Flip the Script
CUSTOMER STORY
Marrying Digital & Hands-On Learning
How does an organization with over 180,000 employees ensure its learning efforts are applied to the work?
Wipro, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, needed to take its learning to the next level to ensure employees were future-ready. With ever-changing technology, employees across the globe needed to be upskilled and reskilled to keep pace with the industry.
Its previous learning strategy needed a revamp to speed up upskilling and onboarding. Learning cycles were long, took place in a classroom setting, paused on-the-job tasks and prevented project-based learning applications, leaving employees less than prepared for their future roles and industry expectations. Moreover, there was little flexibility to complete learning when it best-suited employees, which led to a lack of motivation. Wipro needed to enhance the current solution so that employees could learn on the go and apply it to their work.
Vice President & Head of Talent Transformation, Anurag Seth, decided to flip the script on the learning model. Three unique initiatives helped to craft an employee learning experience that improved employee motivation, access and learning application. These programs were designed to integrate reskilling through a unique 4-step methodology:
- Provide training courses through multiple channels
- Enable learning through hands-on assignments
- Certify through assessments and coding challenges
- Internalize learning through live project experience.
“The flexibility provided to learners for anywhere, anytime, any device learning that is mixed with theory and hands-on experience created a pull factor amongst employees to reskill themselves.”
Anurag Seth
VP & Head of Talent Transformation,
Wipro.
Flexibility was essential to the solution. Wipro implemented a digital platform that gave employees across the globe access to on-demand learning, when and where they most needed it. This platform not only enabled anytime, anywhere learning but also facilitated skill-based communities where employees can learn from and be mentors to one another.
As part of the experience, Wipro designed a Pre-Joining Program for graduate hires, new employees from universities, to fast-track their onboarding and deployment to business projects. To keep these new employees motivated and upskill them quickly, Wipro offered a learning program during the last semester of college that allowed students to prepare themselves for their new role.
The organization developed gamified learning paths that helped new employees build a roadmap for their own upskilling. Employees were incentivized to complete courses with certificates and bonuses. Moreover, as part of their career growth, Wipro made learning a key competency for role progression.
Wipro also incorporated a crowdsourcing platform to enable virtual labs and hands-on training for each learning path. This platform provided digital assignments, case studies, hands-on applications, and finally, live-project tasks crowdsourced from the company to help crystalize learning for employees and gain practical business experience with their new skill.
Combined, these initiatives formed a solution that married on-demand, theory learning with application-based, hands-on learning. Wipro benefited from increased internal hiring and fast-tracked learning, ultimately preparing the business for what’s next.