Developing Competencies for Sustainable Employee Performance in the Pharma Sector: Interview with Sunandha Govindan

SunandhaGovindan, Learning & Development professionalat StridesPharma Inc, is an experienced HR professionalwith a demonstrated history of working in the pharmaceuticals, automobile andITES industry.

Sunandha is aHR specialist skilled in talent development, talent and performance management,employee training as well as training systems projects (LMS, eLearning),content design & development, in addition to her capabilities in digitallearning, training reports & metrics, HR operations, staffing and employeeengagement.

With a strongpassion to deliver quality work and value for individuals and making theirlives better, Sunandha is dedicated to her HR role. When she’s not busyhandling her range of responsibilities at Strides, Sunandha enjoys dancing,baking, and doing arts and crafts with her adorable child.

In acomprehensive chat with us, Sunandha highlights the importance of L&D inthe pharma industry and the role of an LMS in developing competencies forsustainable employee performance.

According to ICRA, Indian pharma industry isto grow at 11-13% in FY2020. What does this growth rate mean for Strides withrespect to its employee training and development?

Employeecapability development has always been our primary goal. The current mission ofour L&D function is to work as a unified team, contribute to the growth andprofitability of our organization by partnering with our customers to drivelearning that is strategic, measurable, and effective. In addition, we also aimto provide our customers with the tools and training necessary for job excellenceand career advancement. With this, we only foresee a lot of competencies to bedeveloped for a sustainable employee performance and efficiency.

How does Strides leverage technology, an LMS inparticular, to achieve its L&D objectives and, in context of the biggerpicture, business goals?

Employee participation in classroom training is always a challenge. So, we would like to take training to the learner by providing anytime-anywhere access to learning, especially compliance and regulatory training that is handy for the learners without hindering their work hours.

This is now achievable with UpsideLMS as it brings mobility and scalable solutions to our learners. With enhanced new features in UpsideLMS the learning can be made fun and interactive to drawing learners’ attention. I call it involuntary learning.

As an Assistant Manager – HR and T&D, whatdo you foresee for the future of the workplace? Technologies, Trends, L&DApproaches etc.?

I see great potentialin building an employer brand with a catalog of different training deliveredthrough different modes; various other features of learning, like microlearning,videos, virtual classroom etc. can enable a different approach towards learning,thereby building learners’ ability to perform better.