Forbes: Cognizant Academy has Redefined Learning to be Millennial-Friendly, Writes Author and Researcher Jeanne Meister

“For [Cognizant’s] associates,” writes Jeanne Meister, a partner at Future Workplace and co-author of the book The 2020 Workplace, “work is more a state of mind than a fixed time and place. All learning is conducted through Cognizant Academy, the firm’s in-house learning center, which has redefined learning to be millennial-friendly, aligned to strategic business needs of a mobile workforce and developed in partnership between IT and HR.” Excerpts from Meister’s post Cognizant Academy: Lessons From A 2020 Learning Organization.

“At Cognizant, the classroom is not the first option for learning, according to Hariraj Vijayakumar, the Global Head of Cognizant Academy. “In fact, of the total learning and development offered to Cognizant employees less than 20% is delivered in physical classrooms. The rest is what Hari and his team call “Millennial friendly”.

Cognizant is positioning itself to not only be a best of breed learning organization, but also a best of breed employer. Three ways that Cognizant is on the forefront of adopting work and learning to the 2020 workplace include:

1. Make Learning Millennial Friendly: One way Cognizant is doing this is by developing and delivering more learning and company policy via apps. Today, there are more than fifty learning apps in Cognizant’s “One Cognizant” App Store launched in 2011.

2. Ensure Learning Meets Business Goals For A Mobile Workforce: Cognizant associates learn on customized portals, live webcasts, online learning communities, on discussion forums or via cohort blogs. In one form or another, Cognizant associates spent a combined 17.4 million hours engaged in these multiple learning platforms, last year.

The secret sauce to develop learning for a mobile workforce however, is a proprietary process known as 5D, developed by Cognizant Academy:

D1: Define and gain agreement on the business problem to be solved

D2: Discover and analyze the problem

D3: Decide on the solution to the problem

D4: Design and implement the solution

D5: Disengage and review results

Using the 5D approach, the Academy team starts with a discrete business problem, identifies any factors related to individual or workgroup performance, and then recommends a method to solve the problem, which includes a mix of formal, informal, and collaborative learning alongside any non-training actions.

3. Partner With CIO, Resist Developing Learning In A Vacuum: Cognizant has brought [the CHRO and CIO] partnership to life by forming a governance system including key stakeholders from HR, Corporate Learning and IT.

“Talent and development solutions are dependent on technology for simplicity and sophistication, however we have some distance to go before we deliver the best technology solutions on L&D. Governance is where companies should start and having a robust governance model opens possibilities for breakthrough solutions,” says Hari.

As companies reflect on how to adopt current HR practices to a younger and more mobile workforce, the key lesson is this: learning innovations are a team sport where all the stakeholders need to understand and respect each other’s roles and expertise.”