So far we have trained 7,000 managers from the varied lines of businesses in these managerial and strategy programs over the last five years. These programs are conducted by our leading Indian academicians from the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata and those from renowned business schools such as London Business School and Harvard Business School.

In addition to classroom learning, we also have the Group virtual campus where our managers are given the opportunity and flexibility to learn at their own pace and time. We call them e-learners interacting with our e-facilitators of the various online modules and courses. Today we are proud to say that we have more than 250 courses available for our managers, covering a host of learning topics on sales, marketing, leadership, and engineering.

The Aditya Birla Group also has the learning channel to share best practices called the knowledge integration program that fosters learning from within and across the company's various business groups. In the last three years the company recorded participation from more than 400 managers in 20 such programs covering various interesting topics on human resources, research and technology, information technology, marketing, and manufacturing, just to name a few.

To include those in middle management, we also encourage our management teams to ensure that they stay in school to ensure continued learning. For such mid-career education, we have engaged a Singapore-based e-university called Universitas 21 that currently offers online MBA programs for our management staff.

To help managers increase their self-awareness through a 360-degree feedback mechanism, an e-360 degree instrument was launched named as Pratibimb in April 1986. Using this tool, managers can receive such feedback on their career competency level, their global leadership competency, and their group values. So far, more than 80 senior managers have experienced using this tool.

The Aditya Birla Group strongly believes that these three types of services that are offered in the knowledge portal will continue to keep managers engaged and challenged in their pursuit for greater knowledge in honing their skills and competency levels.

For every employee in the company, there is the group intranet that is affectionately known as Adityadisha. As with a corporate intranet, this learning channel serves as the information gateway and repository for corporate information and internal communication from the management. It contains various features such as a career helpdesk, and management circulars including access to multiple learning sites that cater to the various needs and requirements of the employees, managers, and non-managers alike.

The last learning channel is Anubhav, which is a knowledge repository that houses more than 600 organisation case studies on the company's success stories, learning experiences from real-life, and practical problems and issues including solutions shared by practicing managers of the company. The Aditya Birla Group captured these amazing life-time war stories and shared them with our employees with the sole objective of sharing the lessons learned, and to appreciate the mistakes made for richer learning experiences.

Focus on Incubating and Nurturing Talent
The Aditya Birla Group is passionate about keeping good talent intact. We have intensive focus on incubating and nurturing such talent within the company through the talent management framework. In essence, the framework comprises eight career stages and 17 specific behavioral competencies for each of these career stages. To ensure that this framework stays intact, we have developed four key steps in this process: development assessment, talent reviews, talent engagement, and career moves and succession plans.

In the first of the four steps, development assessment centers (DAC) were created, which function to provide support to managers to help them assess and develop their capabilities and competency levels. Since its inception in 2003, the record shows that more than 1,200 managers from the various business groups have participated in the DACs.

After these managers have gone through the assessments in the DAC, their next step is to work on their developmental goals that focus on their priorities for learning and development experiences as they plan their career growth, development, and road map in the company. All these information are captured and tracked through the individual development plan (IDP).

Next, the annual talent review process comprises three tiers: at the unit level, the business level, and the group level. This step focuses on implementing the respective IDPs based on review discussion inputs into the career and succession planning process.

The third step of this process involves talent engagement where business heads take a personal involvement in designing specific courses aimed at developing identified individual employee's leadership potential. These business heads also lead certain programs that aim to achieve in-depth talent engagement opportunities with identified high-potential employees. Essentially, this step is focused on these targeted individuals.

When all three steps have been completed in accordance to the process, the last step entails finalisation of the succession planning effort to ensure that there is appropriate and sufficient opportunity for critical roles and positions for the company in the near future. This is a proactive approach to prepare the high potential employees to take on senior and middle management positions when needed.

Based on these employees' individual development plans, this process ensures that employees attain their career aspirations so that they are happy employees with the right career moves for them. At the same time, the company ensures that business critical positions based on a well-planned succession plan are filled. This is a proactive process with a win-win result.

The Aditya Birla Group's passion in incubating talent as future leaders has also been traditionally practiced in the company since the days of our founder, Aditya Vikram Birla. To build on his legacy, the Aditya Birla Scholarships scheme was instituted where the best and brightest employees are selected to be groomed into future leaders of the company. The employees are sent to the Indian Institute of Management, the Indian Institute of Technology, and the Birla Institute of Technology, Pilani, for the nurturing and grooming efforts to take place. This encourages developing home-grown talent instead of searching for the right talent in the marketplace where competition has become very stiff due to the acute shortage of the right talent in Asia.

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