ZEE Entertainment introduces ‘Embark’ to reskill line managers

Technological disruptions are posing serious challenges for businesses as well as HR. It is becoming increasingly important to reskill employees to keep pace with the changing times and working styles. No organisation wishes to lag behind competition just because it was unable to adapt to the changing world.

Realising how important it is to match the competency of its employees with future challenges, ZEE Entertainment has launched a learning and development (L&D) programme called ‘Embark’, to skill and enhance the capabilities of its front-line managers.

The ‘Embark’ programme focusses on building behavioural and functional capabilities. The firm believes that line managers are the bridge between broad management strategies and on-ground execution of those strategies.

Under this programme, ZEE is planning to train 450 line managers across the organisation, through more than 25000 hours of training and development. The company claims this to be one of the largest L&D programmes in the media and entertainment industry.

“Managers are culture carriers, performance multipliers, risk mitigators and brand custodians of any company. With ‘Embark’, we aim to offer a holistic learning programme for our front-line managers that will empower them with an innovative and advanced working style and technical expertise,” says Animesh Kumar, chief people officer, ZEE Entertainment.

ZEE has decided to conduct this seven-month long programme in four key phases. The programme focuses on building behavioural, digital and technical skills in employees and also aims to facilitate the transition of the employees into new managerial roles.

ZEE has partnered with KPMG India, to conduct the L&D programme.

“Managers are culture carriers, performance multipliers, risk mitigators and brand custodians of any company. With ‘Embark’, we aim to offer a holistic learning programme for our front-line managers that will empower them with an innovative and advanced working style and technical expertise”

“We are glad to partner with KPMG in India for this pioneering initiative that will help build a managerial capability intervention within the organisation, focused on internal talent growth,” shares Kumar.

With its workforce being rather young, ZEE has to deal with a generation that wants to grow and achieve a lot in their life. Apart from the recent intervention, ZEE had on-the-go learning interventions for employees. The Company provided online courses to its employees, which they were allowed to undergo at their own pace.

Considering the current disruptions, challenges, and emerging trends in the M&E industry, ‘Embark’ will help reinforce ZEE Entertainment’s commitment to invest in its talent pool and bring in best practices on managerial effectiveness and leadership development.

To harness the power of making extraordinary a reality, ZEE Entertainment, through this partnership, will build a motivated workforce that will continue to provide the Company with superlative performance across functions. The initiative will revolve around building an organisational ecosystem that attracts the best talent, thereby enabling the Company to deliver exceptional performance.

Beyond L&D, ZEE also has a robust feedback-based performance-management system, called ‘Samwaad’. Here, the employees share their innovative ideas and managers provide a bit of feedback to them. The programme was aimed at encouraging employees to experiment.

With turbulent times ahead, organisations need to brace themselves with such L&D interventions to survive and stay relevant.