NIIT wins 'BEST Training Award'

BANGALORE: NIIT has been conferred the BEST Training Award by world''s premier professional association for workplace learning, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD). In all 23 organizations from the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, and India were recently honoured with the 2003 ASTD BEST awards.

NIIT topped among the Indian organizations to receive the award this year.The ASTD BEST Awards recognize organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success as a result of employee learning and development. NIIT''s practice of providing on average 14 days training per person every year, to keep its employees abreast with the latest technologies and behavioral skills is perhaps the highest for any Indian company.

According to Tony Bingham, ASTD's Chief Operating Officer, ''The winners of the 2003 ASTD BEST Awards ''get it'': They use learning as a strategic tool and have the support of senior leaders who champion a learning culture.''

Bingham continues, ''These winners demonstrate that learning is vital to individual and organizational performance, training is not a discretionary item, and even in times of uncertainty and downturn, continued investment in employees is the key to future success.''

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Vijay K Thadani, Chief Executive Officer, NIIT said, ''The ASTD award further strengthens our commitment to benchmark our human resource initiatives against the best and ensure that NIIT continues to evolve innovative HR practices.''

NIIT spots the best talent and places a special emphasis on their induction in the organization, continuous training and retraining at its internal residential training school-School for Employee Education and Development-and then nurtures them through challenging assignments that demand innovation and learning at every step.

NIIT has also recently ranked among the top 25 ''Great Places to Work'' as per a study conducted jointly by GrowTalent, a firm focusing on HR strategies for Indian corporates and Businessworld India based on the methodology developed by ''Great Place to Work Institute, Inc.'' of the US. NIIT topped the list of IT companies to be ranked in this list.

NIIT follows an ''open work culture'' and its most unique facility is iniitian.com, an exclusive and elaborate staff portal. NIIT employees in 44 countries around the world exchange information, discuss issues and share their knowledge and expertise within the organisation through this interactive portal. Employees can also use this portal to acquire relevant skills at their own time and pace using the online learning facility, E-Seed.

The ASTD BEST award winners were selected by members of the BEST Awards advisory committee comprising of a group of chief learning officers and experts in the learning and performance field.