At Tractors and Farm Equipment Limited (TAFE), learning is an integral part of its ethos. As a learning organization, TAFE pioneered the development of its employees and channel partners through various training modules at the ‘Product Training Centre’ way back in the 1960’s, which was the first of its kind in the tractor industry. Over the years, TAFE’s commitment to learning has expanded and evolved, leveraging the latest technology to support and encourage its employees to constantly develop and upgrade themselves.
As part of this journey, TAFE was honoured at the 2018 India Innovation Awards by Skillsoft and SumTotal for ‘Creating an Impact in Leadership Development’ amidst HR, L&D industry stalwarts at its India Perspectives 2018 conference. This award honours an organization that develops and implements best-in-class integrated learning and/ or talent programs that demonstrate strong results. Programs feature innovation to overcome challenges and realize success.
Spearheaded by TAFE E-University and the Business Excellence team, the leadership development program -internally branded as LA CAFÉ, is offered as part of the Joy of Execution Excellence (JoEE) initiative. Considering the great need to develop CSF project leaders in the organization who are hard-pressed for time to attend a complete classroom based learning, TAFE partnered with Skillsoft to offer world class online programs, designed and delivered to meet various business needs in a blended learning mode.
The program focused on boosting the success rate of strategic projects by improving the competency levels of Critical Success Factor (CSF) project leaders within the organization. It aimed to develop the project management skills of CSF project leaders in the identified skill gap areas. The skill gaps were consolidated by in-person conversations with business leaders and surveys. The six modules from Skillsoft Leadership Advantage (SLA) to address the critical areas which were contributing to project success were: – Leading Effective Meetings, Problem Solving and Decision Making, Project Management, Managing Conflict, Influence and Persuasion, and Managing Upward Relationships.
The program followed a blended learning approach that provided the right mix of, self-paced learning for leaders to learn anytime anywhere, online webinars to value-add to the online content and motivate learners, café type workshops to encourage collaborative and social learning, business whatsapp conversations to engage and discuss key concepts, senior leader perspectives to align the learning with TAFE’s context, LA CAFÉ buddy for peer motivation to learn, and gamification to make learning fun and engaging. The program’s framework of ‘Learn – Apply – Share – Institutionalize’, supported learners to apply their learning to the projects they are leading, and also transfer best practices to organizational projects by means of horizontal deployment.
The recognition validates TAFE’s constant endeavour to build a continuous learning culture and encourage knowledge sharing. TAFE e-University and Business Excellence team are at an important juncture in the transformation journey, aligning business needs to learning and knowledge sharing, and thereby impacting the business’s bottom-line.
Congratulations to the TAFE E-University and Business Excellence team on this accolade and for ‘Cultivating The World’ with learning.
