In recent times, the complexity and ambiguity in procurement as a function has increased manifold. While Beroe Inc promises to provide procurement teams with continuous competitive advantage, the “continuous” part of its promise has become critical to its clients. Therefore, it has become imperative that its analysts know their industry well, and be abreast with the latest in sourcing, procurement practices, analytics and client context. Mere knowledge is not enough today; ability to translate knowledge into actionable insights which can deliver practical and significant savings in cost, improvement in process or reduction in turn-around times is crucial.

Need for continuous learning

Since Beroe operates in the knowledge/intelligence industry, the future of its business depends on its ability to attract, hire, develop and retain people with category/industry expertise. Hence, providing continuous competitive advantage and staying true to its belief of “Advantage Procurement” is possible only by ensuring that the company’s analysts have access to continuous learning. If Beroe would have left these concerns untouched, it was likely to lose its current and potential client accounts. This would have led to its brand reputation falling and employee morale dropping, leading to high attrition.

Making learning a continuous process was the only way Beroe could ensure a sustainable solution to its business problem. For this, it was important for Beroe to drive a culture of learning within the organization by shaping and rendering the vast amount of existing, useful knowledge within the company. Creating a culture of continuous learning would also give the analysts a competitive edge. Further, the initiative would also result in positive spin offs on all other employee lifecycle (Talent Management) processes such as engagement, recognition and performance.

Developing strategy for continuous learning

Beroe began the initiative by first identifying behavioral and technical competencies for all the unique roles across levels in the organization. After this, it performed a capability/gap analysis to arrive at the training needs for every employee in the organization and identified trends in learning needs across levels. The company then re-evaluated its organization structure to create rewarding career paths for individual contributors and people managers. Beroe also initiated ‘Career Conversations’ (a continuous and ongoing process) with every individual to identify career aspirations and provide guidance; including diagnostics to help analysts discover their areas of strengths and 1:1 coaching. All these efforts led to the creation of a platform to consolidate and disseminate continuous learning in the organization in the form of Beroe University. This platform also focused on live practical industry situations that the analysts were expected to encounter in their current and future roles.

Under the university program, Beroe identified a set of mandatory courses that were compulsory for analysts to undertake and clear them satisfactorily in order to be eligible for level movements. Here, all courses were customized to suit the needs of individual career aspirations. The university also provided elective courses for employees so that they can pursue learning in areas of personal interest as well.

Under the of this learning platform, Beroe undertook a complete revamp of its onboarding and induction process. This has resulted in higher employee engagement and increased job satisfaction among the employees. Further, the onboarding process has also become very robust and the company has not seen a single case of non-confirmation after probation. Client feedback scores have also organically increased.

Adapting changes into learning systems

Since the workforce at Beroe is geographically dispersed, the company now plans to take learning to the next stage by investing in original digital content. Beroe is working on creating self-learning tutorials and videos with periodic access to trainers. It is also working to make content available across devices so that employees have control over the place, time and pace of learning. 

 (Beroe Inc. won the L&D League award for the “Best in Onboarding Solutions” Category)

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Winner's Response

It’s a great feeling of achievement on being awarded the “Best in Onboarding Solutions” amongst very stiff competition. Since we are a young organization, we have had the advantage of being open to change. This dynamism and agility has affected our HR teams as well.

Beroe has a very metric oriented approach towards its practices. We also integrate client feedback and employee satisfaction. We are also hoping to go to the next level by leveraging our learning and development content for sales. At the moment most of our content delivery happens face to face despite being geographically spread. Since most of our employees are millennials we will also be using the digital platform soon.