Ericsson Academy makes you stand out from the crowd!

Girish Johar,
Vice-President,
Human Resources & Organization,
Ericsson India

What is Ericsson Academy all about? 

Ericsson Academy is a strategic hub to inspire people and organizations to exchange ideas, perform better, collaborate and stimulate innovation. The Academy provides a range of training courses, interactive forums, and learning materials online and on-demand, all tailored to an individual's need. The goal is to network and share knowledge with employees, customers, universities, suppliers and partners in order to drive the ICT industry into the next decade.

In 2010, the Academy offered 7,000 learning modules where about 2,500 were digital learning formats, a significant increase from 2009. Every area of the company is covered, from marketing and sales to operations and maintenance to sustainability and corporate responsibility (a Sustainability and CR e-learning portal was designed and launched by the Academy in 2010).

Ericsson Academy is an evolved unit within Human Resources & Organization. Beside the central unit, the Community of Learning Professionals at Ericsson is vast, including 240 HR Business Partners and 35 Competence Managers. With our Learning Services staff - centrally and in the delivery units worldwide - there are additional 450 people dedicated to learning across the company.

Share the reason for having an Ericsson Academy. What has been the result so far since its day of inception? 

Ericsson's approach to competence building through learning is in step with our vision of the Networked Society that will collaborate, connect and compete, 24x7. Ericsson is focussed on aligning learning and competence development with its business strategy both globally and locally.

Ericsson established the Ericsson Academy to ensure that new competence is applied in the everyday work to enhance performance. The main focus is to prepare people with the right competence at the right time so to drive development of new technologies and value propositions towards Ericsson customers. This facilitates Ericsson commercial leadership as well as takes project execution to new levels.

Is it a global initiative? If yes, what customization you did while introducing it in India? 

Yes, it is a global initiative. Ericsson applies its ICT solutions and digital learning tools to gain knowledge and bolster competencies, using the flexibility and convenience of learning anytime, anywhere via the Internet, smartphones, other devices and innovative applications. As a result, learning programs now offer shorter, more tailored modules satisfying a specific learning need. Competence readiness is one of three priorities in the Ericsson learning approach. 

Ericsson Academy Center Region India is located in Gurgaon, equipped with 9 classrooms and a fully equipped test lab (GSM/3G/LTE, Transport, NMS & Charging systems) - 

* We have 15 Fulltime Certified Trainers and 170Flex Trainers (SMEs).

* The Academy delivered 29,064 student days Instructor Led Training in 2010.

* We conduct Ace Plus Programs (Short ILT/VCT Programs), Customized Programs for GETs, Universities and Learning Solutions for Customers.

* We also offer training on multi-vendor delivery capability.

How does this initiative support your existence in India?

In line with the current business requirements for Ericsson India, our focus for 2011 is to conduct programs on 3G, LTE, System Integration competence, and multi-vendor technologies.

Ericsson Academy's main focus is to prepare people with the right competence at the right time to drive adoption of new technologies and value propositions towards Ericsson customers. This facilitates Ericsson commercial leadership as well as improves project execution to new levels. The key priorities are -

* Portfolio competence readiness to enable competence readiness for our products and solutions to everyone. 

* Internal learning excellence to drive learning excellence in all learning programs and across the organization. 

* Extended learning organization to provide value to customers, partners, universities and talents.

For More Contact: Syeda Beenish 
beenish@varindia.com