TCS gears up for aggressive digital push

Sanjay Kumar (name changed), an employee of Tata Consultancy Services, is glued to his mobile phone busy with Fresco Play, a gamification learning platform to re-skill himself in digital technology, which is the most happening domain in the IT sector.

Along with Kumar, 2.14 lakh other TCSers of the total 3.80 lakh employees have been re-skilled in digital technology under the in-house digital competency development programme that allow employees learn any time, anywhere and over any device, said Ravi Viswanathan, President, Growth Markets, TCS.

The first step in this ‘mammoth’ re-skilling programme was initiated in 2014 by former CEO N Chandrasekaran with a vision to train one lakh TCSers on digital technologies such as DevOps, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.

“We did not know where to start. We had to reinvent ourselves, our courses, our learning methods and our people’s aspiration.

“We wanted employees to come to our training voluntarily. We did not want to set up class rooms and tell team leaders to send 100 or 200 people. We wanted to set up a platform and make it voluntary for employees to use it. We succeeded in it,” he said.

Fresco Play enables an employee from CEO to a trainee to access training module in mobile, Web and seamlessly change between devices. “We made it palatable by making the module 15 to 30 minutes. We designed it for modern TCSers as they commute,” he said.

Nearly six lakh digital certifications have been issued from the system. This translates to nearly three digital certifications per employee. This number will be much higher at entry level, he said.

As soon as the certificate is issued, the information is loaded in the company’s resource management framework. A team leader will know that there are many people with competency in a particular domain and openly advertise for a particular job in the system. An employee can apply for it or the opportunity can drag the employee, said Viswanathan.

IT business is always about disrupting, and disrupting fast. In last 30 years, the industry has grown from $50 million to $150 billion and there was disruption in every stage — right from Custom built software to advanced languages such as Oracle, SAP to now the latest SMAC (social, mobile, cloud and analyitcs), he said.

“Through re-skilling, we are driving the message that all of us need to re-skill ourselves. Please invest time as the company has given you a training platform that can be accessed through mobile device or even classroom,” he said.

It is also strong message to clients on how TCS enables its employees wherever they are to get technically upgraded and that 2.14 lakh employees have gone through digital certification. “We have innovated to disrupt the internal learning platform,” he said. “Certification is an input in to the performance appraisal system. We don’t want to make this you do this but make it a culture. I can see the culture happening. When 2.14 lakh employees have taken up a course, it reflects the fact that is a consumption culture. Otherwise, the worse thing to do is set target for everybody to do, and it may not work,” he said.