Vocational studies to get new curriculum in October, 2011

Faced with the problem of school dropouts and dearth of skilled labour, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) plans to finalise by October a new curriculum for vocational studies in the country. The National Vocational Education Qualifications Framework (NVEQF) will put in place a nationally recognised qualification system, covering higher secondary schools, vocational education institutes, polytechnics, colleges and institutes of higher education.

For this, the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has identified eight skill areas for immediate attention and has involved the private sector for devising curriculum, testing, evaluation and certification. These eight areas are automobile, hospitality and tourism, security and energy, retail, media and entertainment, information technology, construction, and financial services, banking and insurance.

AICTE has already held meetings with the various stakeholders in the automobile, information technology, hospitality, media and entertainment and construction sectors and curriculum has already been prepared for the first three sectors. “Many students drop out of school or are not interested in regular formal education. Some fail their senior secondary exams while others have to work to support their families. In some cases, there are no formal colleges near their homes. The framework will benefit them,” said AICTE Chairman SS Mantha.

There are 9,583 schools offering 150 vocational courses of two-year duration in broad areas of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. In addition, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) imparts vocational education in 80 courses, taking the total enrolment in vocational education courses of all these schools to roughly 6,00,000. The framework will have a competency-based modular approach with provision for credit accumulation and transfer. Students would have the scope for vertical and horizontal mobility with multiple entry and exits.

With dropout rates nearing 40% in Classes IX-XII, Mantha added that vocational education would offer competency-based skills and help students find employment. Representatives from the industry chambers, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) are also helping the ministry develop the framework.

“The ministry identified eight sectors for white collar jobs and a group of 12 state education ministers is examining the issues that may need sorting out at the state level to implement AICTE’s ambitious scheme. The group is expected to submit its report by July,” said Shalini Sharma, Head – Higher Education, Confederation of Indian Industry.

Source: The Financial Express, July 1, 2011

TeamLease signs agreement with NSDC to train 1.8 million

Staffing company TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd. on Thursday entered an agreement with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), a body co-promoted by the Union government, to train 1.8 million people in skills that will help them get jobs. The firm will largely target school dropouts in remote areas. Overall, it will open 1,349 multi-skill development centres, including 209 integrated centres in cities.

“It has a potential of generating revenue worth Rs. 11.77 billion over a period of 10 years,” said Ashok Reddy, Managing Director of the Indian Institute of Job Training, or IIJT, a unit of TeamLease Services, adding that India’s high school dropout rate stands at 56%. “The good part of this tie-up is that they (TeamLease) will venture into chemical sector among other industrial sectors to train human resources,” said NSDC chief executive Dilip Chenoy.

NSDC has to provide skills training to 150 million people in 10 years as part of a broader mandate to train 500 million people to bridge the skills gap that’s hindering Indian industry. Reddy said TeamLease will leverage its expertise of skills education that it runs in 250 centres under IIJT. The new centres will use satellite technology, e-learning platform and virtual simulation to train students, Reddy said, adding: “Bringing students in smaller towns will be a challenge, but we are hopeful.”

TeamLease recently announced a partnership with the Gujarat government to set up a vocational education university in the state.

Source: Mint, July 1, 2011

Manpower crunch plagues Hospitality industry

As India’s hotel industry readies for unprecedented growth, it is about to face a manpower crisis the likes of which it has never seen before. Too few people are being trained for the industry; many of those who have received the training choose greener pastures and fierce fights break out regularly to keep or poach the few who remain. All this while a new hotel or restaurant is being added every week.

“It is a battle every day to retain people you have groomed over the years. While earlier the mantra was to engage with the staff, today you have to keep them enchanted,” said Sujata Guin, Regional Director of Human Resources at luxury boutique hotel chain The Park. “It is not just other hotels we are losing people to. Everyone wants a piece of the hospitality pie — retail, telecom and banking.”

With India’s economy expanding by about 8% a year, the number of people travelling on business or for pleasure is booming. Every year, there are 540 million domestic travellers and the number of overseas tourists will increase from five million now to 18 million by 2016, according to HVS Hospitality Services, a consulting firm focused on the hotel industry. Where India now has 62,000 top-quality rooms for such travellers, by 2014 it is expected that there will be 150,000 rooms. But where are the chefs, butlers and bellboys to serve all the guests?

Surveys show an immediate shortfall of 30-40% in the supply of quality manpower as students passing from hotel management institutes shun the profession because of poor pay and long work hours. They prefer to work overseas or with cruise liners, airlines and retail companies. One such student is Sandeep Singh, who graduated this year from the International Institute of Hotel Management in Delhi. He had offers from Le Meridien, Pullman and The Oberoi but he preferred to join an event management company.

“I am getting three times the money offered by the hotels and I do not have to work for 14 hours a day,” he said. Another hotel management graduate Manish Paul took up a job at Kingfisher Airlines, a decision he made after working 42 hours on the trot at a hotel during his training. Nakul Anand, who heads the hospitality, travel, and tourism businesses for ITC, said six out of every 10 students from the Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration run by the business conglomerate do not join the hotel industry.

“We need to find more creative ways to attract people,” he said. There was a hotel boom in the late 1980s and 1990s but demand for manpower was met by hotel management and catering institutes. This time, the industry is ill-prepared. Anand, who is also the president of the Hotel Association of India, estimates that the hotel industry will need to add 100,000 staff within four years. But only about a fifth of this number are even being trained and a big slice of them will not join the hotel industry.

Suresh Kumar, President of Fortune Park Hotels, a division of ITC Ltd., said that when demand outstrips supply, the existing talent pool becomes extra precious. Hotels also hire those just out of training school and groom them, but quality is inconsistent. Fortune will open 24 new hotels with three years and will have to hire two people for every room it constructs.

KB Kachru, Executive Vice-President for South Asia at Carlson Hotels, the owner of the Radisson brand, points out that in the recent past some of his staff have ventured out to become entrepreneurs, robbing him of valuable top-flight talent. At the other end, salaries for the junior-most staff have gone up 50-60%. Carlson is setting up 19 new hotels that will come up within one year and require an average of 250 staff per hotel.

While hotels expand rapidly, training institutes that supply the manpower are not keeping pace. Furthermore, many in the industry complain that the training provided by many institutes is outdated. Most hotels resort to an extensive internal training programmes to meet their needs.

Shalini Khanna of IIHM in Bangalore is of the view that the manpower shortage can be bridged only if there are more professional institutes. IIHM trains about 700 students a year nationally, of whom 200 opt for jobs overseas. In this clamour for quality staff, home-grown hotels are under immense pressure as people are attracted towards international brands, which are now expanding in a big way, said Anupama Jaiswal, senior associate at HVS Executive Search, which helps hotels recruit staff.

Big hotels chains such as EIH (Oberoi), Taj and ITC prefer to rely on inhouse courses and training to cope with the problem. ITC Hotels, said its chief operating office Dipak Haksar, has also introduced monthly career development reviews for discussions and dialogues on talent development, succession planning and career management. While hotels are trying to cope with in-house training the manpower shortage will only worsen. Mid-term salary revisions and extraordinary pay-raises are among ways the industry is attempting to retain efficient employees.

The 2011 HCE India Hotel Salary Survey shows that in spite of difficult times, compensation levels in 2010-11 are comparable to those in the boom year 2007-08, when disproportionate salary increases — up to 43% — were seen throughout the industry.

The problem is that when hotels spend so much time and resources to train and groom people, it causes a crisis sometimes when people leave. “So, we have created an internal system to create a pool of leaders, to have back-ups if someone leaves. We are exploring alternative sources of recruitment. We are taking people from the north-east, smaller cities, aviation institutes and grooming them,” says Park Hotel’s Guin.

Source: The Economic Times, July 1, 2011

Cos like NIIT, Pepsi-Co, HUL organising alumni meets to stay connected

Organisations are going the extra mile to stay connected – not just with the usual business contacts, but with employees who have left them. Like most educational institutes do, companies such as Pepsi-Co, Marico, Sapient, NIIT, HUL, and Deloitte are organising alumni meets, so that existing employees keep in touch with former employees as a way to network and spread the word about the organisation.

“We believe former employees are your ambassadors. Even if they have quit the firm, they should be updated about what’s happening in the firm. It is important to stay connected today,” says Dhananjay Bansod, Chief People Officer of consulting firm Deloitte India. Deloitte runs a programme called Boomerang, wherein existing and former employees get together. The programme runs across the year over different geographies and divisions, depending on the group’s convenience. This helps the company feel the pulse of the market, says Bansod, adding, “You never know, some of your former employees may become your customers tomorrow.”

PepsiCo India, too, runs an alumni network, which meets at least once a year. “Not only are former employees your brand ambassadors in the corporate world, many atime, former employers too get to learn about best practices. There is a lot of knowledge sharing in such meets,” says PepsiCo India Chief People Officer Samik Basu. Sapient, on the other hand, holds its alumni meet every six months. The company invites most of its former employees to participate in such meets, regardless of their level or seniority.

“Such events are a great source for business referral. Several of our former employees who moved to join potential client companies have invited us back to do business with them,” says Prashant Bhatnagar, Director – Hiring at Sapient India. Such meets also result in wooing former employees back into the fold. Take Ramswaroop Gopalan’s case. The Country Manager, SapientNitro, was the first project manager for Sapient in India in 2000. He left the organisation in 2007 only to return in 2009. Gopalan says he quit because he wanted to get sales experience . “I was not comfortable settling abroad for a sales profile so I decided to move.”

However, Gopalan was regularly in touch with the senior management at the company and was aware of its activities and new initiatives. “When the right opportunity came, the senior management asked me if I would like to head SapientNitro and I agreed.” Marico has more than one alumni group. While the bigger network is called ‘Alma-Alumni of Mariconians’, the finance team in the organisation has a separate network, called ‘Mafia-Marico Finance Alumni’.

Source: The Economic Times, July 1, 2011