http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/jobs/making-vocational-learning-job-relevant/articleshow/11920569.cms
By Ashish Karamchandani, Partner, Monitor Inclusive Markets
There has been much talk that if we can educate our youth and provide them with skills, we will be able to reap the benefits of our country's positive demographic profile. Tertiary education and vocational skills are hence seen as an end in themselves: if you provide access to these, everything else will fall into place.
Everyone, especially the poor to whom education has been inaccessible in the past, will have job opportunities; companies will have access to skilled resources; the country as a whole will benefit from this demographic dividend. However, reality is different. Most of the numerous training institutes and NGOs impart training with little or no connection to the actual jobs in the market. As a result, the employment quotient of these individuals is very low.
Monitor Inclusive Markets carried out a series of studies covering around 300 organisations engaged with those at the bottom of the pyramid. What we found was that most trainees could not translate their training into a livelihood.
For instance, we came across a number of organisations training women to be tailors. Post that, they bought sewing machines and set up shop. They soon got a few 'orders' from friends and relatives but this dried up soon. More importantly, there was usually a professional tailor in the neighborhood who would be preferred over the novice.
Therefore, the key to training is a direct link to a job. The organisations we found most successful were not the traditional ones that trained first and then helped find jobs but ones that had flipped the sequence. They had the jobs lined up and then trained individuals for these jobs. In other words - demand-led training. TeamLease is one such organisation.
Team-Lease hires someone every five minutes, but only 5% of all its applicants are employable. To address this problem, the firm revamped the traditional vocational training curriculum to respond to the market's needs. While demandled training is a viable business model for training and placement organisations, companies that require skilled people also have the means to address this problem at their end: through their CSR divisions.
Corporates have traditionally shied away from training people in excess of their business requirements because of the fear that once trained, people could change jobs and all the benefits of the training would then accrue to the firm's competitors. As a result, companies have waited for other organisations - training institutes, placement agencies, competitors - to provide them with skilled labour, thereby limiting their access to quality employees.
Companies should change this view point. Most enlightened companies already spend money on CSR activities. However, these tend to be unrelated to their core business and definitely not at scale.
Instead of doing a random planting of trees or building primary schools in the promoter's state or donating sporadically, companies can achieve greater impact if they focused their CSR efforts on training and skill development of individuals at the base of the pyramid. This would not only generate livelihoods for a large segment of India's people but also create a pool of valuable trained resources for the company to hire from.
(With Smarinita Shetty, Associate Partner, Monitor Inclusive Markets)
By Ashish Karamchandani, Partner, Monitor Inclusive Markets
There has been much talk that if we can educate our youth and provide them with skills, we will be able to reap the benefits of our country's positive demographic profile. Tertiary education and vocational skills are hence seen as an end in themselves: if you provide access to these, everything else will fall into place.
Everyone, especially the poor to whom education has been inaccessible in the past, will have job opportunities; companies will have access to skilled resources; the country as a whole will benefit from this demographic dividend. However, reality is different. Most of the numerous training institutes and NGOs impart training with little or no connection to the actual jobs in the market. As a result, the employment quotient of these individuals is very low.
Monitor Inclusive Markets carried out a series of studies covering around 300 organisations engaged with those at the bottom of the pyramid. What we found was that most trainees could not translate their training into a livelihood.
For instance, we came across a number of organisations training women to be tailors. Post that, they bought sewing machines and set up shop. They soon got a few 'orders' from friends and relatives but this dried up soon. More importantly, there was usually a professional tailor in the neighborhood who would be preferred over the novice.
Therefore, the key to training is a direct link to a job. The organisations we found most successful were not the traditional ones that trained first and then helped find jobs but ones that had flipped the sequence. They had the jobs lined up and then trained individuals for these jobs. In other words - demand-led training. TeamLease is one such organisation.
Team-Lease hires someone every five minutes, but only 5% of all its applicants are employable. To address this problem, the firm revamped the traditional vocational training curriculum to respond to the market's needs. While demandled training is a viable business model for training and placement organisations, companies that require skilled people also have the means to address this problem at their end: through their CSR divisions.
Corporates have traditionally shied away from training people in excess of their business requirements because of the fear that once trained, people could change jobs and all the benefits of the training would then accrue to the firm's competitors. As a result, companies have waited for other organisations - training institutes, placement agencies, competitors - to provide them with skilled labour, thereby limiting their access to quality employees.
Companies should change this view point. Most enlightened companies already spend money on CSR activities. However, these tend to be unrelated to their core business and definitely not at scale.
Instead of doing a random planting of trees or building primary schools in the promoter's state or donating sporadically, companies can achieve greater impact if they focused their CSR efforts on training and skill development of individuals at the base of the pyramid. This would not only generate livelihoods for a large segment of India's people but also create a pool of valuable trained resources for the company to hire from.
(With Smarinita Shetty, Associate Partner, Monitor Inclusive Markets)
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