Mentoring is secret ingredient of India’s high-tech success
An article appearing in the April 25, 2010 edition of The Times of India shares that mentoring and training are at the heart of India’s emergence as a global center of innovation and R&D.
“Training is a continuous process, not just in technical issues but also in management skills, quality consciousness, communications, foreign language and personal-effectiveness skills,” shares the article. “Mentoring by senior executives is another key Indian practice.”
The article explains that in 2002, India had 102,000 engineering graduates. Within four years, that number had rocketed to 222,000, and that mark is expected to double this year. To understand how a country could grow so many skilled people in such a short period of time, Duke and Harvard Universities sent research teams to study this phenomenon. What they discovered was that Indian companies first learned best practices of Western companies operating in India. Then, the Indians innovated and improved on that learning and reinforced it with mentoring.
“Many companies virtually became universities, employing hundreds of trainers,” shared the article. One example of this is an Infosys training center in Mysore which trains 13,500 employees at once.
“Employees get reviewed at the end of every project and are prescribed training if found to have weaknesses,” write the authors of this article. “Mechanisms such as 360-degree reviews (wherein you review your bosses and peers) and balanced scorecard reviews are widely used. Managers are evaluated on a variety of non-financial measures, including employee satisfaction, attrition rates and mentoring.”