Information Technology (IT) majors spend time, resources and large sums to raise the competence levels of their most valuable asset — human capital. The state-of-the-art 270-acre campus of Infosys Technologies’ Global Education Centre (GEC), which was inaugurated in Mysore in 2004, has the capacity to house 4,500 trainees at any given time and trains the company’s fresh engineering recruits to make them industry ready. The full-fledged training centre (built-up area: 440,735.75 sq. ft) which has a 230-strong permanent faculty, boasts 58 classrooms, 183 staff rooms, a cyber café, a well-stocked library with 75,000 volumes and an auditorium with a seating capacity of 1,500.
All new recruits undergo a 14 week fully residential foundation programme involving generic and stream-specific training in several technology areas, soft and leadership skills. Course content is developed in-house and reviewed every quarter. Infosys reportedly spends Rs.5 lakh to train each newly recruited graduate.
According to a company spokesperson, the rigorous training imparted at this collegiate-style training centre is essential for the smooth induction of freshers into the company’s work stations and project teams. Moreover executive development programmes need to be offered to retrain managers to cope with new technologies as well as to assume leadership positions. Training has also become imperative due to the rapid emergence of new products and service lines in the IT industry.
Likewise, India’s largest IT services provider and employer, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) which has an employee base of 89,500, reportedly spends 4 percent of its annual revenue (Rs.18,253 crore) on training and education. Fresh recruits are trained at the company’s sprawling 58,000 sq. ft campus (in Thiruvanan-thapuram, Kerala), which boasts excellent infrastructure including 18 classrooms and language labs that teach French, Japanese, German and Spanish. The TCS Learning and Development Centre has a dedicated faculty of 150 which trains 650-800 employees at any given point of time. Expansion plans are being implemented to increase the number of trainees on campus.
Well aware that personnel productivity is the key factor that drives the bottom-lines of IT companies, senior managers like Wipro chairman Azim Premji and founder and chief mentor of Infosys, N.R. Narayanamurthy, are closely involved with their companies’ training and development initiatives. Employee training and productivity is fast becoming the vital x factor which distinguishes winners from also-rans in India’s fast-track information technology-enabled services (ITES) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries.