Chief Learning Officer Magazine and Brandon Hall Research Center Each Award NIIT ELS Business Top Honors, Training Magazine Names NIIT a Training Top 125 Finalist

Honors highlight the company excellence in designing, training and implementing programs for global organizations

ATLANTA, Georgia November 29, 2010  NIIT, a global talent development company that delivers transformative strategies through its outsourced Managed Training Services, received the prestigious Learning in Practice Award from Chief Learning Officer (CLO) magazine while Brandon Hall named NIIT a Silver winner at the 2010 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards. NIIT received the CLO Gold Excellence Award for its accomplishments in the Excellence in Content category with KFC, a division of YUM! Brands Inc. Brandon Hall honored NIIT for its work with Diageo, the world leading drinks manufacturer in the Best Results of a Learning Program category. For the third consecutive year, Training magazine named NIIT a finalist for the annual Training Top 125, which ranks companies excellence in employer-sponsored training and development programs.  The rankings for the 125 leading organizations will be unveiled during an awards gala at the Training 2011 Conference & Expo, to be held February 7-9 in San Diego, CA.

The Learning in Practice Awards were established to recognize transformational and visionary leaders in enterprise education, said Norm Kamikow, president and editor in chief of Chief Learning Officer (CLO) magazine. A record number of top learning executives and solution providers were nominated by their peers this year. The winners are the industry leaders who truly champion innovation and transform it into learning and value for their organizations.

CLO awarded NIIT for its exceptional work with KFC.  Seeking a training solution to address loss prevention in its U.S. locations, KFC to positively impact behaviors through the use of real-world, scenario-based curriculum design. As the solution, NIIT designed a scripted series of interventions with believable characters in engaging virtual world scenarios that would drive home the right real-world behaviors.

NIIT and Diageo collaborated to design an e-learning program for Diageo new hires that will use the internal information systems. The program was designed as a modular, interactive and goal-oriented treasure hunt so that employees could learn about information systems in an immersive, flexible and experience based environment. Learning scenarios were developed based on data analyzed from critical mistakes that had the most critical business impact. The program was translated into French, Chinese, Russian and Spanish to meet the needs of a diverse, multi-cultural audience. The program also returned its investment back to Diageo within the first 90 days.

These winning entries are very impressive, said Brandon Hall, Ph.D., chairman of the Awards program. We are thrilled to recognize innovative learning of such high quality.

Collaborating with KFC and Diageo was right in line with NIIT mission to develop and deliver sharp, innovative business solutions to help clients accelerate business impact, said NIIT President and Business Unit Head Sapnesh Lalla. Delivering high levels of service, exceeding our customers expectations, continuously improving what we do, is where we measure our success: by our customers success.

Now in its 11th year, the Training Top 125 ranking is based on a myriad of benchmarking statistics such as a total training budget; percentage of payroll; number of training hours per employee program; goals, evaluation, measurement, and workplace surveys; hours of training per employee annually; and detailed formal programs. The ranking is determined by assessing a range of qualitative and quantitative factors, including financial investment in employee development, the scope of development programs, and how closely such development efforts are linked to business goals and objectives.

The 2011 Training Top 125 application focused on tying training to achievement of strategic corporate goals and showing demonstrable results, said Lorri Freifeld, editor-in-chief of Training magazine. As always, it was a difficult task to choose the winners from the many excellent applications we received. Congratulations to the 2011 winners, who continue to blaze paths in training design, development, delivery and measurement.

Since 1981, NIIT has earned more than 53 awards, including 14 Brandon Hall awards.