Cognizant Starts 12-Week Paid Program For IT Employees Who Wish To ‘Restart’ Their Careers; But How?

Recently, the IT giant Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp has come up with a 12-week paid ‘Returnship Programme’ for technology professionals who are willing to restart their careers after a break.

Cognizant’s Returnship Programme

On Tuesday, the IT services major Cognizant announced a returnship program for technology professionals wanting to restart their careers.

While speaking on the subject,  chairman and managing director, Cognizant India, Rajesh Nambiar said, “a break in a professional’s career can give an opportunity to reflect, find areas of focus, and return stronger to the next phase of a professional journey with a renewed sense of purpose,”. 

Further adding that, ”Many such talented professionals looking to return to the workforce are women, and Cognizant’s inaugural cohort includes women taking on Engineering Management Roles in the Digital Engineering practice,”.

The main behind this initiative is to provide a supportive environment to the returners along with access to training, upskilling, mentorship, and other resources. 

How Does This Help?

As part of this program, it will provide an opportunity to these professionals as they will be able to work with cutting-edge technology.

Subsequently, they will be considered for full-time positions at Cognizant.

According to Nambiar, “The programme is an innovative way to get diverse talent in the door, irrespective of when their last professional role was,”.

Other Women Centric Initiatives

Apart from this, Cognizant has also established women-centric hiring and retention goals for company leaders, making it a part of the formal annual performance ratings process. 

So far, women professionals form around 38% of the Cognizant’s total workforce in India.

Out of that,  almost 45% of the workforce resides in tier-2 cities.

The IT giant talks about a focus on accelerating gender diversity in its leadership pipeline.

Encouraging Women Leadership

It has also pledged to put 1,000 high performing women in leadership roles by 2021, according to Nambiar. 

He further added that this will be done through Propel, a global leadership development initiative.

The initiative aims to help women at mid-management levels to accelerate their careers through coaching and mentoring in partnership with external certified executive coaches.