Amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s resurgence, India-based employees of our valued customer, ACS Solutions, were feeling isolated and confused by a flood of non-validated medical misinformation being disseminated across social media. So, the company’s regional learning and development team decided to take action.
In our monthly review—in which ACS, Skillsoft, and key partner Excel Design Technologies (EDT)—discuss learning & development strategy, Anju Singh, ACS’ Associate Director of L&D, led our conversation with an important observation:
“We help our clients build innovations for timely fields in the pandemic era, like telemedicine. And my L&D team is proud to train our workforce to meet their needs. But we’re only at our best for ACS’ clients, if we’re taking care of our own employees’ physical and mental health. How can we shift our focus toward prioritizing those fundamental human needs?”
Inspired by Anju’s call to action, we mapped out plans to launch a custom learning channel on the Skillsoft Percipio platform. Through this channel, thousands of employees at ACS would gain access to content created, curated, and approved by trusted medical professionals at the Mayo Clinic.
After building the channel, our mission was clear. We needed to encourage employees in India to log in, experience the helpful content, and apply their learnings towards taking care of themselves, each other, and their loved ones. And this is where the unique dynamic of our team truly shined.
As we shared and built upon each other’s ideas, you could feel the collaborative energy in the room, between myself, Anju, and our partner Paras Raina, CS Manager, from EDT. Taking nothing to chance, our team developed a thoughtful plan of action.
- We began by launching the custom channel for ACS employees. This not only raised visibility of the learning resources—it also made it easy for employees to benefit from helpful content, track their progress, and find relevant information. Percipio’s automated reminders kept the channel top of mind, as employees balanced life and work amid the pandemic’s effects.
- ACS encouraged employees take a simple yet powerful step after completing courses: Redeem the digital badges they earned—and share them through social media. This empowered the team to counter inaccurate information circulating online with truthful, Mayo-verified content. Badges ranged from COVID-19 safety to mental wellness practices.
- To further help the ACS India workforce, the ACS/EDT/Skillsoft team created a habit calendar that ACS employees used to keep track of what they’ve learned and put it to use.
We knew we were making a difference when employees began volunteering their own expertise to add to the library of content. For example, we recently learned that one ACS employee created a yoga class, to further support colleagues’ mental health. And it’s moments like that, which remind me of how lucky I am to work with such amazing companies that take care of their learners.
I’d like to specially recognize the incredible ACS team that made this possible:
Mr. Shameel Sharma;(COO/CHRO)
Anju Singh; Associate HR Director
Rajiv Amlani; Director (Legal)
Ramesh Nandyala; Senior Director, HR
Jeena Peter; Senior Director HR
Thank you, ACS Solutions and Excel Design Technologies, for inspiring all of us.
