In the recently concluded 15th Workskills National Competition organised by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and conducted simultaneously in Bangalore and Mumbai, Tata Steel was awarded the Best Company Trophy. The award was conferred on Tata Steel on the basis of performance of its employees in the workskills competition organised in December 2002.

The employees who won this honour for the Steel Company are Sanjeev Kumar Mishra of Hot Strip Mill, Chandra Dip Kumar of Spares Manufacturing, Jainendra Kumar Sharma and Dharmendra Nath Tiwary of SNTI, Shankar P Dey Sarkar of NIM winning 1st positions and Mithun Adhikari of G Furnace and Santosh Kumar Singh of Cold Rolling Mill were positioned 3rd in the competition. These employees have been trained in SNTI - Tata Steel's training centre at Jamshedpur.

Tata Steel was also declared the Best Company in the 15th Workskills India Eastern Regional Competition organised in September 2002. The Workskills India Competition is an important CII initiative for inspiring and motivating industrial workers. This is an important annual event in the calendar of CII activities. This event has been granted recognition by the Directorate General of Employment & Training (DGET), Ministry of Labour, Government of India.

Since its inception in 1921 SNTI (erstwhile JTI) has been a cradle of learning in Tata Steel. It has played a significant role in contributing to nation building - initially preparing the steel major's own workforce through training of graduate engineers and apprentices and later shaping the human assets of a number of public sector organisations. Incidentally, the institute has the privilege of shaping two MDs of Tata Steel - Mr Shavak Nanavati and Mr B Muthuraman. The President of Tata Workers' Union, Mr RBB Singh is also an alumnus of the institute.

SNTI has played a strategic role in implementing IEM and Cluster System of Manning in the Steel Company. It is worthwhile to note that this institute has been instrumental in bringing to the forefront the new human resources interventions like Positional Training and Process Operation Training. It has also played a partnership role in the strategic moves of the company when it came to training employees for G Blast Furnace, Coke Plant, LD#2, HSM, CRM and now South Eastern Block (West Bokaro).

SNTI has been certified ISO 9001:1994 in 1996. In June 2002 it got its certification upgraded to ISO 9001:2000. In the skills competitions for apprentices organised by DGET, SNTI has won four times the "Best Training Establishment" award in the country (the last one was in 1991) and 14 times in the eastern region.