Tech Mahindra Limited: 2024 BEST Award Winner, #14

In today's rapidly advancing technology landscape, organizations must prioritize continuous learning to remain competitive. Tech Mahindra, a global IT services provider, has taken a significant step in that direction through #NAD Learn, the company's artificial-intelligence-based learning platform powered by a "new-age delivery engine."

The company's learning team recognized that traditional learning management systems were self-limiting with lack of personalization and up-to-date content. That affected the scope and speed of employee learning. So, the team set to develop a platform that could facilitate large-scale, continual, and holistic workforce upskilling.

"It also needed to personalize learning delivery by recommending relevant learning paths to the employees based on their current skill set, time for upskilling, and available opportunities," says Vaishali Phatak, head of technical learning.

Tech Mahindra developed #NAD Learn in February 2019 to achieve those goals. The platform offers on-demand, modular learning through skilling units. Each skilling unit is a logical combination of skills across technology, domain, behavioral, and professional competencies. Employees have access to more than 1,900 skilling units that help transform them into full-stack professionals. They can also access curated content from more than 50 education partners, along with more than 6,000 courses, assessments, and certifications.

One of the most significant aspects of #NAD Learn is its Business Benefit Realization framework, which the company developed in 2021. The system workflow enables Tech Mahindra to declare, report, measure, and verify the business benefits of upskilling in dollar terms. The company can quantify the impact of upskilling on its business by identifying various levers, such as additional margin, band optimization, and improved offshoring. The framework continues to yield positive results, with a benefits realization of $100 million and a 10 percent increase in proactive upskilling within business units in fiscal year 2023.

Implementing #NAD Learn had its challenges. The company had to onboard multiple learning partners to keep the learning ecosystem current while putting into place strict skilling unit governance mechanisms. The learning team conducts periodic learning campaigns to raise awareness of new courses. It also encourages employee upskilling by rolling out programs such as project skilling, bench skilling, and future skilling.

Looking to the future, the company has introduced a skills-based allowance framework to incentivize employees to learn niche technologies and take on new roles. Additionally, the focus has shifted to creating engaging content using generative AI, translations, and localization of learning content.

"The availability of key skills is becoming the single biggest challenge to business growth. #NAD Learn allows employees to work on proof-of-concept projects during their upskilling sessions and assessments," says Phatak. "This provides implementation avenues for employees. They often suggest innovative ideas to customers based on their learning."

With #NAD Learn, Tech Mahindra empowers its employees to cross-skill, upskill, and future-skill in response to customers' evolving needs while aligning with their career aspirations. By using learning as a retention tool, the company is positioning itself to tackle future business challenges with resilience.

View the entire list of 2024 BEST Award winners.