We have gone through a formal education system which prepares us to pursue a career. Most of the companies follow induction programs which are meant to guide the new recruits through the functioning of the organization. Once it is finished, you are supposed to join your respective department. No attention is paid on you until your performance exceeds certain limits and you exhibit the potential of a leader. Often middle mangers have the opportunity to pursue an executive MBA.

Improving the Human capital

That is in the past. Now the situation has changed and organizations are in a race to introduce learning and development opportunities for employees, so that they can be upgraded as changes happen. This will help employees in making improvements in terms of knowledge and career. In Accenture India, it is compulsory for the new recruits to undergo a structured training, irrespective of the level they are hired to.

Personalized counseling for work related problems

In order to make continuous improvement at work and in career, the employees can make use of counselors through out the period of work in the organization. This will help to focus on areas where they lack and get a better insight into the job. In Accenture, they have a customized development plan and mechanism which will help in understanding what training is mandatory and what is optional. According to Manoj Biswas, lead- human resource, Accenture India, an employee on the average engages in training programs for 80 to 120 hours inside the organization.

Learning and development becomes a part of strategy

Over the years, the link between learning programs and strategy planning has become stronger, which is a significant development in many of the organizations. As a result it is not uncommon to see an individual from the learning and development department attending meeting which involve strategic decisions. This helps in determining the kind of extra programs that should be administered for related employees.

The process of Planning

The planning process for learning and development process in ITC starts before the beginning of the year. The input for the plan comes from different business plan and requirements. The learning and development initiatives are developed by the Business HR team in collaboration with the corporate HR team. According to Ashok Dutt, head of learning and development, Corporate HR, ITC, they have devoted 11,000 man days on training programmes last year.

Distinctive advantage through Human capital

Learning and development initiatives have gained importance among organizations very recently. The main driving factor behind this is that the companies started to realize that human resource is the only differentiating factor they have that will give them an edge over competition. This is more important in the service industry as it is mostly people driven, and if they fail to pay attention to people, then it will be at their own risk. Learning and development activities are carried out in smaller companies with the help of external service providers and in larger companies, the do it in house.

The shift from HR to other departments

For over the decades it was the HR department which was solely responsible for learning and development initiatives in an organization. They handled recruitment, induction, training, learning and development, etc. But now the role of HR in learning and development initiatives has changed. HR is one among ten departments in the learning and development initiative.

The council for learning and development is composed of representatives from quality, risk, production and so on. The council carefully goes through different training options and determines the needs based on the requirement of each individual and their role in the organization, according to Raghavendra K, Vice president, HR development, at Infosys BPO. In addition to the content of the learning and development program, the council also looks into the context in which the program should be delivered, the framework of the program and the methodology that should be adopted to deliver the training program. At Infosys, the training council reports to the CEO on a regular basis and the performance of the members of the council is evaluated based on their contribution to this initiative.

Changes happening across organizations

There are even more changes happening in the companies in addition to change in the role of HR department. A problem faced by Aditya Birla Management Corporation was with their values. They were confused about how to make the new generation employees understand about the values of the company. So they introduced a game based solution which can be downloaded and installed in the mobile phone. The game which extends to one hour presents the employees with different situations which require them to take decision based on certain values. The one who takes the right decision based on the values of the organization will find a pot of gold at the top of a pyramid.

Technology to increase the reach

According to Santrupt Misra, director, Group HR, Aditya Birla Management Corporation, the company had been concentrating on making use of technological advancements to reach out to the employees. They have introduced about 400 e-learning programs as a part of making use of technology. They also have come up with webinars that breaks the boundary for learning initiatives such as geographical constraints. Many companies have adopted similar methods, which help them deliver their training process online. The advantage of this is that it saves cost, time and effort, and also provides greater flexibility to all as it can be accessed any time any where. Another initiative at ICICI banks is aimed to improve interaction with customers. The employees at ICICI bank is made to watch training movies on soft skill, on Saturday s

The practice of spending on trainers has been found to be declining in most of the organizations. Instead they have started to invest in house training. Accenture has entered into collaboration with XLRI for a co-branded two years master’s degree in human resource. Different other initiatives are taken up by other organizations as well.