The Economic Times, India: Cognizant’s Heads of Strategy and HR Talk About the Company’s Reskilling Philosophy

Cognizant’s Malcolm Frank, Chief Strategy Officer, and James Lennox, Chief People Officer

“At $14-billion Cognizant, the style of learning differs, more in sync with millennials than traditional classroom learning,” writes The Economic Times. “By end-2017, Cognizant hopes to have a cadre of 100,000 AI, IoT, cognitive computing experts, among other specialists.”

While companies are following multiple paths to digital nirvana, the paper points out that getting all employees future-ready, beyond the basics, may neither be possible nor desirable. “There’s plenty of legacy work,” says Cognizant’s Chief Strategy Officer, Malcolm Frank. “You still need people who can manage traditional IT and you still need those skills. For example, front end for a bank may be an app, but back end is still mainframes and client server architecture. Similarly, airlines may not shift their critical systems like flight operations to digital till technologies stabilize. Hence need for traditional skills will not go away very soon.”

Frank adds, “Besides, the pace of change is so rapid that it can overwhelm employees. For example, even as cloud and analytics mature, the next wave of disruptive technologies like blockchain and additive manufacturing is already upon us.”

James Lennox, Cognizant’s Chief People Officer, says: “New digital-age learners prefer social connects, gamification and learning at their own pace. Cognizant has created a Digital University platform, which provides a series of gradational learning paths. The pitch: learn, practice and perform. Learners get trained on basics first and then focus on domain specifics, the expectation being to make a visible business impact.”

Lennox notes, “The scale of the opportunity is exciting. Professionals are expected to apply digital expertise to business problems. However, the ability to learn new technologies even before previous technologies have reached maturity is crucial.”

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