The Mahindra Group is one of the largest and most respected multinational federations of companies in the world. With a legacy spanning over 70 years, the group has grown to include over 260,000 employees spread across more than 100 countries.
They’ve consolidated $19 billion in revenue and operate in over 20 industries with the goal of driving change worldwide. In India, the Mahindra Group holds a leadership position in farm equipment, utility vehicles, information technology and financial services.
Additionally, it is the world's largest tractor company by volume. The group also has a significant presence in renewable energy, agriculture, logistics, hospitality, and real estate. The federation of companies is committed to driving sustainable positive change across global markets and communities.
A vision for building a future-ready ecosystem
The Mahindra Group set out to achieve significant shifts in its learning and development strategy. With diverse business lines and a global workforce, there were varying learning needs and business imperatives that needed to be addressed. To cater to these needs, the Group aimed to invest in a modern, learning experience platform (LXP) powered by cutting-edge technology. The specific objectives of the Group as they looked for the next-gen learning solution included:
- Digital learning transition: The group wanted to transition from physical classrooms to hybrid or fully digital learning journeys. This move was in response to declining learner attention observed over the past few years. By shifting to hybrid or fully digital learning journeys, the Group aimed to provide an engaging learning experience that catered to the evolving needs of their learners.
- Inclusive learning approaches: The Mahindra Group also wanted to shift its L&D focus from a small high potential talent pool to encompass all its employees across businesses. This change represented a more inclusive approach to learning and development, recognizing the value of providing opportunities for growth to all its employees, rather than a select few.
- Self-directed learning: The group intended to create a more flexible learning environment that empowered employees to take control of their own learning journeys. By enabling employees to set their own course, the group wanted to foster a culture of self-directed learning. It recognized that employees have different learning needs and preferences, and tailoring learning experiences to those needs could enhance the effectiveness of learning and development programs.
- Unified learning interface: The complexity of a fragmented learning ecosystem was identified as a big hindrance to creating an employee-centric learning culture. To address this issue, the group looked for a unified, experience-centric interface that would provide a streamlined and user-friendly learning experience for employees, with access to learning materials and resources from multiple platforms in a single window.
- Data-driven decision-making: The importance of data-driven decision-making was identified as key to the success of the group’s learning and development strategy. Rather than relying on personal intuitions or biases, the group was committed to making decisions based on data-driven analytics and insights.
Seven must-haves for the group’s LXP
The L&D Team at Mahindra Group began the LXP selection process by defining their key requirements. The team established the must-haves, outlining the critical features and functionalities that the LXP must possess to meet the unique learning and development needs of the diverse group.
1. Autonomy with governance
The group wanted to empower each of its business entities to develop their own learning strategies in alignment with their specific learner requirements. This approach involved integrating with multiple content partners and implementing various types of engagement initiatives. To achieve this, a governance framework was needed at the core, while the business entities retained autonomy in their decision-making.
2. Scalability
The LXP platform needed to be scalable with the Mahindra Group’s expanding business units. It was crucial for the initial ecosystem setup to be able to meet the growing and diversified learning needs of the businesses without any delay.
3. Cost-effectiveness with seamless support
The learning solution implemented by Mahindra Group had to not only be financially viable but also meet global standards for customer experience. The solution needed to strike a balance between cost-effectiveness and providing a seamless and satisfactory user experience to learners.
4. Any device, anytime, anywhere
It was essential that learners have easy access to the LXP platform from various devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops, to ensure a smooth and seamless user experience. This included access to all types of content, from various repositories and content partners, within a single window. It was crucial to provide a user-friendly and accessible experience for learners, allowing them to engage with the platform anytime, anywhere, from any device.
5. Sharp focus on skills and roles
The learning platform had to be learner-centric, empowering every individual to develop skills that met their unique needs, rather than solely focusing on compliance-based training mandated by the business. This learner-centric approach will put the individual at the centre of the learning experience, ensuring that the training they receive is relevant, engaging and aligned with their personal and professional goals.
6. Hyper personalized
The LXP platform had to promote self-directed learning for all employees, catering to both their professional skills and personal interests. This holistic development approach could help in creating a workforce that is better equipped to handle the challenges of the future, empowering employees to take ownership of their own learning journeys.
7. Comprehensive yet uncomplicated
The seamless integration of the platform with all of Mahindra Group's ERPs’ and HRMSs’ was a crucial factor to facilitate the easy enablement of workflows and business processes without requiring manual intervention. To achieve this, the platform had to be designed in a way that ensured compatibility and smooth communication with all systems already in use across the Group.
Finding the right solutions with Cornerstone Learning Experience
As part of phase one, Mahindra Group successfully implemented Cornerstone for over 23,000 employees, to drive holistic workforce development through opportunities for professional skill development and personal growth. The learner-centric platform prioritized self-directed learning, avoiding categorization by designation, function or job grade, while prioritizing grouping of learners by their unique personas and learning preferences.
Learning ecosystem
The LXP platform was seamlessly integrated with the group's ERP systems. This smooth and automated integration with systems like SuccessFactors, Workday, PeopleStrong, and SharePoint facilitated the efficient flow of information between the different systems. The availability of content resources from several leading content partners enabled employees to access customized learning content that catered to their unique needs and interests. This promoted a more engaging and effective learning experience for the learners.
Learning in the flow of work
Enabling learning in the flow of work allowed the Mahindra Group’s workforce to access the relevant resources at the appropriate time, supporting their learning goals and needs without disrupting their daily workflows. This approach allowed for contextual results to be provided to employees, with platform-based recommendations appearing in Google Search, providing a seamless and efficient learning experience. Learning in the flow of work was also enabled within other applications like Microsoft Teams
Learner engagement
The Mahindra Group effectively utilized their LXP platform to go beyond just learning and engaging employees. Unique feed configurations were used to keep employees up to date with significant announcements within the group. Additionally, speaker series from leaders were organized to allow them to engage with a wider workforce. This approach resulted in an effective means of communication within the organization, while also supporting employee engagement and development.
Data-driven analytics
Cornerstone Learning Experience analytics provided valuable and in-depth data-driven insights for the group, enabling the company to make informed and effective decisions related to content. By analyzing user consumption patterns, the analytics platform allowed Mahindra Group to identify the most relevant and useful content for its employees, eliminating the need for guesswork or intuition in content purchasing decisions.
Yielding measurable results and outcomes
The Mahindra Group effectively utilized Cornerstone Learning Experience to achieve multiple goals:
- Providing role and skill-specific content to create a future-ready workforce
- Driving developmental ownership of that workforce
- Obtaining analytics-based content investment decisions
- Building agile and scalable rapid capability
- Creating exclusive and unique learning experiences
The statistics don’t lie either. More results included:
- 80% adoption rate in six months
- 18K+ users onboarded across five sectors
- 120K courses completed
- 64% monthly active users
- 66 NPS (Net Promoter Score)
- 71% course completion
