Talent Development with Coursera is key to WTW India GDC’s competitive advantage
- Location:
India
- Industry:
Financial services
- Size:
3,600+ employees
- Topics:
Employee engagement, Talent development, Upskilling and reskilling
Overview
Willis Towers Watson (WTW) is a global insurance advisory and solutions company providing data-driven, insight-led solutions in the areas of people, risk and capital, helping companies become more resilient, motivating workforces and maximising performance.
Empowered by their global reach and harnessing local-level knowledge from their colleagues, innovation lies at the heart of WTW. Their operation in India, WTW India Global Delivery Center (GDC), embodies this principle, with more than 3,600 employees delivering solutions to over 120 countries.
Goal
In 2020, WTW India embarked on a search for an online learning partner to provide world-class courses and certifications from internationally recognised business schools and universities. Their primary objective was to foster the growth of professional and leadership skills among their colleagues.
After careful evaluation, Coursera emerged as the ideal choice due to its ability to engage employees with career development opportunities from 300+ leading universities and companies, including IBM, Google, Yale University and Northwestern University.
Sandhya Kini
Director, Talent Development, WTW India
"Coursera has enabled us to offer our colleagues high quality, deep learning content and certifications from premier global institutes, easily accessible from their desks. It is an integral part of our learning strategy. "
Process
WTW India continues to make Coursera content, including Leadership Academy from Coursera, a staple of its colleague learning program, ensuring colleagues can conveniently access quality content on the go.
“Coursera has enabled us to offer our colleagues high quality, deep learning content and certifications from premier global institutes, easily accessible from their desks. It is an integral part of our learning strategy,” says Sandhya Kini, Director, Talent Development.
The talent development team implemented the Coursera courses in a systematic way to make the most impact on learning in the organisation:
- L&D business champions were nominated for each business unit, such as North America and Accounting & Settlement.
- These champions recommended a set of courses based on business priorities and relevant competencies for the year. They provided access to individuals based on their developmental needs and were responsible for effectively utilising the Coursera licenses assigned to them.
- Employees could also contact their L&D champions to enroll for a course based on their own developmental goals following conversations with their managers.
- Centrally, the Talent Development team focused on advising L&D champions on suitable courses for their teams, publishing leaderboards to encourage learning and hosting monthly best practice sharing sessions.
- They also established a dedicated digital learning lead to run learning campaigns, maximise engagement and track success.
Impact
Coursera has become one of the preferred digital learning partners for WTW India, providing high-quality, role-specific training across the organisation where courses are flexible, and colleagues can learn at their own pace.
3,600+ certifications were earned since 2020 from top industry and university partners, including Microsoft, Macquarie University and New York Institute of Finance.
80% course completion rate upon Coursera’s implementation — significantly higher than the industry average of 44%.
Coursera rated 4.6 out of 5 from WTW India users.
The Coursera launch succeeded because of the ownership of the L&D team in understanding the business needs to drive the learning agenda strategically. Mapping job-relevant Coursera content around key learning areas allowed them to emphasise skills that would help learners develop professionally. Together with the L&D business champions, they spearheaded the project and produced high-impact, high-quality learning experiences for their employees.
OUTCOMES
80%
course completion rate — significantly higher than the industry average of 44%.
Coursera’s Leadership Academy guides our program managers to curate skill-based courses and develops business relevant competencies of our colleagues.