As a global technology company, Fortude has built a culture of learning and development that empowers its employees with many growth opportunities. Building on its Diversity and Inclusion efforts, Fortude offers equal opportunities to all as a Learning Organization. Today, the company specializes in delivering enterprise, analytics, software engineering, automation, and digital solutions to global customers, across several industries – making learning and development an essential area of growth within the company.
Accordingly, Fortude has adopted a different approach to improving the agility of its workforce. It has invested in creating a continuous learning and improvement culture across its global network. In doing so, the organization aims to empower every employee, from interns to experienced professionals, to consistently improve their skills and grow in their careers.
Creating an impactful learning culture through L&D
Fortude has implemented a unique learning and development (L&D) strategy benchmarked against global best practices in the IT industry. In addition, the Fortude L&D team creates tailor-made training initiatives for different individuals based on the results of regular surveys and individual needs stemming from development plans. These approaches provide everyone at the company a voice to share how they wish to grow in their careers. The development plans include aspects of personal leadership aspirations, communication, recognition, and more. Acting on these findings, it seeks to improve learning initiatives continuously. Below are a few examples of these initiatives aimed at experienced professionals and the company’s newer recruits.
Recognizing Continuous Development at Fortude
A 2022 research report from LinkedIn Learning shows that 82% of the Gen Z workforce prefers a diverse and inclusive culture that supports growth and equality in the workplace. This includes Mental Health days, hybrid and remote work environments, and rewards and recognition. Accordingly, the company runs quarterly and annual programs to recognize and reward employees for their efforts to be ‘Learning Champions’ within the organization. These initiatives all play a vital part in the company’s aim of becoming renowned for continuously upholding learning, aiming to evolve towards the ideal Learning Organisation in the global tech landscape.
The Fortude Discovery Program
This initiative is Fortude’s creatively curated new employee orientation program, which seeks to acclimatize newer Fortudites to the workplace’s work, life, and culture. It also helps employees navigate the company and meet its leaders for insightful experiences, working with global organizations across several industries. The program takes place within the first 3 months of an individual’s journey with the organization. Having participated in the program, Associate – HR Business Partnering at Fortude, Surindu Goonewardene, said, “The Executive Presence Training session by Loretta Gunewardena was spot on. She engaged the audience individually and got everyone to have a voice.”
Dedicated time and resources for eLearning
Fortude has endorsed using LinkedIn Learning, Udemy for Business, PluralSight, Infor Campus, and other learning platforms to upskill its staff. The content from these resources covers both technical and soft skills. Moreover, the company encourages employees to commit to 2 hours of learning every week; or set a time at their convenience. Commenting on these initiatives, Manager – IT Business Partnering at Fortude, Nirasha Fernando, shared, “I am very passionate about learning something new every day. The weekly allocation of hours for learning and development is a testament to the company’s journey in becoming a global digital learning organization.”
Coaching and mentoring programs
Fortude also organizes frequent coaching and mentoring programs with the expertise of globally certified coaches and institutions. These programs vary from one-to-one coaching for individuals taking up leadership roles to sessions coaching teams at a group level. Alongside this, internal mentoring sessions are also conducted at Fortude by those coached through accredited programs. These efforts to share experiences are aligned with the organizational values of Humility and a Hunger to Learn.
Sharing his views, Infor ERP Consultant at Fortude, Nimendra Withanage, said, “The coaching and mentoring sessions are very useful in communicating aspects of the company’s culture. For example, the ‘Better Together’ internal training session highlights the importance of diversity and inclusion while also teaching us to identify and overcome our biases.” Assistant Manager – IT Business Partnering at Fortude, Keheliya Amarasinghe, added, “A recently held group session has helped me understand the importance of observation, which led to me improving my networking with others. It was beneficial, and I would recommend it to anyone!”
Tech Talks
Fortude’s tech SMEs conduct monthly discussions with all staff members to share knowledge and expertise on critical topics and ongoing projects. Senior Lead Database – Administrator at Fortude, Vysakh Das, commented, “The tech talks, such as the Introduction to DevOps Practices, are always easy to understand and have the perfect content relevant to the topic.” Trainee Consultant – BI at Fortude, Theekshana Manujaya, added, “These sessions are great and are something I had wanted for a long time.”
The Fortude Academy
Fortude’s Learning mantra is to provide best-in-class, globally relevant, people-centric learning readily available at the fingertips of its employees. As such, initiatives under the company’s growing, internally-developed learning platform, the Fortude Academy, are critical in providing its teams with the resources they need for learning. In addition, the company has developed Skill-Up and Knowledge-Hub Portals, which act as a repository of all training materials, accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Thus, Fortude’s culture and the satisfaction of its employees stand as a testament to the work done by the company in bringing itself closer to this grand goal of offering equal opportunities to all as a Learning Organization.