Empowering the youth in India to make them ‘productively employable’ | Labour is abundant and cheap in India’, is a myth that has been going around for a while.
There are many who believe that with the size of the population in our country, it is easy to hire people in an organisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. While one does get responses to an advertisement for a job in the newspapers, it is shocking to see that most of the applicants are simply unemployable.
The manufacturing sector especially suffers from this problem as we find that many engineers today, who are qualified and employable prefer to explore the IT sector that offers a bigger pay cheque. The residual pool from which manufacturing has to hire from, is demographic and either unqualified or unemployable.
This is true for engineering diploma holders and ITIs too, as technical institutes are out-dated and continue to teach obsolete concepts. For instance, they still teach about carburettors at ITI, which currently no Indian car comes with. It is estimated that with poverty rates at 27% (World Bank report) a very small percentage of the population can afford any form of education.
This percentage narrows when it comes to higher or skill education of any kind. The current Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in India is 15% and dropout rates spike at higher secondary and higher levels of education. More than 53% of Indian youth suffer some degree of unemployability. This has serious repercussions for the manufacturing industry.
75% of the jobs created in the manufacturing industry require some sort of vocational training, usually not affordable by the masses. 84% of the people working in the manufacturing industry work with firms employing less than 50 workers. Given this fact that the majority of the manufacturing players are small-scale players, it is up to the large players in the industry to adopt new programs, which will create large-scale changes in the sector.
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has been working closely with Employability and Education Partners (EEP) like LabourNet and various industries to understand the skill gaps at all levels of the work force. And, the trainings as well as the products are designed by industry experts to bridge the skill gap thus creating a win-win situation for both the industries and workers.
Various training models can be deployed in industries to increase the employability of a worker. ‘Hire train and deploy’ and ‘earn while you learn’ are commonly used training models by the EEP. This model works on the lines of sourcing skilled, semiskilled and unskilled work force to the industry and then train them on tailor made courses.
Training is imparted to the new recruits to upgrade the skills of the existing work force within their organisation. In contrast to an apprenticeship, such trainings tend to be more closely tailored to the requirements of a specific role in a particular organisation.
HIRE TRAIN AND DEPLOY
Hire train and deploy model is split into two categories of trainings: Internal upgrade training, which involves people who already work for an organisation in a particular role and require advanced training to rise up in the organisation’s job hierarchy to a new role that requires a higher level of skill (e.g. helpers trained to become semi-skilled machine operators). External training, involves recruiting unskilled workers from the external labour market and give them specific training required to address a particular job.
‘EARN WHILE YOU LEARN
‘Earn while you learn is another training model that needs to be implemented in the manufacturing sector on a large scale. The talent pool is so much in need of economic sustenance before education it becomes imperative to combine the two in one program. This program will provide a means of income to candidates and at the same time provide them vocational training which is critical for their consistent performance and improvement.
It breaks open the entry barrier of having to be qualified before employment which throws the door wide open for enthusiastic and talented young people who are eager to learn and perform on the job. The educational program will culminate in an official certification that would be of immense value to the candidate.
The employer also stands to benefit as the employee is being trained on the job and is therefore equipped to handle the requirements of the particular role. The employee’s education will enable him to be more productive on the job and help him to be upwardly mobile into supervisory roles.
Employees would be hired for work by making assessment of skills through scientific tools that ensure that the employees hired are a good match for the organisation in term of knowledge, skills and behaviour. Once these basics are in place, they can move on to the next phase of training them on the job during the weekdays and educating them on weekends.
The focus of the EEP would not only be technical skills but also soft skills like communication, situational leadership, team work and IT skills, which would result in well rounded employees who can be promoted to supervisory capacities.
In China, a 1% growth in GDP, results in poverty reduction of 0.8% whereas in India, 1% GDP growth, results in poverty reduction of only 0.3%. This is because we as a country are too dependent on the services industry rather than manufacturing. There is no large country economically prosperous that does not have a dominating manufacturing presence.
US, Western Europe, China etc., all have a strong manufacturing base. Manufacturing, as a core industry is critical because every percentage of growth increase in the manufacturing sector has a positive cascading impact on the services sector. It is therefore imperative that the issues of employability and education of the talent pool is taken up to ensure that the biggest asset of India, its large numbers of the youth population is utilised to the best extent possible.
India is right now a country with significant numbers in the ‘should be employable’ demographic. The only way to harness that potential would be to provide sustenance, training and education in one package that would convert this population into the ‘productively employed’ demographic and give sustainable results in the long run.
Gayathri Vasudevan
CEO
LabourNet Services India