One of the most pertinent issues that industry on a whole faces is finding skilled and ready to employ manpower.
Irrespective of the sector you are in getting trained and employable people is a daunting task faced by plethora of companies/HR managers across industries.
An institute that has been quietly yet effectively making a significant impact in this area is the skill development institute (SDI) Visakhapatnam.
(SDI)-Visakhapatnam has been vigorously yet tacitly working on the Govern- ment of India’s National Skills Development Mission skilling and up skilling the youth of the city and its surroundings.
Set up in 2016 with HPCL as its lead partner the institute has trained over 23,000 people as of date.
‘SDI has been at the forefront of training and skilling people for close to a decade now.
We provide free training to the people who need it most i.e. the unemployed youth’ informed Mr Imtiyaz Arshad, SDI’s CEO and secretary in an exclusive interview to Vizag Industrial Scan.
Imparting Free Training
The institute’s core mandate is to provide free training to the unemployed youth of the region who are typically in ITIs, junior graduates i.e.10+2 offering courses in a dozen sector skill councils (SSC) with 26 job roles ranging from Fire safety technicians to Industrial electricians to Pipe fitters to, fabricators, plumbers etc.
‘These 26 SSC form the bulk of our training programs aimed at making them employable. This I must underscore is totally free of cost’ reiterated Mr Arshad. Under this vertical SDI trained 2000 people in FY 24 and aims to end the current fiscal by training 3000 people.
Getting Practical Experience
In addition the institute also works with educational institutions by partnering with them and offering courses to their students to make them job ready.
‘This is a fee based program and typically has a 3 months duration’ said Mr Arshad. Albeit this vertical was started just recently it has already trained 300 students under this.
Train the Trainer
Apart from training students SDI has gone a step further and imparts training to teachers too under their train the trainer program.
‘We need to have a pragmatic approach in the training field. This requires us to apprise/train our educators from a corporate’s perspective. We thus also train and update teachers on what corporates expectations are.
Only then can teachers better equip/train their students to the needs of the industry’ said SDI’s CEO and secretary. SDI has trained 100 teachers across four institutions as of now.
Up skilling Corporate Managers
Another recently launched vertical of SDI is the corporate training program which is up skilling aspiring managers and supervisors who can choose form a wide variety of development programs such as behavioural, functional, quality & change initiative programs etc. ‘These programs can even be looked at by MSMEs.
We are empanelled for implementation of pro- grams like lean manage- ment six sigma which can be hugely beneficial for MSMEs too’ said Mr Arshad.
Getting Industry involved
Speaking on industry’s role he urges industry to get more involved and be more proactive in the process of skill training and job readiness.
‘Industry needs to interact more with skilling institutes while the youth are being trained in order to get the desired results.
A great deal of onus lies on the part of the industry to make the on boarding process of trained freshers more pragmatic’ said the CEO and secretary.
