Times are hard within the wind turbine industry, including at one of the world's largest and most established providers, India's Suzlon Energy Ltd. As Suzlon grapples with global overcapacity, competition, and price challenges, its business priorities emphasize ways to generate and conserve cash. Within Suzlon's learning and development organization, that means finding innovations that will lower costs and simultaneously support management goals such as filling competency gaps.

One such learning goal is to establish a framework for continuous skill enhancement as an enterprisewide culture. To achieve this, among other things, the learning organization is pursuing a new technology-enabled learning framework aimed at boosting the skills of the workforce.

Specifically, the concept has resulted in several initiatives, including an increase in e-learning even though only about 50 percent of the shop floor and frontline workforce has access to personal computers. Multiple languages and cultures also pose a challenge for online learning.

"Driven by our quality function and in collaboration with them, we installed kiosks for the training of individuals who have no access to computers, especially on the shop floor," says V.J. Rao, head of global learning and development. Kiosks are being installed at factories and wind farm sites to accompany instructor-led training, he says. This enables learning as well as assessment, and helps provide certification to employees.

The strict business goal learning approach targets the full range of personnel from entry-level employees to senior managers. "At senior levels, we have found that even general managers often may not know each other or even have a complete picture of the overall operations of the company," says Rao. Since these executives are also too busy to attend programs of long duration, the department responded by creating short, three-hour classroom sessions on Saturdays, a regular workday, in a relaxed setting.

In addition, video-based presentations inserted into monthly online learning digests focus on a range of topics geared toward broadening the perspective of executives regarding the company operations and culture. The learning plan "helps bridge silos within the organization," says Rao.

Various learning initiatives support other key populations with need-to-know content. To orient certain new hires, for example, a five-day induction course includes visits to wind farm sites and manufacturing plants, along with content on the company's induction portal. Instruction in the areas of quality, health, safety, and environmental safety is driven by Suzlon's Quality Academy via face-to-face and Internet-based training.

The Suzlon leadership competencies that were defined last year soon will be taken to the next level, says Rao. Elements include a campus recruitment drive to build the leadership pipeline; and a custom-developed leadership competency framework that provides assessments, individual learning, coaching, and mentoring.

Rao believes attracting strong leadership begins with properly training recruiters in the skills of observation, questioning techniques, and leadership competency assessment. Suzlon also will create new functional training modules to build the leadership pipeline in a variety of specific competencies, he says.