Nghiên cứu điển hình
Ngành
Digital, Business Consulting, Technology - Financial Services Industry
Trụ sở chính công ty
New York, NY, USA
Số lượng nhân viên
+8,000
Upskilling Thousands of Technical Employees at Synechron While Optimizing Billable Hours
Udemy thúc đẩy kết quả kinh doanh
Chi tiết nghiên cứu điển hình
For Synechron, deploying cutting-edge digital technology is at the core of the company’s purpose. That’s because the world’s top banks, asset managers, and insurance companies partner with the 20-year-old financial services consulting organization to lead their digital transformation. To ensure their clients keep up with the constant technological changes, Synechron needs to make sure their 8,000+ employees’ skills are up-to-date. Senior Manager of HR Development Varun Patil oversees learning and development throughout the organization.
Keep employees’ technical skills ahead of the evolutionary curve
“We want to be the best organization in terms of the quality and reliability of the delivery of our services to clients, which includes recommending and implementing technology infrastructure and digital solutions,” Varun explains. This lofty goal put a lot of responsibility on the training team to continue but also enhance our L&D program. “We have to continuously upskill our resources or risk falling behind and having our talent’s skills become outdated.”
Synechron has always placed an emphasis on developing its talent. “But just having .NET or Java framework knowledge was no longer sufficient. We had to train employees to become full-stack developers, and acquire many other necessary modern skills,” Varun says.
In-person training could help fill some of Synechron’s needs, but Varun knew that it wasn’t scalable. To keep multiple teams of global technical talent up to date and their skill sets refreshed, he would need a blended learning solution that could span the globe.
Global Head of Operations
Adopt an agile learning solution — and gain a strategic partner in the process
“Synechron has always boasted that we are an agile organization. It’s in our DNA,” says Varun. “So it was important that we find a learning solution that matched our own agility and futurelooking culture.”
Synechron considered several L&D solutions. But after carefully evaluating Coursera, Pluralsight, and Udemy Business, the choice was clear. “Udemy fit us like a glove,” he says. “Their team curates fresh, up-to-date courses from their marketplace and makes them available to customers. The speed and agility of this collective intelligence played an important role in our decision-making process to choose Udemy.”
One of Synechron’s first areas of focus? Keeping technical employees upskilled while minimizing their time away from client work and billable hours.
Increase productivity 35% to grow revenue
Before launching its initiative with Udemy, in-person technical training helped many Synechron employees update their skills. But it also meant taking time away from clients’ project delivery and, consequently, negatively impacted billable hours. Python training, for example, took five days.
Planned classroom training required taking resources away from a project which negatively impacted our project billing and revenue,” Varun says. “Udemy opened up the L&D door for all employees on a global scale.”
Once Synechron adopted a more flexible, blended learning approach with Udemy, their approach to training transformed. Instructors assigned Udemy courses as prerequisites to building a foundation of knowledge. “Training doesn’t start from the basic level for everyone anymore. Now training can start from the intermediate level, to meet individual needs” explains Varun.
Employees can take introductory Udemy courses on their own before the classroom sessions. This is much easier to work into their schedules and get approved by clients. And training now lasts just three days — a 35% reduction in classroom time — without compromising on quality or content. Additionally, it results in less time away from key project deliveries.
Chief Human Resources Officer
Delighted executives prioritize learning for all Synechron employees
After running a successful pilot with a small percentage of the Synechron employee base, in 2019 Varun and his team made the case to management that Udemy should be available to all employees. Without hesitation, his team was given the go-ahead to implement an enterprise-wise rollout plan.
The results were immediately apparent. Udemy course consumption exploded. Synechron employees have enrolled in over 44,000 courses to date. “Even non-technical employees and our business leaders are taking Executive Briefing courses to develop their technical knowledge, Varun notes. “Even customer-facing employees who are not technologists are benefitting,” he said. “They need to understand enough to have conversations on key topics.”
Synechron Global Head of Operations May Yang attributes their success to Udemy’s Learning Path functionality. “We have always been seeking ways to enable our employees to have more control over their learning and expanded access to learning,” she says. “With Udemy’s Learning Paths, we can provide employees with a step-by-step guide to pick up new skills or refine their current skills, precisely when and how they wish to learn.”
Adapting to the changes brought on by a global pandemic
As it turns out, Varun’s request to expand Udemy access to all Syncheron employees was welltimed. In March and April of 2020, like most companies, Synechron closed its offices due to the COVID-19 pandemic and employees transitioned to working from home.
“The Udemy platform has played a pivotal role in our success during the pandemic,” says Synechron’s Managing Director & India Delivery Head Hareesha Pattaje. “Our IT employees have benefited from a variety of deeply relevant courses and the flexibility of learning at any time and from any location, as they choose. Their educational instruction did not have to pause because of the COVID-19 restrictions.”
Prior to the company’s sudden shift to a remote workforce, Synechron employees collectively averaged 20,000 hours of learning per month. But in the months since the crisis began, usage skyrocketed to 30,000 hours per month. Varun believes learning paths have helped drive such impressive Udemy consumption.“With the help of our subject matter experts, we use learning paths. We’ve done org-level learning paths for our employees, so I can drive focused initiatives toward them.”
Synechron Chief Human Resources Officer John Gaunt was also among those grateful for having a partner to prepare them for the unexpected work-from-home need. “Virtual learning has been one of the cornerstones of our employee engagement strategy during the pandemic,” he says. “And Udemy has been central to everyone’s ability to learn and grow both professionally and personally. This initiative not only benefits their personal learning curve, but translates to tangible benefits to our company and our clients.”
In addition, Gaunt notes, “With Synechron’s recent pair of company acquisitions, the Udemy L&D platform will easily facilitate an expanding learning opportunity for more than 2,000 new employees who can also take advantage of upskilling, as desired.”
A full-fledged enterprise rollout and proprietary learnings on Udemy
In addition to the selection of courses available on Udemy, Varun sees the opportunity to host customized Synechron training. “I want all of our compliance trainings — like information security, prevention of sexual harassment, workforce ethics — to be available on the Udemy platform.
While Udemy is currently available to the majority of Synechron employees, Varun is excited about the full-fledged enterprise rollout that will include contractors and temporary employees. “We will activate everyone in our organization, through compliance training or other initiatives,” he says.
Varun is proud of the progress made. “The broad reach to our employees, and the convenience of anytime/anywhere learning has been addressed,” he says. “Now we have the opportunity to dig into Udemy’s data and better understand what motivates employees to learn. Learning itself requires some intrinsic motivation. We’re going to focus on how to help get everyone excited, so they want to put more effort into learning.”
Senior Manager of HR Development
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