Here's What Indian Companies are Doing to Assist Government's Skill Development Idea Corporates are now taking charge of accelerating the Skill India initiative by addressing employee skill-gaps

Despite the current slowdown, India remains a fast-growing economy. With the advent of technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and Big Data, among others, the nation is progressing towards yet another industrial revolution. This is bringing about a significant development in employment opportunities. Employability has reached a new high from 37% to 47.38% in five years, as per the India Skills Report 2019. While there is no denying that the massive penetration of technology in various sectors is bringing enormous opportunities in the kind of jobs existing at present, in the absence of right steps there might be a shortage of skilled talent to fill those jobs.

The government of India has already realised the importance of skill development and entrepreneurship. It has started working towards facilitating the same with initiatives such as Digital India and Skill India to train the country's growing manpower. The ministry even claims that 2.5 crore youth have already been trained under Skill India in the past three years under various programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) programme and the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme. However, industries and business enterprises are facing fixes when it comes to hiring people due to lack of skills in them to be sufficiently productive. Hence, they are now taking charge of accelerating the Skill India initiative by addressing employee skill-gaps pertaining to their companies. Here are few ways in which both established and new-age organisations are creating a positive impact on the country's skilling landscape:

Teaming up with training providers

It is not necessary that every company would come equipped with in-house training and development facilities to suit their productivity requirements. So, corporate houses strategically align with online training providing platforms for their workforce training needs. This not only improves the company's success rate of connecting the right skills with the right people and the right job role, but also keeps the workforce abreast with the changing business dynamics.

Enabling on-the-job work experience

There is growing mindfulness among individuals about the necessity of exposure to practical work experience in an industry to gain higher levels of expertise. Companies are making it possible by opening its doors to freshers in large numbers to give them on-the-job training opportunities and facilitate job-specific skills through access to machine time or real clients.

Extending industry-related expertise

There is no better way of learning than extracting it directly from experts who have dedicated a significant number of professional years across industries for freshers, helping them learn and earn at the same time. Many corporate houses have started encouraging willing employees to assume proficient roles as subject experts, and mentors to impart industry-related knowledge and skills at various training programmes or guest sessions. Their idea is to go a long way in ensuring better training outcomes.

Determined and proactive participation from corporate companies are clearly indispensable to the success of the Indian government's Skill India initiative. Through strategic partnerships with training providers, and government bodies, companies can substantially influence the scope and quality of skilling for the young employable generation to step ahead and help India emerge as a global economy.