Article: Building the gateway to higher learning

Learning & Development

Building the gateway to higher learning

Genpact won the Best in Career Mobility Award at the 2013 L&D Leadership League for its Gateway & Build Program
Building the gateway to higher learning
 

The program’s aim was to make a sustainable talent pipeline for business continuity and create employability by investing in trainable skills

 

In developing countries like India and China, there is a large number of college graduates, yet only 10-12 per cent of them are able to find jobs due to language skills, cultural fitment, proximity to big cities and the gap between theory and practical application. At the same time, in developed economies, there is increasingly a mismatch between available jobs and trained talent in the market. Recognizing this huge gap and talent deficit that co-exists, Genpact launched a program to up-skill potential and existing employees to bridge this gap by partnering with government/ semi-government and private institutions to create a self-sustaining talent ecosystem.

The ‘Gateway & Build’ program follows a two-pronged approach; focus on external talent from new/ untapped pools and prepare them for entry-level jobs in Genpact (Gateway); and equip current employees with necessary skills to take up ‘larger’ jobs within the organization (Build). While this approach had been in existence in small pockets across the company, a cohesive program that pulled together all the terrific work at a global scale was required. The Program is also strongly aligned to Genpact’s business and talent strategy which is to equip people with the right skills at the right time, pass on productivity benefits to the clients and increase retention by building careers and providing larger roles.

It provides: 1. A platform for both external job aspirants and internal tenured employees to upskill themselves for bigger jobs involving complex skills through a structured framework; 2. Build a ready, cost-effective talent supply chain to support business growth and continuity; 3. Reduce dependency on limited, experienced talent; 4. Provide aspirational career paths throughout the employee lifecycle

The ‘Gateway & Build’ project team developed a structured approach. Some of the highlights were: Using Lean & Six Sigma methodologies to develop launch and optimize a replicable toolkit and execution framework; Partnered with 8 government bodies, 300+ colleges across 25+ Universities and 20+ private institutional networks; Designed and implemented 30+ unique skill building learning paths; Ear-marked 20 per cent (~8000 entry-level jobs) of hiring forecast for supply through this Program; Set a target of 70 per cent of lateral level positions (10,000 jobs) to be filled internally by providing a talent mobility platform to 60,000+ employees across specific domains.

Making the ‘Build’ program work required change management within the organization. Ability to forecast demand for 3-4 months, establishing confidence to hire for aptitude and train for domain rather than hiring experienced resources, working with clients to release employees into the ‘Build” were some of the initial challenges. Some of the best practices to retain and deploy talent were also implemented, including leadership interactions, buddy programs and counselling.

Today, the ‘Gateway’ program works with 300+ colleges across 25+ universities to train people in eight major domains, including Finance and Accounting, Source to Pay, Banking, Healthcare, Insurance, Analytics and Software & IT. The program has helped meet 40 per cent of the demand for ‘tough-to-hire’ skills, improved retention, on-time delivery, resource quality, and lowered the replacement costs of talent hired in 2013. The target for 2014 is to hire 50-60 per cent of these ‘tough to hire’ skills from the program and ramp it up to 80-90 per cent in the next two years.

Since its introduction in 2011, the ‘Gateway & Build’ program has trained and deployed more than 7,000 people and in 2014; Genpact is planning to train 5,000 employees under this program. To make the program more robust and scalable, the focus will be to work with governments and partners to create a sustainable ecosystem to address the skill mismatch and make people employable. This will include the transfer of Genpact’s teaching methodology, standardization of training and deployment processes, and the establishment of a robust governance framework work.

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Topics: Learning & Development, #BestPractices

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