Case Study: Cognizant achieves rapid, scalable upskilling for 250,000 employees with Degreed

Keeping the Skills of 250,000 Employees on the Cutting Edge

Cognizant, a global IT services and consulting firm with roughly 285,800 employees across 38 countries, needed to keep a quarter-million people’s skills current in a rapidly changing industry. To create personalized, role-aligned learning at scale they chose Degreed’s learning experience platform, using features like Pathways, pods/learning groups (T‑Pod, M‑Pod, L‑Pod), machine-curated/context-sensitive recommendations, and a content marketplace to surface timely resources and support continuous learners.

Degreed helped Cognizant launch 40 pods and behavior-change campaigns to drive adoption, resulting in measurable impact: about 15% of the organization (~40,000 people) engaged, 262,691 resources viewed and nearly 900,000 hours of learning in year one, resource consumption grew from under 5,000 to over 25,000 in a single quarter, and skill development accelerated (Secure Coding in 1.5 weeks; Java Spring in 4 weeks). The program also produced 30% employee-curated Pathways content, identified the top 30 digital leaders, and achieved a 90% success rate across initial groups — clear business results delivered by Degreed.

Cognizant