Sep-2021

On the occasion of International Literacy Day, a notebooks distribution drive was organized. The leadership team at Cigniti distributed 2500 notebooks and 1000 workbooks to Mamidipally Government School, as part of Project Cignificance, Cigniti’s flagship CSR education program. The books were distributed to 55O primary and high school students.

As part of the initiatives 10,000 notebooks and 3000 workbooks to over 3000 students in 12 government schools in Shamshabad, Hyderabad will be distributed in September.

Ms. C Rajeshwari, w/o Chairman & MD, Mr. C V Subramanyam, Ms. Urmila M, SVP – Corporate Services, along with other teams members from Cigniti presented the notebooks and interacted with the children and teachers of the school.

Where Covid 19 has affected every aspect of life around the globe, from individual relationships to institutional operations to international collaborations, Cigniti took the opportunity to bring out some philanthropy in its people. The calling for nominations for the Covid Support Team –‘Driven by Employees to Help Employees’ was widely accepted and had over 73 volunteers who came together to support fellow Cignitians and families affected by Covid.

Be it sharing information about authentic sources to procure oxygen and life-saving drugs that were short of supply, or reaching out to fellow employees with fresh food, or dropping off medicines at their door, the volunteers were just an ask away.

Kudos to all the Covid Volunteers for their willingness and support extended and for re-affirming a sense of belongingness to the ‘Big Cigniti Family’.

‘My Covid Story’ was a series of emails publishing the real-time experiences of Cigniti’s Covid Warriors that battled their way to recovery. The intent was to spread positivity and hope amongst those who suffered the Coronavirus infection themselves or their family and are experiencing psychological trauma due to isolation and quarantine.

Thank You to the Covid Warriors for sharing their stories and reinstalling hope which helped speed up their healing process. Certainly, all the stories are inspirational!

Inoculation has become the need of the hour. Following suit with most corporates and institutions in the industry, Cigniti initiated Covid vaccination for its employees and their dependents and organized on-campus Vaccination drives on 21st, 24th, and 25th June ’21. With over 500 registrations, including the employees and their dependents. The team meticulously planned and allocated the date and time slots to ensure a smooth and hassle-free process. For employees spread across other locations, a reimbursement facility was kept open between June – July ’21. While the cost of the vaccination for employees is covered by Cigniti, their dependents were provided vaccination at a subsidized cost.

Also, in the recent vaccination drives, Cigniti has set up on-site doctor consultation, BP Check facilities, and eye-catchy photo booths to promote more vaccinations, while ensuring necessary precautions of Sanitization, Masking, and Social Distancing.

A sincere appreciation to the Covid Helpdesk volunteers for the support rendered in handling the queries around the vaccination drives and the supporting teams who collaborated and ensured flawless execution through the program.

International Father’s Day 2021 was a day of dedication to the Super Hero we fondly call ‘Dad’. ‘Down the memory lane with Dad’ and ‘Picture Perfect with Dad’ were apt initiatives to revive our memories of growing up under the watchful guidance of an affectionate Father.

The stories shared truly transported the readers down the memory lane where one can relate to similar experiences back in the years and pass on a tribute to all fathers around the world.

The year 2020, in the wake of the Pandemic, opened up a window to take a closer look at our ecosystem and harmonize with it by ways of reduced pollution, widened landscape for other species that coexist with us in our habitat, and experience the richness of a cleaner environment.

Reflecting over a few practices that will help us comprehend our dependency on Mother Nature, a week-long initiative, ‘#GoEco’ – was launched globally. Each day was focused on one Eco-friendly practice, and a corresponding challenge was given openly to everyone.
The responses were encouraging, and the colorful pictures captured in response to the daily challenge portrayed the spirit of harmony with Nature.

The Team Leader Essentials is a unique program curated for the employees stepping into the role of a Team Lead for the first time in their professional career. The program will provide the TL with the essential skills required to transition from the role of an Individual Contributor to that of a first line Manager.

To guide the newly promoted Team Leads, Talent Development has launched the program on Team Leader Essentials in the year 2019, which will equip them to navigate the role with character and competence. The updated version of the program is reintroduced post the 2021 performance management cycle and the newly promoted TL’s participated in the program and learned the tenets of team management.

Entering a corporate world can be exciting but is unnerving at the same time. For a college graduate, the transition from college to corporate is quite a daunting task, and to enter a new virtual world without understanding the basic environment can be stressful.

The Graduate Development program was created with the goal of empowering fresh graduates with tools for refining their personal and professional excellence. The Graduates not only experience technical trainings but also communication, and behavioral knowledge to navigate through this new phase in life and professional career.

Bias is an intentional or unintentional preference for or against a specific group or individual. It occurs as a result of routine mental shortcuts that occur in our brains. Unconscious bias is a threat to team collaboration and leads to altercations in the team. Unfolding the consequences of bias at the workplace is of utmost importance for an organization in building a harmonious workplace that provides psychological safety to the workforce.

Talent Development in collaboration with HR curated a program on – Managing Unconscious Bias for all employees across the board. The program provides deeper insights to the participant on identifying the biases that lead to discrimination and learn ways to embrace diversity and inclusion. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) guides the participant to identify their personal blind spots and move from “unconscious “to “conscious” state of mind at workplace. Launched in Nov 2020, 1400, Cignitians benefitted from this program, thus far.

Have you ever started a new job and felt befuddled on day one? Was it easy for you to “hit the ground running,” or did it take you a long time to adjust to the new workplace?

HR in association with Talent development conceptualized the idea of New hire buddy mentoring program and launched this initiative in June 2021. Assigning a workplace buddy to assist with the move into the new role may be quite valuable to a new hire, particularly during the initial phase of settling in.

The program objective is to facilitate a smooth transition of a New Hire into the organization, provide guidance, encouragement and impart knowledge on “how to get things done” in the Cigniti way.

Learning is important for an individual to grow in any domain. Sometimes due to time zone barriers, it becomes difficult for onsite associates to seize the opportunity and enhance their skills and knowledge by being a part of regular programs. Talent development has introduced exclusive onsite learning interventions as part of the global learning calendar. The training programs were both technical and behavioral, which benefited them in their day-to-day work.

A homespun web application was developed by the TD team with an objective of providing active tracking of learning programs and corresponding learning hours. This will help employees in planning and completing 40 hours of mandatory learning.

The portal also features skill registry, certification, job role and resume upload. In June 2021, a campaign is launched to encourage employees to update their skills in the portal as it is important to leverage the abilities of employees and assess the current capability to meet the changing demands of the market. Special thanks to HR, PMO and Delivery Leaders for making this drive a successful one.

Talent development launched the Certification reimbursement policy in the month of June 2021 with an aim to encourage the employees to enhance their skills & knowledge. This policy will aid employees in certifying themselves in the areas which are in demand by the job role, the client or by individual interest. For a better understanding of the policy, organization-wide road shows were conducted in June 2021 for all Functions

Organizations have entered a digital-first environment in which technology is critical. It is undeniable that digital dexterity is a necessary skill for today’s workforce – and this is where many businesses are experiencing stagnation. While the corporation may have made the transition to digital, its employees may not have prepared. The reason could be a lack of knowledge on the new tools and platforms, a lack of technical know-how, a reluctance to adopt digital technology.

The Global Head of Talent Development-Sirisha Kommireddi participated in the ETHR World-Round Table on ‘’Convergence of digital technologies and skilling to future-proof your workforce” in June-21. She alluded that companies must make it easier for their workforce to accept and learn the necessary skills to reach new levels of success. To better prepare their workforce for the business of tomorrow, Cigniti is exploring the usage of digital platforms/eLearning content providers in finetuning their skilling processes. She added that Organizations must move from the traditional training approaches to the blended training models, leveraging digital technologies and create a personalized capability matrix for every employee.

As we continue to strengthen our partnerships with BFSI enterprises, we hosted three networking events in New York, Boston and Chicago recently. Kalyana Rao Konda, President and Pradeep Govindasamy, CTO & President, and Srinivas Jasti, Vice President, represented Cigniti from the executive leadership team and hosted the industry leaders from enterprises such as Citigroup, ICS, Broadridge, ISG, Citadel Securities, Federal Reserve Bank NY, and FedOne in the New York and Boston meet. A private networking event was also hosted at Wrigley Field for the Cubs-White Sox game for the BFSI enterprise leaders to meet and greet for networking.

We sponsored the World Test Engineering Summit where Deepak Vijayaragavan, Vice President, Global Delivery, Cigniti was a part of a Panel Discussion on Technology Trends Impacting Quality Assurance, Quality Engineering, and Digital Assurance’ and ‘Driving Innovation with DevOps.

Kalyana Rao Konda, President, Cigniti attended a networking event organized by Philly CIO – preeminent executive peer leadership development organization of Philadelphia chief information officers to discuss strategic ideas with the leaders of the industry in person after such a long hiatus!

Pradeep Govindasamy, CTO & President, Cigniti attended a networking event organized by DFW CXO – an organization that provides influential leaders an opportunity to make a positive and lasting impact in the community and in the workplace, to build relationships, share ideas, and develop new business opportunities after a long pause of pandemic!

Nanda Padmaraju, President, Cigniti discussed at the webinar to get an overview of the opportunities to invest in the UK. The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) explained the various investment services and many investment stories were shared from existing Indian investors.

Cigniti Technologies has been publishing several Whitepapers across industries to promote the latest technology trends and guiding the readers concisely on the complexities of Digital Assurance. Please feel free to share the latest whitepapers with your contacts.

For the Connected Vehicles Services, the IT team is playing an instrumental role in the delivery of ‘Connected Solutions’ to the Toyota customers. Cigniti Technologies is part of this amazing program and support it by providing testing services spanning functional, capability, performance and security testing. Telemetry data provided the vehicle is processed through Toyota platforms to deliver a different set of product suites to Guests. A mobile app allows the Guest to access a range of connected features based on subscriptions.

Cigniti has been involved across Data Services testing and Non-functional test assessments covering the length and breadth of the program. We intend to continue our association with Toyota Connected Services program to support the future generation capabilities in the connected space.

Toyota Connected Services offer an advanced suite of smart technologies designed to simplify guest’s everyday life. Current services include Automatic Collision Notification (ACN), SOS Emergency Call (SOS) and Stolen Vehicle Tracking (SVT). This program is considered one of the steppingstones to realize Toyota’s vision of being a ‘Mobility Solutions’ company.