So who or what is the teacher in this fire scene – it’s really the experience that we gain out of having touched it and burnt ourselves. What it indicates is the need for learning expe-riences that allow us to try out new things and to fail and to learn from that failure to innovate and create. As learning professionals, we are looking at solutions that will help our talent be future ready, to deal with uncertainty. How do we create solutions if we cannot bet on what the future holds? How do we fool proof talent

against uncertainty, when no one knows what uncertainty really is? A key to this could be to create a safe space for our talent to try their ide-as, where it is okay to ‘GOOF-UP’. Depending on the industry, we create Goof-Up labs where technology and people could come together to innovate, to try out things, to get their hands dirty to create.

How many times has each of us not taken that chance because of anxiety that it will lead to an unfavorable result? This space will allow people to take that chance, which in turn will build their confidence that the organization believes that they can. Can there be a bigger motivator than that? Classrooms or modules will seldom be able to replicate this experience and what it will teach. And since studies affirm that people’s emotional states affect their level of risk taking and innovation, we should look at how we celebrate both the wins and misses of the Goof-Up labs to encourage such experi-ences.

Depending on an organization’s risk appe-tite, one could start small, maybe with simula-tion exercises, where people can try out differ-ent ways of doing things, bite sized gamified modules that allow to take risks and learn, to finally enter a space where all can come to-

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gether, try out their ideas, make mistakes and learn…the mantra through all these learnings being ‘it’s okay to Goof-Up to create and learn something new”.

Wall of FamePractices generally used by organizations un-der which, a structure, board, display, electronic space etc. are created by the organization to promote best practices, employees, branding of events etc. are:• Boards placed at eye catching Locations.• Corners created in the organization for the

purpose.• Newsletters circulated and having space in

the name of Wall of Fame or any other name branding.

• Wall of Fame space created at Social Web-site of the institution.

• Wall of Fame pager in Whatsapp group cre-ated for employee of the organization.

• Innovative Platforms. Picture of structure created and covered from stickers in the form of brick, along with space to write “about problems faced, expected solutions, interventions that are required to achieve the milestone at faster pace/lower cost. This structure is generally associated with an

image which is related to the target/work assignment. Yearly Target or work assign-ment of the group/department is further distributed in smaller milestones for a week/Fortnight/Month/Quarter basis the nature. Employees are asked to peel off the stickers once those milestones were achieved and were required to fill the fields placed on the side mentioning the problems faced, solu-tions, interventions that were required to achieve the milestone at faster pace/lower cost. This in-turn helped in showcasing the employees who have contributed in achiev-ing milestones and also give an in-depth understanding of the situation under which these milestones were achieved with solu-tions and expected training interventions.

Turn Table – Flip the learningThe challenge in this Big Data world is how we transform learning from Trainer or Facilitator driven to Participant Centric. It is time to Turn the Table or flip the learning room to more Par-ticipant Led Training.

Taking into account the different learning styles and learners, the training methodology should provide a platform for learners to wear a Trainer’s hat, collaborate with groups and fa-

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cilitate the training. This would enable partic-ipants to take responsibility to learn and share in a collaborative manner. The learning then becomes more personalized with interactivity among learners (tools like blendspace to create digital lessons) and becomes highly impactful.

The methodology encompasses variety of action-based tools, techniques to engage the learners. A professional trainer with good fa-cilitation skills should use a variety of train-ing methodologies to make it interactive and should be flexible enough to use wide variety of tools and techniques.1. Challenge Impact Series2. Experiential sharing3. Innovative Story Telling methods (cartoon,

Mascots characters)with creativity4. eLearning and advances in training delivery

like gamification have added new levels of immersiveness

5. Team/group activity6. Practical Assignments 7. Video Recording (snip tools of Microsoft

free tool)/simulation based learning8. You tube tutorials, Moocs & Coursera9. Virtual classrooms with annotation (elucido

learn)

Making content more relevant for learnersContent is the main component in learning, be it e-learning, classroom learning/mlearning - content plays a vital role in creating any learn-ing plan. Content Analysis is the first thing to be done while developing any eLearning/technol-ogy-based learning because based on the type of content, an appropriate learning strategy can be implemented. Content needs to be relevant to a variety of audience.

Adaptive learning is used by companies to bring internal expertise in the organizations and brings training to end-users and creates a personalized learning experience. This includes artificial intelligence, analytics, web based learn-ing with goal of teaching different learners the same content in different ways which enable high retention of knowledge and mastery over the subject compared to traditional methods.

Making learners interested in what they are doing is challenging, and it is becoming very clear that old and traditional methods of in-structor-led trainings are just not as effective as they once were. The emergence of new meth-ods such as gamification, social learning, and blended learning have become so popular over the last few years, as they break away from the legacy systems and provide a greater transfor-

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mation in immersive learning in changing the learner’s habit.Learning CommunitiesCommunities of learning as a style is increas-ingly becoming a way of preferred learning where a group of people who share common academic goals and attitudes meet on regu-lar intervals to collaborate on classwork. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based approach to future learning. This approach involves people who have common goals of development & believe that learning happens when knowledge is shared with oth-ers. This approach is being practices in our Country from the very beginning in the form of Gurukula.

What makes this method of learning work?• It is not time specific/date specific & people

are free to schedule their learning by way of expressing it online/meeting at their con-venience.

• It is not about traditional way of getting trained by trainers, rather it makes every member a source of learning through shar-ing their experience/events.

• The influence of this method on learning is

quite strong as people feel free to express their opinion & get perspective of others.

• It instills a sense of ownership & urgency to contribute to the community.

• It influences/challenges people to contrib-ute towards the learning of others.

• It fosters networking within the organiza-tion and outside the organization & thereby builds strong collaboration within different groups for business success and learning.

Few Practices on community of learningLearning group for quick update: This is a

learning ‘quick bites’ where people having un-dergone similar development programs discuss their development updates/events/experiences etc. with others who have similar developmen-tal needs. This forum provides a platform to discuss what can be done in a particular context /situation & what others have done in similar situations in the past.

Internal Blogging & Mind mapping: A top-ic is generally chosen which is a concern/areas where new ideas/fresh perspectives are to be pulled. This works extremely well as people feel free to contribute to the topic & the most pop-ular ideas get a place on the table for brain-storming.

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Brown Bag Meet: This is again a way of sharing knowledge that people have experi-enced/undergone via training/conferences etc. Learners share their perspectives on the topic & facilitate learning of others.

Leaders Blog: Here a leader of the business shares updates on business progress/issues & invites perspective of employees on new busi-ness lines. This builds a sense of belonging in the decision-making process of the business &

adds value to the strategic direction.Toastmaster Club: People come together to

enhance their communication and presentation skills.

These are some of the examples on how L&D can keep up pace with the need to remain in-novative, relevant and current for the business. Be bold, take the unchartered path and involve the stakeholders in the journey of innovation.

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Challenges to develop leaders continues to be acute and the need of the hour is to develop a robust pipeline of leaders considering the rapidly changing business contextBy Reetu Raina, Global OD Practice Lead at Amdocs

Redefining leadership

development

Each facet in life undergoes evolution and corporates are no different in this journey. The topic of leadership development has

passed through various facets of technology sophistication and leadership redefinition. Even though the world may have changed, some basic fundamental questions still remain like ‘Is leadership a skill or are people born with it?’

We started this question in the sample group of participants at the L&D League Annu-al Conference 2015 and surprisingly the results matched exactly with CCL’s research on the same question conducted in 2009 with much larger geographically spread population. Fifty percent believed it is both and the rest percent-

age was more or less equally distributed. But what was unique in our co-creation discussion was that there is something inherent in individ-ual, which enables him to be a leader. It is the inner motivation, drive and ability to respond differently to stimulus. Let us take the example of Gandhi. What made him a leader was his re-sponse to stimulus when he was thrown out of train in foreign land.

The discussion was concluded that leaders are the outcome of both born traits and ac-quired skills but what leads to leadership is a drive and response to stimulus in order to take control of the situation and not be controlled and eventually practice and training, which

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leads to leadership fulfillment.Once we ascertained this fact, we realized

that we owe a lot to the design of creating lead-ership development programs. What came up was very interesting and unique, that training plays may be ten or less than ten percent role in leadership development. For an effective pro-gram, it is about on the job experiences. And the ability of an organization to interweave these learning experiences with participants and business goals is what makes the differ-ence. One of the strongest tools which help in bringing this is Action Learning projects with individual mentoring of the participants in the organization. Both learning and day to day can-not be disconnected. If you disconnect them, learning becomes burden and not motivation.

While sharing of the best practices and suc-cess stories by the group members, the strong-est tool in leadership came up to be the self-re-flection tools. When people grow as leaders in organization, there are certain set of behaviors which get fostered in them as a result of which learning starts slowing. Self reflection tools like Hogan assessment help the leaders to get glimpse of their both positive and not so posi-tive behavioral traits. This reflection shakes the participants and makes participants committed

to learning despite their busy schedules.Reflection at times leads leaders in stag-

gering situations, but if it is integrated with the right coaching, it leads to positive infliction of reflection. One of the best practices spoken about the integration of all these points was by creating learning journals specific to individual. The concept of learning journals helps to bring personalization in the learning journey and also brings participant commitment.

One of the most important and non-nego-tiable drivers of leadership development is in-ner motivation, so participants before being en-rolled into such programs need to be checked for their willingness by way to self-assessment tools. This practice will kick off the journey in the right direction. As coaching plays integral part in learning, one of the ways by which L&D can bring efficiency with continuing value is by de-veloping internal coaching practices. To ensure there is no conflict of interest, internal coach-ing process needs to use cross-pollination for Coach-Coachee mapping.

Though the direct objective it serves is by bringing the efficiency by lowering the cost and bringing the value by coach knowing the organ-izational context, the by-product of this process is that it helps in building the coaching culture

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within organizations. For the leadership roadm-ap to create effective leaders, the key elements to be incorporated in programs is as follows:• Self -Awareness and Reflection tools• Coaching with defined goals• Mentoring• Connect the learning journey to business

goals

• Personalization of LearningLast but not least everything has to be inte-

grated. Leadership programs need to be tightly connected with succession planning and cul-ture building in organization.

Learning from MythologyThe data points were not just restricted to corporates but went deeper in Hindu mythology to the story of Eklavya and Arjuna. In the Mahabharta, Eklavya was the son of Hiranyadhanus who was King Jarasam-dha’s army commander and leader of the Nishadhas. He approached Drona to tutor him in the art of war, especially archery. Drona was a Brahmin teacher and taught the young Kaurava and Pandava princes. Dro-na was quite impressed by Eklavya’s sincere desire; however, he soon discovered Eklavya’s background. Foreseeing political circumstances that would engen-der from training a member of an army that was in opposition to Hastinapur, Drona turned him away.

Response to this Stimulus by EklavyaDeeply hurt by Drona’s rejection, Eklavya still didn’t give up on his resolute and the will to master archery. He once stayed hidden in the forest while guru Dro-na was teaching the Kaurava’s and Pandu brothers. After they left the ashram, Eklavya collected the mud on which his Guru walked, as a symbolic gesture of

wanting to follow his knowledge and footsteps and he went into the forest and made a statue of Drona under a big old tree. He began a disciplined program of self-study over many years. Eventually, Eklavya be-came an archer of exceptional prowess, greater than Drona’s best pupil, Arjuna. He accepted the statue as his guru and practiced in front of it every single day.

OutcomeOne day when Drona and his students were going out into the forest, Arjuna saw a dog that was una-ble to bark due to an amazing construction of arrows in and all around his mouth. This construction was harmless to the dog, but prevented the dog from barking. Drona was amazed, but also distressed: he had promised Arjuna that he would make him the greatest archer in the world. Drona and his students investigated, and came upon Eklavya. Upon seeing Drona, Ekalavya came and bowed to him. Drona asked Eklavya where he had learnt archery. Eklavya replied “under you, Guruji”, and showed Drona his statue while explaining what he had done.

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The Learning culture in any organization should be an integral part of the vision, values and founding principles. Find out the best practices and blue ocean strategies that could be explored to build a Learning cultureBy Sumukhi Jairam, Vice President, Talent Development, NTT DATA Global Delivery Services Pvt Ltd

Building a learning

culture

The learning culture of every organiza-tion should be an integral part of the vi-sion, values and founding principles. The

growth, sustenance and future of an organiza-tion are dependent on the evolution of people that form an important part of the traditional triad that build an organization (People, Pro-cess and Technology).

Any organization that is able to encourage employees to explore, build curiosity, and de-velop a thirst to learn, will be able to improve productivity, motivation, and grow through in-novation, anticipate and easily adapt to change. This process can begin as early as the recruit-ment stage and continue through New Em-

ployee Orientation and later at Performance Management. In this write-up, we will discuss this concept and bring in many ideas, best practices and blue ocean strategies that could be explored to build a learning culture.

What is Learning Culture? The core of the report (High Impact Learning Culture®: 40 Practices for creating an Empow-ered Enterprise) is one major finding: among all the HR and training processes we study, the single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of an organization’s learning culture.

Organizations don’t just arbitrarily develop into learning organizations. New and/or rather

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young organizations learn quickly. But this ca-pacity is frequently lost as they grow structural-ly, develop cohesive and inter-dependent pro-cedures which thereby leads to rigidity in the thought process.

To remain competitive, it is important to learn more and faster than your competitors. The challenges are managing knowledge, un-derstanding the internal and external environ-ments, and finding new and creative solutions that employ the full range of knowledge and skills of the organization and its workforce; with pre-requisites of collaboration, trust, and open and reliable conversation.

Learning organizations - those that have a learning culture - are characterized by five main disciplines, which were identified by Peter Sen-ge over two decades ago. These disciplines, or ‘component mental technologies’, converge to help people shift from just reactors to active and or involved participants in shaping a new reality and creating the future. Understanding how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels of the organization requires system thinking, personal mastery, use of men-tal models, a shared vision and team learning.

A learning culture as widely understood is a set of organizational values, conventions, pro-

cesses, and practices that encourage individu-als, and the organization as a whole, to increase knowledge, competence, and performance.

Benefits of learning cycleAn organization which prioritizes learning can provide a service that is constantly being im-proved, thus benefiting the customer and creating a competitive advantage. Consumer expectations are higher than ever, requiring organizations to obtain ever-increasing knowl-edge and expertise. An organization and its people need to be progressive/continually ad-aptable to be sustainable. We must remember the cardinal rule; ‘Learning and change are in-terdependent’.

The perceived benefits are:• Promotes constant learning opportunity

for individuals, leading to motivation and increase in skill and competency thereby achieving organizational objectives and vi-sion.

• Promotes collaboration amongst teams/de-partments which impacts business results.

• Empower individuals to take responsibility for their development and career progres-sion.

• Ideation/Innovation

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• Fosters healthy/harmonious relationships within teams where staff share learning

• Improves productivity and growth addition-ally building a competitive environment

• Employee engagement and Retention• Creates a pull vs. push culture• Freedom of choice - how I learn?• Ready to adapt to change• Best practices adopted

Building a Learning Culture - the tools re-quired for implementationLearning is a processLearning culture is about both formal and infor-mal learning and not something that happens at a particular place and time. In order to build an environment conducive to learning, it is im-portant to align business strategy with learning and development. Employees should have ac-cess to a wide variety of tasks and responsibil-ities and opportunities and learning channels like e-learning, mobile apps, town-halls, etc.

Learning is continuous. To ensure continual growth, learning challenges such as opportuni-ties for job rotation and taking up new respon-sibilities can be incorporated with the appropri-ate guidance through HR policies. Career paths could be shared with employees and a policy

introduced to cross-train and release employ-ees who are interested in job rotation.

Celebrating small success in learning and motivating along the way. Learning could be gamified and associated with motivation and encouragement from immediate supervisors. Assign brand ambassadors and create a pool of subject matter experts in varied fields to encourage and recognize a learning culture. There should also be opportunities for work-ing with and alongside those with different ex-pertise. Colleagues with different skill sets are not only a source of knowledge and technical know-how, but also a potential source of inspi-ration, support and motivation.

Coaching and mentoring could be intro-duced at various stages of career paths to help and guide employees to accept more respon-sibilities and achieve their short-term and long-term goals.

As HR practitioners, we can talk about the ideal environment required to build a learning culture; however, implementation is the key fac-tor to drive the change. We need to do away with the dogmatic approach of the organiza-tional leaders, as they need to walk the change. Some suggestions in these areas are:• Integrate learning with talent management

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in support of capability development.• Use leadership development programs to

encourage leaders and management to take ownership of the learning culture.

• It is important to build strategic communi-cation to spell out the WIFM (what’s in it for me) statement.

• The leadership should promote Education, Experience and Exposure to build a progres-sive learning culture in the organization.

• Allow failures, seek new solutions/ide-as, encourage new behaviors and immer-sive learning methodologies to implement change and a progressive learning culture.

• Assign budgets for seamless implementa-tion of new ideas, involve stakeholders to mutually agree upon target training days and measure ROI for L&D activities to assist in creating a learning culture.

• Reach out and meet the learning require-ments of employees, customize a unified, scalable learning management system that is aligned to the career progression plan of the employees. This shall assist and map user objective goals to business goals to bridge the gap and facilitate a learning culture in the organization. It will also help address specific business and project needs. Inter-

twining Gamification elements with visual storytelling, real-time feedback, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with visual cues could facilitate this. This should be meas-ureable and have an objective for the learn-er; reinforcing previously learned behaviors and facts. Gamification will allow the learner to explore information and learning though simulations. The benefits are two-fold; one it assists in competency building and other in building focused skills to perform tasks for a given role.Gamification will influence, engage and

motivate employees and effectively drive be-haviors to bring about desired results; name-ly, enrolment into programs, giving feedback, engaging in learning, contributing to exchange of ideas, and in all this process, building com-petencies.

Parties that take ownership and responsibili-ty to build a learning cultureThe rate at which organizations learn may be-come the only sustainable source of competitive advantage – Dr. Peter Senge

Leaders: Employees always look to their managers/leaders and emulate them. Leaders

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must walk their talk! They must model their belief in the value of learning and lead by ex-ample. If employees watch their leader learn, unlearn and re-learn, they will be motivated to follow. Leaders should spread their learning by Storytelling, which is very powerful way of shar-ing their knowledge. A good part of develop-ment learning is from the experience of bosses/supervisors. Leaders should work strategically with the learning function.

Line Managers: Line Managers, the report-ing manager, supervisors are all responsible for continuous learning and development of their teams. Beginning with induction, it is their re-sponsibility to provide challenging assignments, based on the individuals’ capabilities and move the team member to their next level of perfor-mance job-rotation and provide opportunities and conducive environment for learning.

Individuals: Ownership of learning is most certainly in the hands of the individuals. Change being a constant factor, only learning and up-to-date information will help adapt to changes. Perhaps, some of our styles of teach-ing in schools/colleges is focused on curricu-lum-based education and does not pass on the ownership to the students. This has left many individuals to confine and draw boundaries of

learning. If one does not continue to learn, he or she may stagnate and this will be a huge burden to the growth of the organization and society at large.

Learning/Training Departments: The func-tion of the learning department among other activities is that of a sponsor, subject matter expert, logistics provider etc. A learning team should work closely with the business leaders and provide the organization with various meth-odologies and platforms to train and learn. This function would work at its best if they were em-powered and treated as a cost-center. Business leaders should work closely with the training function to ensure a high Return on Investment.

Types of LearningLet us go back to our premise - Learning Cul-ture is inclusive of Training Function, but it is not the only source or process for learning. We now take a look at the avenues of learning.

Most of employee learning is just-in-time learning that is focused towards building basic skills, technical and or process, to meet immedi-ate business needs and or project requirements. This is linked with experiential, peer-to-peer and on-job training and learning. Today, technology has enabled gamified and self-paced learning

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which is highly addictive and furthers learning. Cutting edge technology has enabled webinars and workshops to build varied skills. Opportuni-ties for working with and alongside those with different expertise and different skill sets is not only a source of knowledge and technical know-how, but also a potential source of inspiration, support and motivation. Cross training on pro-cess, technical and behavioral competencies can help create a competent and enabled workforce.

Besides the traditional classroom-based learning, simulation-based learning has paved the way to build niche skills of leadership, stra-tegic communication and lateral thinking. Most importantly, the triad of Coaching, Mentoring and focused feedback has provided the required podium to help employees align their goals to achieve business and organizational objectives, develop self to thereby build proficiency, pro-ductivity and efficiency. To have holistic learning culture, organizations could look beyond skill development and offer wellness initiatives, cre-ative endeavors and community based projects. These would motivate and help individuals to look beyond work life.

Finding the Blue ocean strategiesConsidering the factors that have to be raised

well before the existing practices and creating new ones, we have following suggestions that would help build or create a Learning Culture:• Including a parameter to screen prospective

employees even in skill-based businesses. • Keeping the wide range of audience from

baby boomers to millenniums in mind, tech-nology, duration and implementation of learning activities should be re-assessed and a multiple learning methodology should be available for same objective. For e.g. For a “short learning span” audience, technology should support short bursts of learning ma-terial; for millenniums availability of forums on a 24x7 time frame will be attractive.

• Goals set for performance management need to be aligned to organizational goals/needs and also need to be set for knowl-edge, attitude and behavior.

• Including a compulsory target to commit mistakes and learn from the lessons. This will force people to take risks and come up with innovative ideas. Power of choice and freedom to examine the inherent motivation.

• Collaborative learning with organizations outside the place of work. This will give exposure of networking and learning in groups.

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• One best practice that is prevalent in some organizations – is Bid Win Loss analysis … all successful bids are analyzed for – why they were won and similarly when bids are lost – as to why they were lost. This helps to improve the ability to improve the success rates over time. There is a need to look at building a learning culture more strategical-ly for it to become a part of organization’s DNA.

• Rewarding Story-telling that has an ROI. It seems that products and services that suc-ceed and provide a considerable ROI do so not by just providing rational explanations but by giving people reasons to identify with and believe and to belong. The customers look for and want to hear stories. Consid-er reaching out to the customers and brand advocates, and collaborate with them. It is also important to look at past impressions and think more like a publisher to get bet-ter results. So include real time metrics to help your business grow with the power of storytelling. Include quality of engagement for a better overall view of how you’re doing as you harness the power of storytelling to gain a ROI. Encourage and reward such suc-cess stories.

Best practices by organizations for building a learning culture1. British Council

‘Think out’ at British Council: We conduct ‘Think out’ sessions where we get senior peo-ple from leading organizations and get them to share their thoughts on a particular topic. This has given us a very nice response. Leaders come up proactively to attend this session and take knowledge from outside industry. Namra-tha Sood, Manager - L&D, British Council

‘Manage to Serve’ at British Council: We have an internal framework called ‘Manage to Serve’ in which we cover all our leaders and the objective is to prepare our leaders for inverting the pyramid of the organization and move from managing to serve the frontline. The inverted pyramid or the ‘serve’ culture is based on the fact that front line manager engages with the customer on a daily basis and understands him the best. She/he should be empowered to serve the customer. Senior managers should serve the frontline managers as coaches. They should help them manage long term priorities or short term priorities. They should focus on long term vision of the organization. They should also help front line managers manage conflicting priori-ties between themselves. The executive manag-

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er should be outward focused and understand the industry. He should serve senior managers by coaching them to be market ready.

2. NTT DATA Global Delivery Services Pvt LtdTalent Development at NTT DATA Global De-livery Services Private Limited (NTT DATA) en-visions to create a learning environment in the organization. It is mandatory for every employ-ee to complete a minimum number of manda-tory training hours per grade. The offerings un-der this umbrella aim to provide Personal and Professional skill development. The more re-cent inclusions available to the employees are: Exploring Leadership Series which is a peer-to-peer leadership development program wherein, program participants will have the opportunity to lead the discussion; Domain Expert Speak-er Series that is aimed to build subject matter experts and thought leaders that could lever-age business specific solutions to our custom-ers; People Management Essentials that targets first time managers and helps them understand how transitioning into a management role can be overwhelming and equally exciting.

Gamification at NTT DATA: To reach out and meet the learning requirements of NTT DATA, it was important to introduce a unified,

scalable learning management system that was aligned to the career progression plan of the employees. It was also important to map user objective goals to business goals to bridge the gap and facilitate a learning culture in the or-ganization and alongside address specific busi-ness and project needs.

Catalys at NTT DATA: Catalys, Learning Management System has gamification elements with visual storytelling, real-time feedback, in-trinsic and extrinsic motivation with visual cues. It is measureable and has an objective for the learner. It reinforces previously learned behav-iors and facts. Gamification allows the learner to explore information and learning though simulations. The benefits are two-fold. One in that it assists in competency building and other in building focused skills to perform tasks for a given role. Gamification of Catalys can be used to influence, engage and motivate employees and effectively drive behaviors to bring about desired results; namely, enrolment into pro-grams, giving feedback, engaging in learning, contributing to exchange of ideas, and in all this process, building competencies. This new era of fun, video-games inspires learning to not only “hook” players but effectively prepares them with focused skills required to do their job well.

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This process of adding motivational ele-ments within a learning framework or system to increase user engagement is based upon game theory and game mechanics. While it takes a systematic approach to rewards and recognition programs, it adds a human incen-tive layer and provides an effective motivation framework. The new gamification features drive greater learner engagement by introducing el-ements of scoring and competition to add in-terest and excitement to learning participation.

Innovar at NTT DATA: Innovar is NTT DATA India’s annual innovation roadshow with sen-ior leaders from NTT Group companies, clients, media agencies, and the employees in attend-ance. Multiple booths representing various ca-pabilities of the NTT Group are displayed and the guests are taken on a guided tour of the roadshow. The booths manned by NTT DATA’s services and vertical practices showcase their unique solutions and novel product demon-strations that help our clients stay ahead of the curve. Innovar motivates attendees to take part in meaningful discussions, and insightful pres-entations on some of the latest industry trends and path breaking NTT DATA solutions and promotes continues learning.

3. MindtreeCapability-based learning at Mindtree:

Mindtree moved from a structured table of con-tents learning model to capability driven mod-el where the learning is very outcome focused. This led us to remove faculties/facilitators from the program and bring in hands on practition-ers from projects. Small groups of 20-30 are as-signed to a technical lead that has a challenge to solve (a project); in the process they build the capabilities required and deliver the project.

Continuous evaluation at Mindtree: Here there are no assessments or exams but the learner is evaluated. The evaluation happens on the deliverable that he has as part of the pro-ject and is on everyday basis. It has a structure to it and basically they get qualitative feedback and are put into Green, Amber and Red bands which is a reflection of their deliverable which in turn is mapped to learning/acquiring a ca-pability

Individual Learning Plan (ILP), Portfolio at Mindtree: While there is one standard plan for all learners, the truth is that there are slow learners and fast learners. Here, the learners add capabilities to their list based on the indi-vidual pace. A learner who has completed his capability ahead of time will add advanced/op-

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tional capabilities to his list. A slow learner gets more assignments to work on the existing ca-pabilities. The motivation to take up additional capabilities is the Portfolio that a learner creates at the end of the learning program. The Portfo-lio is very similar to that of an architect or a de-signer which would talk about individual’s work, interests, learning path, challenges and failures.

G8 learning at Mindtree: Learning hap-pens by solving a problem/challenge (Project). The learners are grouped into 8 and the learn-ing happens in these groups. The groups are formed considering diversity on various param-eters like demography and performance. The physical spaces in the learning center are de-

signed to enable G8 learning.Integrated tracks at Mindtree: There are

multiple tracks in an individual’s learning plan – technical, business and behavioral. We have made an attempt to integrate all of this into one learning path for the learner so that learn-er realizes that these cannot be independent of each other. Example: Learner is made aware that fixing a defect incorrectly has a business impact through gamification and thus driving a point on business impact. And behavioral traits like adhering to timelines, taking responsibility, planning are all brought in by observing them on the project they are working on.

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Three main challenges in managing the global-local conundrum and its practical solutions By Uma Sankar, India - Director (Learning & Development) and Global Head Operations at Capgemini University

Making learning a

success in global and Indian

conglomerates

Leaders, when implementing their global learning strategy in the local market or globalizing a local practice, must appre-

ciate the fact that India and the Western world are different in many respects and hence a ‘one size fits all’ approach cannot be applied to learning. Below are some of the challenges that the participants shared and some insights from the Group to address such a challenge.

Challenge: Global companies see resistance within local entities to adopt global content and global courses. While the intent is to bring in consistency and eliminate any duplication, the perception is that it can be an expensive propo-sition as this could mean investments to set up

that infrastructure, cost of facilitation and travel.Infrastructure support especially bandwidth,

network connectivity, etc. is not very stable in India which makes it difficult to move aggres-sively into virtual or online learning. At the same time, there is a general lack of openness to new methods of learning in India which makes it dif-ficult to introduce new ways of learning.

Solution: Refrain from ‘one-size-fits-all’ syn-drome. Strike a right balance between centrali-zation and decentralization. Define what needs to be centralized and why. Global organizations must define the framework, process and guide-lines at the corporate level which will allow local entities to develop their course and deliver. A

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strong governance council which meets peri-odically to review the quality of courses, their acceptance levels by the employees will help in maintaining the quality and relevance, irre-spective of where the courses are delivered and what delivery formats are adopted. The partic-ipants in a course also act as a key factor in the success of any program. When we bring people into a course, we must make sure we get par-ticipants from all regions so as to allow them to understand the diverse culture, and learn from one another. Any resistance to new ways of working or learning can easily be addressed when we get people across cultures together and share their experiences.

Challenge: Bringing in speed to competence is getting difficult as market expectations change rapidly and organizations are growing rapidly

Increasingly, we see the need for Indian leaders to step up and take on global roles and work in a multicultural environment. The lead time to develop a new course is typically 6 weeks and the challenge in accessing course content as and when required are some of the key aspects that need to be addressed. There is also the need to be conversant with legal and statutory compliances of a country before one starts working with clients and hence the need

to get up to speed on such critical aspects is gaining importance.

Solution: The digital content management system should act as a good solution, which allows users and trainers across geographies to get access to learning/teaching material anytime, anywhere. A central repository of all knowledge assets is very important. Organiza-tions should also start investing in interactive social platforms which enables users to con-tribute to a topic, share their experiences, reach out to the experts online to get their queries addressed, rather than L&D investing time for 2 months to put together a 5 day classroom training. Today the need is to be able to learn without too much travel and cost by flying fa-cilitators to get onshore teams trained on dif-ferent aspects. In many organizations, learning is closely linked to HR systems and processes which helps to demonstrate business impact.

Challenge: Inconsistency in course content and failing to deliver to the standards.

With the need to deploy learning programs rapidly across different geographies and cities, there is always a challenge to balance between speed and quality. Often the courses designed in one side of the world are not known to oth-ers. We lack the ability to sustain and deploy

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courses at a large scale with quality. This applies for Indian multinationals increasing their foot-print in other countries as well as MNCs want-ing to expand their operations in Asia.

Solution: Introduce the digital asset man-agement system, which allows users and train-ers across Geographies get access to learning/teaching material any time anywhere. Bring in interactive platforms which enable learning to be delivered without too much travel and cost involved in flying facilitators to get onshore teams trained on different aspects. The closed loop system introduced in some organizations helps mitigate any risks around tying learning to competencies and business impact.

Problem: Inconsistency in standards and failing to deliver to global standards.

With the need to deploy learning programs rapidly across different geographies and cities, there is always a challenge to balance between speed and quality. Often the courses designed in one side of the world are not known to oth-ers. We lack the ability to sustain and deploy courses at a large scale.

Solution: Facilitators or trainers play a cru-cial role here. Qualifying facilitators and certify-ing that they meet global standards is a good way of ensuring quality and consistency in what

we deliver irrespective of the location. Organi-zations like Capgemini have a University Facili-tator Qualification Process which helps identify potential trainers at an early stage and gradu-ally gets them ready to move to various levels of competence to finally become a University Qualified Facilitator. Thus, they ensure that the quality of the course delivered is the same, be it at China, France or Chicago. Technology is another key enabler that supports in dissemi-nating learning faster and demonstrate value. Organizations like Pfizer have a good learning system that links to HR processes so that one can easily demonstrate the impact of these pro-grams on business and people. Implement-ing a global platform to track and administer learning will go a long way in defining quality standards and reporting. The real need today is also to equip L&D professionals with the right skills to deliver informal and social learning. Bite sized learning, learning on the move, device ag-nostic content, gamification are changing the way people learn and hence L&D professionals must be equipped to facilitate learning in a new way. While a lot is spent on designing and de-veloping a course, organizations do very little to promote them which becomes critical when organizations grow. Every L&D function must

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invest in a strong Marketing and Communica-tions Program to be able to constantly promote and engage participants at an early stage on.

ConclusionFor Indian enterprises going global and global enterprises scaling operations in the country,

the key is to identify the priorities and strike a right balance between global and local, lever-age technology to bring in speed and scale, supported by a strong Governance to ensure that training effectiveness and quality are not hampered. The importance of L&D for L&D should not be underestimated as well.

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Organizations are increasingly leveraging social learning as it enables a more collaborative approach and coexists with instructor-led and work-based trainingBy Anju Sethi, VP/Head - Recruitment and L&D at Tesco HSC

Integrating ‘social’ with ‘learning’

The learning and development environ-ment has evolved rapidly in the last few years. Today, learning has been integrat-

ed with technology extensively. And today the hyper use of technology in delivering training through mobiles, smartphones, tablets, web-based learning etc. is remarkable, where ded-icated platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, Tizen, Oxygen, etc. are being used.

However, there are a few pertinent questions which come to mind when we think of technol-ogy in learning ‒ when using technology, what can be the potential challenges or bandwidth issues that can be encountered or what can

be the challenges related to the scalability and adoption of technology, among many other pertinent questions. But an important factor in planning and implementing effective learning strategies is to understand the learner behavior first. In order to fully comprehend this, the dif-ference between what training constitutes and what the organizational outcomes of the train-ing or performance are, need to be considered. Learning is a process where one initiates, ap-plies and demonstrates what has been learnt. For all this, it is important to reach out to the learners and today many organizations are us-ing on-demand learning, which not only saves

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time, but is easily accessible, on-demand, scal-able, and is customized according to the needs of the learner who nowadays is more tech savvy.

Trend of Social LearningSocial learning has become a new trend today. It is a concept where people learn from each other by observation or socialization, are able to produce their own content, share and gain knowledge. ‘Social’ today endows everyone with a digital identity. With the help of social tools and social media platforms, organizations are now able to create collaborative workplac-es that enable employees to learn from each other, than in formal settings like trainings. Or-ganizations today are extensively using batch enrollments to sustain cohort participation and involvement, and use gamification to engage the participants among many other things. For example, IBM is using social learning for all its learning interventions – it has created a suc-

cessful online community and also has metrics to measure the success of social learning. For IBM, “social learning through communities is the future which co-exists with instructor-led and work-based training.” IBM uses gamifica-tion and the mechanics in SimPM (Simulated Program for Project Management Learning) game where participants play a game and each completed task takes the participant towards completion. Tasks include videos, courses, re-port-submission, proposals, mentoring etc. To-day, there are many technology tools that are also available for L&D Professionals to use like Learning Kiosks, Articulate, Storyline, Claro, Ice-break, LMS, Youtube, Coursera, Camtasia, An-imote, Cornerstone LMS, QQ Player and QR Codes. However, the elements that L&D profes-sionals need to consider are constant upskilling of the L&D teams/professionals and keeping a track of new changes in technology which can be combined with the workforce needs.

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Business leaders have become more demanding on return of learning and are making conscious investments into talent as they now understand that a constantly evolving workforce is the differentiator in a competitive business environmentBy Pradeep Janardhanan, Head Capability Development at AIG Data Solutions

Return on investment

aka Return on Learning

The business world is looking towards new horizons and investments into employee development have been brought to a

forefront, but this move has been taken cau-tiously. Organizations are committed towards the right investment rather than blanket de-velopment. Gone are the days where ‘Learning team’ would get budgets based on forecasts and assumptions. The days of “investment” are here instead of “expenses”. Business leaders are looking towards learning leaders to provide them with talent insights for business strategies and it becomes imperative for them to look for “Returns on Learning.”

As the word ‘investment’ takes more prom-

inence, return on investment becomes one for the most sought after metrics for learning teams - one of the most challenging areas in learning and development space, but if derived well, it becomes the most powerful metrics to have. Most of the learning professionals are asked by the business to justify or explain the need to invest in an intervention ‒ their needs are gone beyond assessments, or post learning applications but towards how much impact can a learning create at the bottom line create.

ROI process is one of the most comprehen-sive methods, and regarded as the most mean-ingful one too. It draws from established the-ories of Kirkpatrick’s learning evaluation model

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and Phillips’ ROI methodology to provide learn-ing practitioners a framework to establish func-tion’s value creation.

Return on Investment (ROI) starts much be-fore the interventions are designed. There are three broad stages of ROI:1. Engagement2. Application3. Measurement

Most of the times, teams tend to focus on stage 3 more than stages 1 and 2, whereas stag-es 1 and 2 build a strong foundation to measure returns of learning.

ENGAGEMENT This is the first and perhaps the most critical step for measurement. It’s not necessary that learning needs can be executed through facili-tator led intervention. Sometimes it may be an expectation mismatch or job mismatch. This is where learning teams need to be engaged with the business to explicitly understand their im-plicit learning needs. It has become vital that we understand the business and their ‘needs’ and not wants.

The starting point to any engagement is the “Strategy map.” What are the key goals for the

business, what do they need to achieve in the short term and long term? Having a strategy map acts like a compass to all engagement activities, not just learning interventions. The business plan will help define the right talent strategy – what skills to acquire, what skills to develop, what organization level to focus (all levels are equally important) but will also help us drive the right intervention for right level. It is important to also understand the business at a granular level ‒ what the key success indica-tors for business are, how do they measure suc-cess, what does success mean to them, who are their key stakeholders, or who their customers are etc. Exploring these indicators will enable a much deeper understanding of the business and help in informed conversations with them.

Once there is a deeper understanding of business, we can the link (right) competencies to strategy map, which can then feed into Tal-ent Acquisition and Talent Development strate-gies. The teams then based on their areas, ei-ther scout for right talent or formulate diverse development strategies. Yes, Diverse, cause it is not necessary that one intervention can bridge the skill gap!

Once the core competencies are derived and tied to strategies, drilling it down to core

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skills required to do the job - the process for Return on Learning needs to start. This is a crit-ical stage, where business stakeholders and learning teams need to partner to define the first stage of post learning assessment.

Skills with clear outcomes are then defined and learning/organization development team then has to engage with business more deeply and frequently to ensure consistent/standard-ized construction of outcomes of assessment. Post defining the job descriptions with asso-ciated competencies, skill and measurement parameters, it is necessary to create a process map around the same. This ensures that out-comes for each stage are called out and a ro-bust RACI matrix is built around it.

Before moving to Application stage, the Learning and Business Teams need to connect with C-Level to get their perspective and for continuous support. The effort is not just for few teams, but should be owned across levels through the organization.

APPLICATIONMoving towards application of the process, focused developing and stringent review of learning intervention comes into play. Dur-ing this stage, design of interventions/ experi-

ments takes place. One of the drawbacks of this stage is that while engaging with the business, teams usually see instructor-led sessions as the only way to impart learning. The learning team needs to advise the business on alterna-tive ways of learning and knowledge applica-tion. The quintessential ADDIE process or the breakthrough SAM process provides quite an amount of insights through process documents for practitioners to follow.

While designing the intervention, there is a need to keep in perspective the ‘Learning de-livery mechanism’. Some topics have a better learning penetration through a particular deliv-ery system.

Designing the intervention measurement of outcomes that are aligned to learning ob-jectives should be called out explicitly as this would act as ‘end-user performance estimate’ and is used during data collection. The same should be communicated to participants as well as part of learning pre-work and the facilitators need to get engaged with the participants dur-ing this phase.

Once the objective, outcomes and measure-ment are defined, what the lead time for impact and lead time to measure outcomes will be also need to be called out. This is done in collab-

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oration with business, as they will be in much closer contact with the participants to observe learning assimilation and knowledge applica-tion post the event. Learning teams should be in constant exchange with the business, in par-ticular supervisors of participants, and coach them on how to measure the impact of learn-ing. Some organizations have systems and pro-cesses that generate that data which can help in empirical assessment of embryonic ROI.

MEASUREMENTOnce the design of intervention is finalized, outcomes defined and business engaged to observe, next step would be to take a deeper look into Design of Experiments (DOE). During the intervention phase, DOE provides an op-portunity for participants to play around with their new found knowledge. The right set of exercises, role plays, simulations bring out key behaviors during the course of events and pro-vide inputs from facilitators and fellow learners on alternative ways of application.

Another way to assess learning penetration is through design of knowledge test. These can be administered pre- and post the learning in-tervention to assess the knowledge grasp of participants. With key guided questions, we can

make out how they will apply knowledge back to the job.

One of the most commonly used measuring techniques is Learning Feedback Questionnaire – which is also the most abused/unstructured one too. Most of the questions check on the Facilitators ability to convey the learning, but falls short on how much the leaner has learnt! The questionnaire therefore should be more ‘learner centric’ rather than facilitator centric. The questionnaire should maximize most of Kirkpatrick evaluation model and focus on eval-uating how much the participants get a chance to demonstrate the knowledge and practice ac-quired skills. It should help detail out the ability to apply acquired skills if they foresee any barri-ers in application of knowledge. One of the are-as that is left unexplored is ‒barriers to learning application ‒ the questionnaire should probe on barriers that participants may face to apply knowledge, which should feed into the support system for coaching and sanctuary structure.

Post learning execution, data collection

becomes more structured. The learning team needs to partner closely with business to ob-serve the behavior/performance changes in

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participants. Supervisors can be engaged to check on leading indicators on behavior chang-es in target competences. This can be more controlled through focus group discussions, behavior sheets, competency charts, and follow up surveys. Mentors can be retained to enhance performance demonstration and help link it to business/operational metrics. Follow-up ses-sion can be incorporated for participants to unlearn and relearn from live application sce-narios ‒ which could be done in an experiment scenario with mentors to help participants re-discover competencies.

There are more and uncharted ways to gather data, and after that is done, it is mapped to the end-user performance estimate that was done during the design phase which helps iso-late the effect of learning solution that could impact customer satisfaction, quality, and pro-ductivity scores. Customer inputs on CSAT, NPS scores, Referral business opportunities are oth-er ways to get structured data for analysis.

After all data is cleaned and structured, the process of reporting starts. Most of the time learning professionals report what’s relevant from a Learning Industry Outlook – not from a business perspective. Data that is gathered needs to be relevant from business standpoint,

eventually underlining the value that is created by interventions.

While working on the arithmetic, all costs (direct or indirect) need to be accounted for. The cost for research (white papers, periodi-cal, secondary research, data sets...etc.), design (iterations of design, pre-work, connect with stakeholders and participants), facilitation (cost of facilitation), logistics cost (Travel and Enter-tainment cost) need to be accounted. Evalu-ation costs along with any follow-up sessions also need to be appended to provide a com-plete cost view.

Analytics should point to or suggest the im-pact on the bottom line. This is a crafty process, and requires deepening of our understanding of business P&L. It should suggest how end user performance estimate has a direct impact on performance which leads to an increase in productivity through reduction in cost of qual-ity (lean process, agility, efficiency and scalabil-ity). The insights can also take in account intan-gible benefits that an intervention has provided – increase in brand image, engagement scores, confidence in teamwork, gradually moving to more structured intangibles like decrease in at-trition and increase in retention etc. The dash-board should go beyond the traditional ses-

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sions executed, coverage, participation hours and move towards increase in productivity, cost saving and impact on bottom line.

ConclusionThe journey towards ROI is long one, a difficult one but then who said crusades are won in a day? Organizations are gradually waking up to this metric, which is the one of the most pow-erful one to have in an executive dashboard. Teams are coming together, collaborating to provide an ecosystem that facilitates measure-ment. Business leaders have become more de-

manding on return of learning and are making conscious investment into talent. They under-stand that the differentiator in today’s business scenario is not the product, but a constantly evolving workforce, which can churn out inno-vative product and services. Roles of learning practitioners are evolving into organization in-novation agents, who now have a seat at the table playing an advisory role to the business on shaping the future. Not every intervention needs to be measured, but what gets measures needs to have a return!

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ACknOWLeDGeMenTS

Aarif AzizGE Healthcare

Aarthi SivaramakrishnanBeroe Consulting

Abdul WajidANZ Operations & Technology

Ajit BeheraMAN Trucks India

Aman JainVF Brands India

Amar SharmaKBACE Technologies

Amit Mital Huawei Technologies India

Amith PrakashHCL Technologies

Amol ShirodkarKeva (S H Kelkar and Company)

Amol PitaleLupin

Amresh MishraTCI

Anand SSociete Generale

Anand ThangarajCongizant

Anand PillaiLeadership Matters

Anandhi IyerInfosys

Andanaswamy HiremathBiocon

Anil Karamchandaniwww.anilkaramchandani.com

Anita VasudevanSonata Software

Anita SachdevAce Technolgies

Anju SethiTesco HSC

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Ankur GuptaSumTotal, A Skillsoft Company

Anuja Pandit Jombay

Anupam Pareek OnMobile Global

Anuradha RaoJDA Software

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Arathi VenkateshCognizant Technology Solutions

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Arnab PaulAccenture

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Arnab Saha Merck

Arpana AryaWNS

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Arvind ChawlaSumTotal, A Skillsoft Company

Asha TatapudiHindustan Coca-Cola Beverages

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B S VenkatachalanApollo Munich Insurance

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Bhupendra BerdiaAccenture

Bindu ChopraThe Chopras

BirjenduCCL

Capt Hari Krishna Mandadi VenkataAllstate India

Chirag SuchakVF Brands India

Conian DharAccenture Services

D A JayakumarCoca-Cola

Debasis Panigrahi Karle Infra

Deepa KrishnaMindtree

Deepa VemuMicroland

Deepa S ShekarMindtree

Deepak RamakrishnanAmway India

Deepak KumarStock Market Institute

Dhanashree RajNetServ

Dhanashree RajNetserv

Dhivya Anand Beroe Consulting

Dinesh HSHewlett - Packard India

Dipesh ChandraDeloitte

Dipti ManchandaSnapdeal

Divakar KazaLupin

Divya DhirCitibank

Divyesh SindhwaadSkillsoft

DN PrasadAPAC Google

Dr Joseph ShieldsLeadership Matters

Dr. K K RainaDIT University

Dr Shambhavi SharmaMarvel India

Eswaramurthi KaruppanaGounderZF Wind Power

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Farooque ShaheenNTT DATA Global Delivery Services

G Y SuhasL&T Construction Equpment

Gerard Rohith PatrickPoletowin International

Gogu PavanAccenture

Gopali VoraWns Global Services

Goutam NandaKalinga Institute of Medical Sciences

Goutami DuttOLX India

Gunjan ZutshiFirstsource Solutions

Hariraj VijayakumarCognizant

Harshita VargheseEMID’S

Himanshu RaiHCL Technologies

Indhumathi BhanuprakashANZ Operations & Technology

Indrajit ChatterjeeKeva

Jaijo M. JoseInfosys

Jayakrishnan KDeloitte Touche Tohmatsu India

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Jayanthi GopalState Street

Jayaprakash BNGreat Lakes Institute of Management

Jayendra ChaturvediPaayas Milk Producer Company

K. VenkataramaniHeritage Brands Division

Kadiresh M UMicroland Limited

Kamaljeet KaurJubilant FoodWorks

Kanika PassiJubliant Foodworks

Kapil Sridhar BharatanKotak

Karan SharmaCCL

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Kedar VashiHindustan Coca Cola Beverages

Kevin FreitasInMobi

Khalid RazaIBM

Kishore BSBasket Option

Kochat GangadhranSharadha Terry Products

Krishnakumar RamachandranMaveric Systems

Kunal WaliIBM India

Kushal BhatSnapdeal

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Lakshmi NadkarniPfizer India

Laveena LaitonjamPersistent Systems

Laveena LaitonjamPersistent Systems

Lexter MartinSkillsoft

Lincy JaisonIndegene

M N ShivaprasadTVS Motor Company

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Madhumitha VSnapdeal

Madhurima BaruaSnapdeal

Mahesh DharmarajanAltimetrik

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Manish Bajpai Biocon

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Manmeet KaurSnapdeal

Maria NirmalaFidelity

Mayank KapoorSnapdeal

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Michael CampbellCCL

Moonmoon RoyMahindra Partners

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Namrata SoodBritish Council

Nancy Santosh

Nandini KantharajAltimetrik

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Neha BagdiTesco

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Nita KhareTCS

Omprakash SPDeutsche Bank Operational International Global Services

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Prabhu Kanakaraj BCD Travel

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Prakash AnandLG Soft India

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Pranav PrimlaniMahindra & Mahindra

Praseeda RaghavanDeutsche Bank

Prathima AVMphasis

Praveen R KrishnanPfizer India

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Preeti PatilkulkarniKaseya

Prema PatriMicrosoft

Prince AugustinMahindra & Mahindra

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Priyadarshini PrabhuNovo Nordisk Service Centre India

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Priyanka MohantyAgeis

Priyanka SrivastavaDelphi

Purva BhatnagarHindustan Coca-Cola Beverages

R. SwaminathanWNS Global Services

Rachana G NHuawei

Rahul BasuDeloitte

Rahul NarayananHCL Technologies

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Rajender SudMax Skill First

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Rajesh Guglani Aegis

Rajesh PandeyOn mobile

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Rakhie Joseph Mphasis

Ramesh SubramaniamComputer Sciences Corporation India

Rani MohanDeutsche Bank

Rashmi MansharamaniWave Infratech

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Ratish JhaRaychem RPG

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Ravindran M HCL Technologies

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Reena DanielWNS

Reetu RainaAmdocs India

Rekha SanthoshKotak

Reshmi RaghavachariNorthern Trust

Rini DuttaCentric Brand Advisors

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Roland SmithCenter for Creative Leadership

Romita MukherjeeSamsung

Roohul HaqTe Connectivity India

Rovan VargheseReplicon

RoydonNorthern Trust

S. Sai PrasadIon Exchange (India)

Sachin Tiwari Snapdeal

Samyakth BallalCargill India

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SandhyaSungard

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Sanjay Talukdar Reliance ADA

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Senthil KNSun Innovations Systems

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Simhadri Rama RaoCisco Systems

Sindhu SubhashiniBrillio, HR Head - India

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