The Art of Learning in the Corporate World

Dynamic hours, incessant travelling to keeping yourself updated with the latest happenings in the industry, you need to be ready for all. Cadila Pharmaceuticals’ Learning and Development (L&D) team can very well resonate with this lifestyle. From Ankleshwar to Jammu to Bangalore, they are responsible for all training sessions, and for ensuring the novelty and the relevance in them. Cadila’s CHRO, Dr Sunil Singh, talks about how they try to keep the learning bug alive in all of pharma Cadilians.

“The general belief is that learning comes to an end once we graduate and enter the corporate world. Hence my team and I try to provide opportunities to help our colleagues expedite their skills and provide various opportunities for them. We keep our curriculum up to date as per the industry standard and bring in speakers from different scopes of the industry.”

The L&D team at Cadila Pharma works round-the-year to provide training sessions ranging from the field force, mid-level managers and the senior leadership. The focus areas of these sessions vary from soft skills to time management to vocational skills such as Artificial Intelligence in Human Resource (HR) practices.

“When it comes to the field force, we provide tools and techniques for on the ground requirements such as presentation and communication. Post that, we move to the business aspects like product details and the science behind it. We then periodically share educational material while they are on the field so that they can keep themselves updated and have a comprehensive database easily accessible to them. Regular inventions in the form of assessments help us keep a track of their progress.

Recently, we started engaging our salesforce via WhatsApp. It is one of the unique and first of its kind initiatives wherein we use the WhatsApp platform learning. Our users (Cadila Pharma Salesforce) have also been very enthused with this initiative as the learning material and tools was easily available to them. We are proud of this novel strategy, and the media has covered the news extensively. You can read more about it here.”

While Cadila Pharma’s field force benefits the most out of these training sessions, the middle managers is a category that Dr Sunil Singh feels most strongly about.

“The middle managers are the enablers of the company. While they strategize on how to take their departments forward, they also enable their team members to execute on the plans. Hence it becomes very important for the right training to be imparted for their growth. We have programs for their personal development such as time management, effective communication skills, etc. and for their team development such as management of change, problem solving and decision making, working with cross functional teams, etc. These help them to perform better in both their roles i.e. as a team lead and as an executioner.

We bring in external professionals and trainers for our senior managers. We have a scheduled calendar to send our leaders to premium colleges such as Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and MICA where professors keep them abreast with the recent trends of industry.”

Cadila has been investing in learning and development since its foundation. Cadila Pharma’s Founder Chairman Shri Indravadan Modi created conducive environment for constant upgradation of team skills in functional and behavioural areas. He emphasized on leadership through people, and always invested in potential leaders and employees.

“Managers at Cadila Pharma are now encouraging their teams to attend these workshops and learning sessions. Peer-to-peer learning is also on the rise wherein participants talk about their learning experiences with their teams. With the success of these programs, employees now plan their days better to accommodate trainings and workshops. This is probably one of our biggest achievements,” concludes Dr Sunil Singh.