Published on September 12, 2022
Tata International is a premier trading and distribution company with a network of offices and subsidiaries spanning more than 27 countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. The company has employees from 30+ nationalities working across the globe, with diverse and unique skills across the company’s business segments. It has centralised its L&D function and is working on strengthening its long-term talent development plan to meet the ever-changing skill requirements and groom in-house talent for future roles. In this respect, Tata International was keen to understand practices available within the Tata group in areas such as talent development, L&D strategy, architecture, people development metrics, building a learning culture, leadership development framework and succession planning.
To assist Tata International in its improvement endeavours, three best knowledge sharing sessions were facilitated by TBExG.
On April 8, 2022, Sireesha Chandana, Associate Vice President - Learning & Development and Employee Engagement, IHCL, shared L&D interventions developed by the company across all layers of its workforce, i.e. from multifunctional and behavioural training for front-line associates to management development interventions for senior leadership. Ms Chandana further elaborated on L&D methodologies across digital, classroom, cross-functional exposure, mentoring and on-the-job training. She further explained IHCL’s external collaborations from an L&D perspective, accelerated career development programmes, Taj Swagat’s employee induction process, functional and behavioural training processes and training needs identification. Other topics discussed were the development of the training calendar, the building of Taj certified trainers and the measurement of training effectiveness.
In the following session with Titan on April 14, 2022, Gurkirandeep Singh, Head - Talent Management, Learning and OD, shared salient features of the L&D landscape at Titan. In the session, he shared his insights on Titan’s L&D organisational structure, leadership development, competency framework development, learning management system and experience platform, external partnerships and in-house content, coaching, peer learning and mentoring.
On May 9, 2022, Aruna Viswanathan, General Manager (HR) and Zenobia D’souza, Business HR Head - Nutritional Solutions, discussed key attributes of the L&D framework at Tata Chemicals.
The knowledge shared in these sessions have helped Tata International enhance its learning solutions basket, e.g. business-wise functional training plan, ‘Train the Trainer’ programme to develop an in-house trainer pool for specific competencies, coaching interventions, and specific learning solutions for the top talent. These improvements are at various stages of implementation across multiple business units of Tata International.
Participant Speak
Our L&D strategy is made through inputs from various stakeholders, for e.g. guidance from the MD and senior leadership, industry trends from external sources, current and future competency requirements from businesses, peer idea generation within the organisation and views from our partners like external trainers and training organisations. Implementation is rolled on and managed with partnerships from HR business partners and business leaders. These sessions with Tata companies are an important part of our evolving L&D strategy. Special thanks to the TBExG team for arranging these valuable sessions.
— Rajan Somvanshi, Head - Business Excellence (Distribution), Tata International