The consulting, technology, and outsourcing solutions company with more than 156,000 employees is trying to stay ahead of its global competition by creating successful training programs for IT specialists, engineers, and company leaders.
"At Infosys, we understand that a globally competitive and sustainable business can only be built upon a strong base of learning, education, and research," says Kris S. Gopalakrishnan, executive vice chairman. "While we were scaling up, we realized that it was imperative to build our own education and research department as a core competency."
The India-based company created training programs to combat three critical business challenges:
- availability of a quality talent pool in the market to meet company growth
- skills gap between graduating engineers and business needs
- pace of change in the technologies used to solve client problems.
The Campus Connect program was created to enhance the capacity and capabilities of the IT talent pool. The program is for stakeholders in the engineering supply chain—including students, faculty members, college management and policymakers, and students and faculty in the IT industry—and it helps enhance employability and industry readiness of students. Since 2004, the program has reached out to more than 100,000 students in more than 360 engineering institutions.
Another initiative, the Foundation Program, helps lay a strong foundation for engineering graduates and software engineering and computer science graduates. Each engineer who joins the company goes through the six-month program that includes instructor-led lectures and presentations, quizzes, assignments, guided learning, collaborative projects, and tests. During the past four years, more than 50,000 recruits have participated.
The Continuous Education Program deepens employee skill sets and helps employees keep pace with the technology changes. The learning function conducts role-based training and provides certifications for all employees to help them strengthen their technology expertise, transition into new roles, and gain skills for different roles. More than 15,000 employees have participated, and more than 1,900 certifications across four dimensions have been given, including 700 in-house certifications.
To reduce the skills gap between supply and demand of talent, the Mobility Academy was created in 2012 to develop subject matter experts who can help train the workforce to meet the business demand.
"The company, through a comprehensive credit point framework, facilitates employees to acquire the relevant competencies on the job," explains Gopalakrishnan. "The employees approach the learning initiatives from multiple perspectives—servicing client needs, meeting career aspirations, and positioning themselves as certified professionals."
In 2001, Infosys set up a leadership institute exclusively for the purpose of developing leaders. This program includes training, coaching, and mentoring initiatives covering myriad topics such as strategic leadership, change leadership, and talent leadership. Participants are selected from the company's leadership talent pool, which includes high potentials and high-performing employees.
"By merging well-researched leadership theory and principles with the application and practice of these principles within our programs, the leadership institute ensures that leaders are learning and developing in the context of the realities of true leadership and the business environment," says Gopalakrishnan.