STAYING SHARP AT SCALE

Keeping the Skills of 250,000

Employees on the Cutting Edge

SUCCESS STORY: COGNIZANT | degreed.com 1

CLIENT

FOUNDED EMPLOYEES USE CASES

1994 285,800 globally • Skill measurement and
certification
HEAD OFFICES FEATURES USED • Empower employees to own
Teaneck, NJ • Personal learning network their learning
• Machine-curated & context- • Simplify the fragmented learning
INDUSTRY sensitive recommendation of experience
IT Services and Consulting learning resources
• Content market place

CHALLENGE SOLUTION RESULTS

Helping a quarter-million
employees in 38 countries stay
on the cutting edge of the always-
changing information technology
industry.
Build a platform that provides
context-sensitive content
recommendations aligned to
job types, which recognizes the
company’s continuous learners
and supports anyone who is willing
to adapt.
Accelerated skill development
from months to weeks and was
able to identify the top 30 digital
leaders. 15% of the organization is
currently participating in “learning
groups” with positive feedback and
a wide-reaching business impact.

SUMMARY

Cognizant helps its client companies lead their digital transformation, and
they needed to do the same for their employees’ growth. With Degreed,
they built a platform that featured “learning groups” (referred to as
“learning pods”) for leaders, managers, and technical workers. Users
reported that the new tool was easy to use and helped make learning a
habit. Now thousands of employees are directing their own development in
ways that align with Cognizant’s strategic priorities: increasing learning
agility, supporting future-readiness, and developing skills that align with
organizational roles and business priorities.

SUCCESS STORY: COGNIZANT | degreed.com 2

CHALLENGE
Cognizant is one of the world’s largest information
technology (IT) companies. Their clients are the
most powerful firms in every industry — healthcare,
banking, transport, energy, media, and many more.
Clients look to Cognizant for technological guidance
while redesigning business models, innovating existing
products, and overhauling operations. This is what
it means to “be digital and do digital,” as folks at
Cognizant like to say.
But how could Cognizant do this for its own people?
What would it take to help employees become as
adaptable and innovative as their clients?
Cognizant has over 250,000 employees spread
across offices in 38 countries and 80 cities. Plus, in
the IT industry, skills have a shockingly short shelf life.
So Cognizant had to find a solution that addressed
both scale and speed. Employees needed personalized
learning paths with timely and relevant resources. The
firm needed clarity on how these paths would fall in
line with overall organizational priorities, even as some
business strategies might change in the future.
Cognizant started looking for a learning experience
platform. It needed to feature curated resources,
IN POD WE TRUST
T-POD M-POD
Supports technical workers with Serves managers of people, projects,
Pathways for certification and and products, fitting their on-the-go
IN POD WE TRUST
groups for troubleshooting. lifestyles and making it easy to share
with teams.
SUCCESS STORY: COGNIZANT | degreed.com
selected by individuals, peers, experts, and algorithms.
The platform ought to promote agility with the ability
for users to receive support from personal networks. It
also needed to integrate seamlessly with any content —
internal or external. And of course, it had to look elegant
and intuitive.
SOLUTION
Degreed delivered on all of Cognizant’s needs — and
then some.
Needing structure for many different employees,
Cognizant formed “pods” for three types of learning.
The ‘pod model’ was a change management framework
developed within Cognizant to align with the company’s
principle, “experience, believe, evangelize.”
The T-Pod supported technical workers with Pathways
for certification and groups for troubleshooting. The
M-Pod served managers of people, projects, and
products, fitting their on-the-go lifestyles and making it
easy to share with teams. The L-Pod was for leadership
and onboarded their key business leaders and helped
them experience the Degreed platform. It delivered
daily nuggets based on personal interests, and it offered
peer-to-peer connections with other leaders.
L-POD
Onboarding key business leaders
and helping them experience the
Degreed platform. It delivers daily
nuggets based on personal interests,
and it offers peer-to-peer connec-
tions with other leaders.
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Once leadership understood the potential of Degreed learning hours. And 30% of learning content curated in
and the program approach, they became internal Pathways has been from employees outside the L&D
ambassadors, helping other employees get started on team.
their pods and Pathways.

The best thing about Degreed is

Building skills was just half of the task, though.
Cognizant also sought to shift the learning culture of
that I can choose a topic of interest
their organization. To do this, they enacted a behavior and a daily snippet or an article on
change strategy that involved development, role- that subject comes in automatically.
modeling, understanding, and reinforcement. This way I can learn something
piece by piece over a period. The
Development and role-modeling started the culture key is that it creates a habit of
shift. Cognizant rolled out campaigns, webinars, learning and that is important.
and challenges to teach the basics of the platform —Cognizant employee
and to help employees create a habit of learning.
Once some employees started catching on, the
But making strategic alterations at this scale also
company celebrated them as role models. Monthly
required some change management and one special
leaderboards highlighted the most active and
challenge was consistency. Degreed allowed anyone
influential users.
to design learning Pathways, which Cognizant wanted,
but before long, the countless new Pathways were
Positive reinforcement solidified the new learning
scattered and unstandardized. Users became confused
culture. Employees received personalized messages
and overwhelmed. In response, the learning and
reminding them of the importance of learning and
development team created guidelines for Pathways,
how the Degreed platform aligns with company
disseminating them through orientation materials.
priorities. Six weeks in, Cognizant started a feedback
Quickly, the Pathways were organized and streamlined.
loop to monitor responses to the change. After all this,
workers reflected on how learning helped fulfill their
Another trick was sustaining engagement after initial
larger goals.
enthusiasm faded. Cognizant launched campaigns —
such as 101 Reasons to Learn and Be Future Ready — that
According to Cognizant, analyses of various data
kept people coming back to learn more. They also
sets indicate that the culture of learning within the
devised gamification strategies for the different pods:
company moved from “needs-based to a preemptive
weekly tech competitions for the T-Pod, a ten-day
and continual approach.” For example, the amount
habit-building challenge for the M-Pod, and a series on
of time spent on informal learning in just 2 quarters
learning methodologies for the L-Pod.
has been almost equivalent to a full year of formal

SUCCESS STORY: COGNIZANT | degreed.com 4


A PLATFORM FOR THE PEOPLE
Cognizant employees love Degreed; it helps them find
relevant content, build their skills, and make a daily
habit out of learning.
“I drew inspiration from the other learners.”
—T-Pod participant
“Degreed helps me with curated content that is
relevant for my area of work.”
—L-Pod participant
“The Degreed 10-Day Challenge increased my
motivation. Now at least once a day, I spend
some time improving my knowledge.”
—T-Pod participant
Want to get started? Need more info?
We want to meet you! Visit us at degreed.com
or email us today at info@degreed.com
SUCCESS STORY: COGNIZANT | degreed.com
RESULTS
After the first year, the improvements are undeniable.
Cognizant launched 40 pods, reaching about 15% of
the organization — approximately 40,000 people.
They viewed 262,691 resources in the first year,
totaling nearly 900,000 hours of learning. Half of all
users voluntarily continued to learn beyond what was
required. The growth rate of learning was exponential,
as the resources consumed quintupled from under
5,000 to over 25,000 in just one quarter.
The business impacts became clear, too. A team
working on Secure Coding Practices accelerated
their skill development in only a week-and-a-half;
another team working on Java Spring did the same in
four weeks. Product managers in Digital Engineering
embraced social learning as an effective approach to
keep themselves up-to-date with the latest trends.
Another business unit identified its top 30 digital
leaders through a series of challenges on Degreed.
According to Cognizant’s statistical parameters, 90% of
the 40 groups in the initial rollout were successful.
Ultimately, the platform boosted curiosity, developed
necessary skills, and built a dynamic network for
learning. It was through that trio that Cognizant helped
itself create a digital transformation and reskill their
employees. There aren’t a whole lot of guarantees in the
IT world, but one is that change is inevitable. By building
a culture of learning, Cognizant is able to stay ready for
whatever’s next.
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