Cognizant’s learning and development team, Cognizant Academy has won five awards from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) for 2019-2020, including four Excellence in Practice Awards and a BEST Award. ATD is the world’s largest association dedicated to those who develop talent and career opportunities within organizations.

The ATD Excellence in Practice Awards are presented to organizations that have demonstrated clear and measurable results of achieving organizational goals, meet a demonstrated need, have appropriate design values, and are clearly aligned with other performance improvement initiatives. These practices have long-term, sustained results.

Doubling its winnings from the previous year, Cognizant won the most Excellence in Practice awards among its competitors for the following programs:

• Aspiring Architect Program in the Career Development category.
• Skill Transformation Framework for an Effective Learning Organization in the Integrated Talent Management category.
• Headstart GenC Program in the Onboarding category.
• New Hire Orientation for U.S. Healthcare Claims Process in an Outsourcing Company.

Specifically, ATD recognized the team for its innovative work in skilling workers for emerging and future roles, and for developing and implementing a world-class onboarding experience.

The Cognizant Academy team also won the ATD BEST award for its employee-centric and business-focused approach. Cognizant is among 66 organizations from Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Macao, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States to receive the award this year. Companies were recognized during a virtual awards recognition celebration on June 30.

The BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success through talent development. Cognizant competed against 185 organizations that submitted quantitative and qualitative information about their talent development practices and programs. Applications were assessed in a blind review by members of the ATD BEST Awards advisory committee, a select group of experts in the field.

The Cognizant team prioritized three areas: developing innovative learning solutions that are immersive, just in time, personalized, and relevant; building specialized and in-demand skills through upskilling and reskilling programs; and creating opportunities for employees to build their careers based on their interests and abilities.

Learn more about the awards here.