On April 1st, Ujjivan’s first 27 Management Trainees celebrated completing one year at Ujjivan. They went through one month of training after which they were assigned to various departments and designations based on individual assessments of their skills and interests. Each trainee was given a lot of responsibility in their respective departments and moved onto various roles across the organization, including Area Manager, Credit Manager, Product Manager, Financial Analyst, Operations Manager, Recruitment & Training Manager, etc. After exceptional performance, some have even been promoted to Distribution Manager and HR Manager over the course of the last year.

After the successes of the Management Development Program (MDP) last year, Ujjivan has hired 26 new Management Trainees from Business School and Agricultural Universities across the country that are currently going through a one and a half month training program.

The MDP this year was based on the concept of “believing by seeing and doing” and was tailored based on feedback from the first batch of Management Trainees. It is designed to help Ujjivan build the right kind of leadership in the organization to take it forward. It involves classroom sessions, projects/exercises and field exposure to ensure a thorough understanding of the organization and more broadly, the microfinance industry as a whole. As an organization growing and expanding at a rapid rate, trainees are encouraged to give their opinions, recommendations and suggestions on how Ujjivan can improve as they learn about different parts of the organization.

More emphasis is given to the field process, where the trainees are sent to various branches in North Karnataka and Tamilnadu to conduct surveys. This helps in providing hands on experience regarding issues at the grass root level. The inputs provided in the reports are considered for evaluation and will be one of the criteria’s during the trainees’ assessments.

To complement the classroom and field training, Ujjivan has organized a Leadership Talk Series and invited eminent leaders and pioneers from the social sector to share their experiences and thoughts. Last year’s talk series was a huge success and featured speakers including Shukla Bose, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, K.R. Ramamoorthy and Subroto Bagchi. This year, Ujjivan invited leaders like Mr. Al Fernandez, Mr. A. Vikraman, Mr. Rajiv Sabharwal, General Arjun Ray, Mr. Sitaram Rao, Mr. KR Ramamoorthy and Mr. Jerry Rao.

From the end of May, the trainees will begin their new careers in various departments across Ujjivan in Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata and Pune. Ujjivan has high hopes that last year’s group as well as this year’s will serve as Ujjivan’s next generation of leaders to push the company forward.