Learning and Development Strategy

of
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS)

Submitted by:
Group 7
ADITYA JAIN – 18PGHR11
SAMEER CHAVDA – 18PGHR19
SHALINI SARKAR – 18PGHR23
SHREYA GHOSH – 18PGHR44
TANMAY BHATIA – 18PGHR53
RAJAT SHARMA – 18PGHR58
AMELLE MOUSLI – 19GEM01
 About Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS)
Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has
been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for the
last fifty years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of IT, Business &
Technology Services, and engineering. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile
delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development.

A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has more than 411,000 of
the world’s best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues
of US $19.09 billion for year ended March 31, 2018 and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock
Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change
and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading
sustainability indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), MSCI Global Sustainability
Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index. From gender diversity to occupational safety, TCS’ HR
strategy covers all aspects of employee well-being.

TCS provides its global, diverse workforce with a stimulating environment to aid both their personal
and professional development. TCS has been leveraging digital technologies extensively to reimagine
its talent acquisition, talent development, and engagement functions.

Progressive Working Environment

TCS is an equal opportunity employer, and subscribes to the Tata Code of Conduct in embracing
diversity in race, nationality, religion, ancestry, marital status, gender, age, ethnic origin, physical
ability, and sexual orientation. Today, it is one of the world’s largest employers of women. Progressive
policies such as extended parental leave, a mentoring program for junior women employees, special
leadership development programs for senior employees, a virtual support group on child psychology,
and parenting workshops for working parents have gone toward making the workplace more
employee-friendly.

Their Center of Excellence for Accessibility works on IT solutions for differently-abled individuals,
aiding their integration into the workforce. TCS also runs multiple initiatives to help employees grow
in their careers, such as CareerHub, a platform that provides them with mentoring services. They also
run Inspire, a specialized program that provides fast-track career progression to high-potential
employees. Periodic leadership reviews help us maintain a healthy succession pipeline.

Digital tools for digital upskilling

The shift to digital means upskilling employees in digital competencies, as well as the TD team
leveraging digital technologies for talent acquisition, development, and engagement. The team has so
far partnered successfully with HR and other departments to drive digital learning that is flexible,
fosters innovation, and motivates employees to develop themselves personally and professionally.

Since the push to digital began, the TD team has made 90 percent of all the company's learning content
available online. Part of the reason for this successful transition is a virtual learning platform that has
enabled the TD team to scale training globally. The team invested in creating the right digital
infrastructure—including the internally developed iQlass virtual classroom platform, mobile-based
learning, and social platforms—that enables learners from across the world to collaborate in real time.
Combined with a robust webinar delivery system, self-paced training modules, and the in-house
learning management system, iQlass in particular has helped TCS's "digital reimagining" become a
reality. In the 2018 fiscal year, the company delivered more than 700 virtual sessions through the LMS,
translating to 6.1 total hours of usage per day.

To maintain this momentum and ensure that employees continue taking part in online learning, each
TCS business unit has "digital champion councils" that work with competency development managers,
digital experts, and the TD team. Experts identify the digital technology topics that employees need
training on, and the TD team designs, develops, and deploys the content.

A social collaboration platform also has made the transition to digital learning more effective—and
enjoyable. One community on the platform, "Learning and Sharing," has more than 91,000 members
and is one of the most active. In addition, the TD team hosts a blog and quiz series called "Culture
Shots" through the platform, which highlights the many cultures represented by TCS employees across
the globe as well as employees' experiences as they travel to work in other parts of the world.

The chief learning officer also uses the social collaboration platform to blog about learning initiatives,
leadership updates, and key organizational priorities; and employees are encouraged to use the tool
to share personal stories and experiences related to the company's mission, such as data privacy and
cybersecurity issues. This has proved to be a powerful usage of the platform for learning, says Nivedita
Kuruvilla, head of branding and communication for the TD team.

Digital LMS – The academia of corporate

LMS – an application for administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of learning
programs is an integral part of most of the talent management solutions. These modern smart talent
management suites ensure that the workforce acquires new skills, which are most relevant to their
jobs aligned to their specific role, team, and organization. The LMS is also empowered to model career
path for talent and succession planning.

LMS course content could be an amalgamation of different course models. One such model is
corporate open online courses (COOC), wherein learners participate in collaborative and interactive
fashion. These COOCs are specially designed for corporates of small and large businesses. Other
course models are massive open online courses (MOOC) and small private online courses (SPOC).
MOOCs are accessible to a large audience such as students and corporates, while SPOCs are tailored
for very specific and small group of people with a perfect blend of online resources and personal
engagements.

Most of the modern LMS are available on cloud, and digital technologies are driving the next phase of
LMS development. LMS is already enabled with features of ‘Remote Learning’, ‘Self-paced Scheduled
Learning’, ‘Peer-supported Social Learning’, ‘Mandatory Learning’, ‘Gamified Learning’, and some level
of “Adaptive Learning”. Interactive trainings through Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)
are being introduced in educational and occupational settings. Learners can actually get to role-play
and gain hands-on experience instead of simply watching videos or reading modules about a topic.
With the costs of delivery and deployment falling rapidly, VR/AR will become more affordable in next
few years.
The Future of the LMS will be driven by the demand of convenience, learning options, and digital
methods. Driven by intelligent engines, future systems will have automated capabilities that learn,
adapt, and interface in a highly personalized manner.

Re-skilling workforce
The ManpowerGroup’s 2017 Talent shortage survey suggests that 40% employers reported difficulty
in finding skilled talent, and these gaps were filled by re-skilling and developing people internally. Re-
skilling, therefore, is an important part of the HR strategy. Not only corporate but government is also
taking pro-active measures to address re-skilling. Recently, Karnataka government made an
announcement (Nov 28, 2017) to set up re-skilling workshops for engineers to make them re-
employable.

Best practice for re-skilling would be to identify the skills of future and run re-skilling programs as
mandatory driven from the top management. Program should be managed by dedicated learning and
development teams and could be linked to the goals and KRAs. Identification or selection of
employees for re-skilling could be gathered from appraisal feedbacks and employee aspirations
besides the workforce skills requirement trends. It is important to link re-skilling to career
development and rewards to ensure employees are motivated to acquire new skills.

Alternative approach used by corporates is job rotation and job enhancement. Job rotation is a
systematic movement of talent from one job to another ensuring right employee is fit into the right
job. On the other hand, job enhancement involves addition of tasks at the same level, which helps
employees to hone their skills with increased responsibility and improved motivation towards work.

Above mentioned practices require addition or upgrade of new or existing skills, which can be acquired
by developing a progressive learning ecosystem such as Learning Management System (LMS) with the
digital technologies.

Training Programs Aimed at new TCS Recruits

 TCS Initial Learning Program

The Initial Learning Programme (ILP), the strongest and the best-assured grooming platform for all
new recruits of TCS. The ILP aims to transform fresh engineering graduates from diverse disciplines
into software professionals and to initiate them into the TCS way of life. With TCS
Thiruvananthapuram as its hub, the ILP has successfully initiated the value of learning and sharing.
The ILP model has continuously evolved along with the changing needs of the business. Trainees are
not only introduced to various technologies, they are also provided with project delivery, project
management, and business or life skills. The trainees are expected to maintain a log of their daily
learning, and this is periodically reviewed by their respective assessors. The trainees are required to
attain a pre-defined readiness level for being deployable to projects. Remedial Programs are also
offered to slow-learners so that they can catch up with the expectations. ILP is now no longer confined
to the Corporate Learning Centre at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, but has spread to different parts
of the country – Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Guwahati, Kolkata and even overseas – China, USA
and South Africa.

 TCS Ignite

Research suggests that only about 2% of all graduating science students in the country are employable,
and usually lack the basic skills required to survive and progress in the technology industry. The TCS
Ignite program aims to address this issue, and create a skilled resource pool for the IT industry. TCS
Ignite is an intense learning program for young science graduates who join Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS). Today, TCS is the largest recruiter of fresh science graduates in the country, and each year,
thousands of the best and brightest graduates join the TCS Ignite program. Candidates are selected
through an open learning platform, called Open Ignite. This online platform attracts over 100,000
users from the science community from across 6000 colleges across 700 towns all over the country.
Selected candidates are made part of a six-month, state-of-the-art learning program, where they are
taught through various technology enabled learning tools, that makes learning fun. Students are
exposed to various real-world projects, which ensure that they are job ready by the end of the
program. On completion of the training, associates are deployed in TCS client projects. Out of the
4,000 Ignite alumni, about 10% are deployed onsite and about 5% are project leaders. Several are
named inventors in patent applications.

 Aspire

An E-learning module for students TCS has created an e-learning module called Aspire to be used by
the fresh recruits of TCS. The course contains 4 modules of IT Foundation skills Introduction to
Computers, Programming Fundamentals, Problem Solving and Databases. It also has one module on
soft skills required by the IT professionals. The module is used by 35 000 fresh recruiters of TCS in FY13
for enhancing their skills. The modules are available to them in their final semester in their
Undergraduate Program in Engineering. Since it is an eLearning module, they could use it at their own
pace of learning.

Training Programs Aimed at Experienced Professionals

TCS has over the years introduced various continuous learning programs for its experienced
professionals. This spans issues like business strategies, project needs, technology and business
directions. Aside from meeting individual aspirations, it also addresses the long term, short term and
medium-term needs of the organization.

 Building Enterprise Architects

TCS Learning &Development team in collaboration with Technology Excellence Group has designed
the EA Star program that is aimed at building Enterprise Architects. The program was created to cater
to the increasing demand for Enterprise Architects, and the demand for TOGAF certified professionals
in various project assignments. So far, over 700 employees have gone through the program, enabling
career progression for the associates and creating a strong architect community in TCS.

 Ambassador Corp

TCS Ambassador Corp is a leadership development program, that prepares experienced employees
for global sales roles. TCS’s Ambassador Corps Programme focusses on critical business and
communication skills and also equips managers to tackle challenges posed by cultural diversity. It
offers an accelerated learning curve and trains managers to take their place on the global stage from
the day they land in the international marketplace.

Self-Learning/ Competency Management Tools

 iCALMS

iCALMS is a Competency Management tool which helps to integrate the skills set required &
manpower available at a point of time. It bridges the gap between the existing competency & expected
competency required for the associates. These gaps are then addressed by learning modules designed
to fulfil the needs of the organization.

 Books 24X7

An extensive, fully searchable Web-based reference tool targeted to meet the information needs of
TCS employees. Offers a variety of ready-access titles that cover a broad selection of subjects and
topics.

Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management is concerned with creating organizational environments for people to share,
create and leverage knowledge for innovation and competitive advantage.

 KNOWMAX

TCS has developed a web-based Enterprise wide Knowledge Management system known as
KNOWMAX, which is available globally to all TCS consultants. This platform encompasses focus on
deriving reusable assets. KNOWMAX acts as a central knowledge bank for all projects being executed
by TCS and reduces cycle time. Apart from global assets in KNOWMAX which are available to all
authorized users, KNOWMAX holds assets that are customer specific which can be accessed only by
the project teams working for that customer. In addition to KNOWMAX, all key accounts maintain
relationship specific portals that provide an effective knowledge management mechanism and
repository for all relationship assets.

 TCS – Academia Learning Collaboration

1. Jadavpur University ME Program in Software Engineering: This program was launched in 2004 as an
area of collaboration between TCS and Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, exemplifying an
effective industry-academia relationship and has been successfully running 10 batches since then.
TCS-JU jointly developed the curriculum for this program. 198 TCSers admitted since the inception.

2. Amrita-SUNY Twin PG Program - MBA & MS in Management of IT Services: This collaborative

program jointly offered by Amrita University and SUNY Buffalo University will fetch two Master's
degrees. One is an EXECUTIVE-MBA (EMBA) degree from AMRITA University in the area of General
Management and other is a MASTER of SCIENCE (MS) in Management of IT Services from SUNY
Buffalo. 39 TCSers admitted since 2011.

3. IIT Madras MTech Program in Mechanical, Engineering Design, Aerospace, and Applied Mechanics
departments: Lack of courses for specialized skills in High End Engineering Design & Computational
Engineering prompted TCS to collaborate with IIT Madras to start this program in 2005. TCS sponsored
Infrastructure for the “Center for Finite Element Analysis and Design (CFEAD)” Lab. This program
created talent pool and provided strong foundation in areas like Strength of Materials, Thermal Engg,
Mechanics of Solids, and High-Performance Computing. 92 TCSers admitted since 2005.

4. Curriculum Development in Engineering & Industrial Services: TCS EIS vertical designed a module
“Foundation Skills in Integrated Product Development” for different branches of engineering, as part
of overall curriculum revamping effort. The same is being deployed in eighteen institutes across India,
on pilot basis.

5. TCS Faculty Development Programs: TCS Faculty Development Programs (FDPs) are well respected
in Academia. In FY12-13, 276 Programs were conducted covering 10228 Faculty from 254 institutes.
Few typical FDPs are: Adopting Cloud Computing - Impact on Service Management Process, Advanced
Techniques in Computational Intelligence, Analytics for intelligent Infrastructure - Signal Processing &
Data Processing, Business Intelligence and Cloud Computing, High Performance Computing (HPC) and
IT Infrastructure for Automobile Industry, Mobility - Introduction, Android / iOS / Windows etc.

Training as part of CSR – Supporting Inclusive Growth

Just off the Mumbai-Pune highway, an hour’s drive from Panvel, lies the village of Wazapur in the
Raigad district of Maharashtra. The village till recently was devoid of even basic amenities. Today,
however, it has witnessed a transformation largely owing to the tireless effort of hundreds of TCS
volunteers working under the “TCS-Maitree” banner. The volunteers in the last three years have
helped to sustain holistic development in Wazapur based on partnerships. A sustainable model has
been built to improve education, healthcare and environment in the area.

The guiding principle of TCS’ CSR programmes is “Impact through Empowerment.” More than 25
women from three villages in the area were taught to perform basic calculations and were made
aware of issues like health and hygiene.

 TCS Maitree

A number of non-work-related employee engagement initiatives such as fun events, sports, cultural
activities and volunteering for social causes are organized across the globe under its employee
engagement platform known as 'Maitree'. The culture of volunteering helps employee bonding within
the organization and reduces stress at work. TCS Maitree, founded in February 2002, strives to create
a spirit of camaraderie among TCS associates and their families by organizing social activities and
events. TCS has grown tenfold in the last few years with associates working in several locations around
the world. TCS Maitree encourages associates and their families to look upon themselves as a part of
TCS’ extended family. The initiatives undertaken through TCS Maitree cultivate and propagate
volunteer-driven, meaningful activities for associates and their families. Human Resources within TCS
leads, directs and facilitates all such associate engagement activities and programmes related to
Corporate Sustainability. Just off the Mumbai-Pune highway, an hour’s drive from Panvel, lies in the
village of Wazapur in the Raigad district of Maharashtra. The village till recently was devoid of even
basic amenities. Today, however, it has witnessed a transformation largely owing to the tireless effort
of hundreds of TCS volunteers working under the ‘TCS-Maitree’ banner. The volunteers in the last
three years have helped to sustain holistic development in Wazapur based on partnerships. A
sustainable model has been built to improve education, healthcare and environment in the area.
  TCS Affirmative Action Program

TCS Affirmative Action endeavours to “Improve the employability of graduates’ from socially
disadvantaged sections and other underprivileged categories across India who are unable to get jobs
due to lack of communication skills, low confidence levels or other barriers unrelated to their
educational qualifications. A powerful, imaginative and interactive training program has been devised
by experienced trainers at TCS BPO which lasts for a total of 80 – 100 hours over a period of around
15 - 20 days. Apart from providing education and making youth more employable, the program also
aims to provide employment opportunities to those trained in TCS BPO. More than 30,000
underprivileged young graduates have been made employable under the program, since its launch in
2010.

 TCS Udaan

Project “Udaan”, is a joint and novel initiative by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) –
Government of India and Special Industry Initiative (SII) to help Kashmiri youth join the mainstream of
corporate India. TCS has been associated with the program since its inception and aims to train and
create employment opportunities for at least 850 youth from J&K, over a 5-year period. The training
intervention provides the youth with the requisite knowledge, skills and competencies required in the
corporate world over a period of 3.5 months. The program covers the entire gamut of business skills
like Business English, Presentation Skills and builds competence in domain and process areas while
leveraging from innovative learning methodologies like games and movies. In addition to this, the
curriculum also includes life skills and performing arts like dance, music and drama to enhance and
enrich the overall personality of the participants

Conclusion
 TCS Wins Association for Talent Development’s 2018 BEST Award

TCS has won the Association for Talent Development’s (ATD’s) 2018 BEST Award, and ranked #2
among the top 45 global organizations recognized at the event.

At the core of TCS’ organic talent development strategy has been its Digital Learning Platform, which
offers employees an integrated ecosystem combining virtual, physical and experiential learning
infrastructure with high quality content, available any place, any time and on any device. There are
virtual development environments where they can try out their learning, with a social connect so they
can consult peers. Additionally, there is a focus on enhancing the learning experience through
simulations, gamified learning and adaptive assessments.

This globally available learning platform has removed geographic boundaries, giving TCS’ reskilling
program the benefit of both scale and speed. TCS’ inclusive learning approach offers the full spectrum
of holistic skill development across career paths, roles, levels and geographies, at the same time
encouraging associates to explore and demonstrate talent in new areas.

 L&D drives business growth in Tata Consultancy Services

With a market leading position in IT services, consulting and business solutions across a number of
sectors including banking and finance, retail, utilities, energy and telecommunications, she said the
ability for TCS to bring innovation to clients through its people was critical. Being an IT company, the
forums that people have for learning anytime, anywhere are immense. According to reports, there
were some 28 million learning hours within TCS over the past year. Whether it’s through social
networking sites that they have internally, online training through video libraries, traditional
classroom training, virtual labs, video sharing portals or otherwise, training is a huge focus for them.

A good example of this globally is TCS’ social platform, ‘Knome’, on which employees from around the
world have naturally formed more than 3,500 communities to come together to capture and reuse
learnings and knowledge, collaborate, discuss and develop solutions to client and other business
challenges.

The company had also made a “huge investment” globally in centres of excellence and research and
development labs, to help customers get the very best of global learnings and experience. They have
what we call a co-innovation network, in which they are tightly aligned with various leading academic
institutions that partner with their labs and other software vendors. With a decrease in the shelf life
of technology across the board, the ability to bring innovation to clients is increasingly important. That
is essential for our growth, and for their clients’ growth and so talent management is very important
to use because they need to make sure they have strong skills in place to deliver what they are selling
to the clients.

References
 https://www.tcs.com/nurturing-human-capital
 https://www.tcs.com/tcs-wins-association-talent-development-best-award-2018
 https://www.td.org/magazines/td-magazine/to-foster-learning-dont-underestimate-digital
 https://www.teqipgoodgovernance.in/pdf/3.%20TCS%20Supporting%20Learning%20and%2
0Development.pdf