Organizations excel in creating learning cultures that achieve results.

ASTD honored 30 organizations from Bahrain, Canada, India, and the United States as winners in the 2012 ASTD BEST Awards competition. NIIT Technologies Ltd., from Noida, India, won the first place ranking. The companies were recognized during a ceremony held at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

“These 30 companies get it,” says Tony Bingham, ASTD President and CEO. “They excel in creating innovative, vibrant learning cultures that clearly align with strategic business goals. The leadership of these organizations values learning and knows that having a knowledgeable and skilled workforce drives success.”

The ASTD BEST Awards is the training industry’s most rigorous and coveted recognition. The program recognizes organizations that demonstrate enterprise-wide success through employee learning and development.

The 2012 ASTD BEST Award winners are recognized in a special section of the October issue of T+D, ASTD’s flagship magazine, and shared their best practices at the Learn from the BEST conference earlier in the day.

Through an online application ASTD received entries from 84 organizations in 14 countries. These organizations submitted quantitative and qualitative information to ASTD about their learning and development practices and programs. Their applications were assessed in a rigorous blind review by members of the BEST Awards advisory committee, a group of experts in the learning and development field.

**The 2012 ASTD BEST Award winners and rankings:

**1. NIIT Technologies Ltd., Noida, India

2. Savvis, A CenturyLink Company, Town and Country, Missouri

3. Cerner Corporation, Kansas City, Missouri

4. Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company, Sitra, Bahrain

5. WakeMed Health & Hospitals, Raleigh, North Carolina

6. BB&T, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

7. TELUS, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

8. ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd., Mumbai, India

9. Suzlon Energy Ltd., Pune, India

10. Summit Credit Union, Madison, Wisconsin

11. Shell Oil Company – Jiffy Lube International, Houston, Texas

12. Clarkston Consulting, Durham, North Carolina

13. U.S. Security Associates, Inc., Roswell, Georgia

14. Memphis Light, Gas and Water, Memphis, Tennessee

15. Morrison Management Specialists, Atlanta, Georgia

16. OptumRx, Irvine, California

17. Cognizant Technology Solutions, Teaneck, New Jersey

18. New York Community Bancorp, Inc., Westbury, New York

19. Terumo BCT, Lakewood, Colorado

20. UPS, Atlanta, Georgia

21. Tech Mahindra Limited, Pune, India

22. Ryan, LLC, Dallas, Texas

23. Cigna Corporation, Bloomfield, Connecticut

24. SSM Health Care, St. Louis, Missouri

25. Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India

26. SunTrust Banks, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia

27. Fluor Corporation, Dallas, Texas

28. Deloitte LLP, New York, New York

29. Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Lexington, Kentucky

30. Health Care Service Corporation, Chicago, Illinois

In addition, 12 companies on this list have been ASTD BEST Award winners for three years or more. They are:  BB&T, Cigna Corporation, Clarkston Consulting, Deloitte LLP, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company, Infosys Limited, NIIT Technologies Ltd., OptumRX, Suzlon Energy, TELUS Corporation, Terumo BCT, and WakeMed Health & Hospitals.

More information about the 2012 ASTD BEST Award winners may be found in the October 2012 issue of T+D magazine. Details about the 2013 program will be available in February 2013.

ASTD thanks Accenture, Gold Sponsor of the 2012 ASTD BEST Awards, as well as Silver Sponsors EBSCO, The Ken Blanchard Companies, GP Strategies, Skillsoft, and SuccessFactors.