The investment per top executive now ranges between ₹20 and ₹50 lakh per year, up from ₹5-10 lakh before the Covid-19 pandemic, they said.
A volatile business environment, with rapid technological advances, including artificial intelligence (AI) and new emerging sectors, is driving conglomerates like JSW Group, Adani Group, Reliance Industries, Godrej Group of Industries, Vedanta and the Mahindra Group sending larger groups of senior executives for leadership training, executives said.
“We would be spending four times more on learning and leadership development than we did two years ago,” said Sumit Mitra, Group Director, Human Resources and Corporate Services, Godrej Industries Group.
According to executives, lessons learned from the wave of resignations in 2021 and 2022, which resulted in the exit of top executives, prompted companies to focus more on building internal leadership pipelines. Partnerships were also established with Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and Brown, and other leading foreign and Indian institutions, they said.
“We conduct leadership development programmes in collaboration with top universities and educational institutions that assess the capabilities of leaders in crucial areas,” said Dilip Pattanayak, Chief Human Resources Officer, JSW Group. “We have so far successfully developed around 50 senior leaders through this process.”
Sandeep Bhalla, head of consulting business at Korn Ferry, said the primary goal behind investing in CXO training is to enable “CXOs to embrace the new world and new challenges, bring fresh perspectives to self-revolutionize their business or function, and apply innovation to grow the business in turbulent times.”
The Mahindra Group has introduced talent acceleration programmes such as ‘Future Shapers’, which has trained around 80 participants in three batches so far, and ‘MALT’, which covers around 100 associates in three batches, group chief executive Anish Shah said.
“The goal is to help build the leadership pipeline by providing development opportunities and enabling job and leadership rotations. We invest significantly in high-potential talent pools across the group by partnering with world-class institutions such as CMU, Harvard and Russel Reynolds Associates, to name a few,” Shah said.
Madhu Srivastava, Group Chief Human Resources Officer, Vedanta, said the key focus areas and learning objectives of such programmes include understanding the complexities and processes involved in successfully executing a demerger, developing skills to effectively manage and lead organisational changes and ensuring smooth transitions during restructuring to minimise disruptions and maintain productivity.
An Adani Group spokesperson said, “We offer the best of global learning at our facilities. Our learnings are highly experiential and immersive. We conduct them at our various assets such as ports, airports, mines and other manufacturing facilities. This way, participants get the experience of applying the learnings in the workplace.”
Executives said another reason to invest in leadership training is that rapid business growth since the end of the pandemic has required robust leadership succession plans.
“Most of our businesses are showing very good growth in India and abroad. With this growth, it is important to develop the talent pool,” said Godrej Industries Group’s Mitra.
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