CEO of Cognizant, Brian Humphries announced that next year, the company would be doubling its investment in technical education. He also asked the employees to take a pledge that they would be learning one new skill every quarter and mentor one co-worker each quarter. Humphries, in his email to the employees, indicated that those who upgraded their skills consistently were more likely to stay in the organization for a longer period.
The company has its own learning platform Cognizant Learn, where there are many resources for online learning and skill upgradation; it also offers its employees a collection of 50,000 self-paced courses. The firm’s in-house skill development platform provides learning materials on subjects such as IoT, digital engineering, smart sensors, edge artificial intelligence, and many more upcoming technologies. Humphries said that,
“We know we can do even better, so we expect to double our investment in technical education next year.”
He also spoke about Cognizant’s initiative to improve the next-gen work-force of the company; entry-level executives who are recruited from Indian campuses will be offered higher pay. The company is also providing final year students of technical institutes with the opportunity to intern with them so that they can be technically ready to take on the challenges when they join the company.
He said,
“We’re also focused on attracting and retaining tomorrow’s top talent…We’ve increased the compensation for entry level trainees from engineering campuses in India who will be joining us next June. We’ve decided to provide internships to all students from engineering campuses across India to whom we make job offers. This will improve their readiness to take on technical roles once they graduate and join our company.”
The recommended pledge to learn a new skill and mentor colleagues was an initiative to uphold high levels of investment in skill upgradation and training, as the organization is aiming to get back its position of the market leader, using innovative techniques. The company is even giving out incentives to those who have completed the most number of courses successfully on the internal platform.
Cognizant is now acquiring Zenith Technologies to boost its IoT capability. This acquisition is also going to give them an upper hand in the life science domain.