These Entrepreneurs are Re-skilling Blue Collar Employees as an HR Initiative "We consider re-skilling as a crucial culture for inclusive growth"

Inspired by PM's Skill Development Mission, a number of start-ups across the country have moved a step ahead by producing quality, skilled manpower, thereby contributing to the Indian economy.

Consumers might perceive this as simple convenience, but on the flipside, these start-ups can and do dramatically improve the livelihood of vendors. With growing job opportunities, start-ups are focusing more and more on giving skilled training.

Entrepreneur India got in touch with four start-ups that have started taking steps towards "re-skilling' blue-collar employees as part of their HR initiatives.

Truebill Considers Re-skilling Crucial for Inclusive Growth

According to Shubh Bansal, Co-founder Truebil, an online marketplace for pre-owned cars, it takes almost 30- 45 days to hire any new employee as compared to re-skilling existing members, which hardly takes around 15 days.

"We consider re-skilling as a crucial culture for inclusive growth. Instead of putting up an ad against every position for hiring, we first look internally and try to re-skill and help people shift to newer roles and responsibilities," shared Bansal.

"Further, re-skilling also helps in speeding up our project work and it creates a talent pool. Meanwhile, the employees also understand that merely moving up the hierarchy is not enough; what keeps a career vibrant and increasingly relevant are the experiences that they gain through different on-the-job opportunities," he asserted.

How It Helps Genext Students Address the Gap in Education Sector

Ali Asgar, Co-founder, Genext Students, India's first hybrid tutoring platform, started focusing on training and developing quality tutors to address the huge gap that exists in the education sector.

"Tutor orientation and skill development workshops help in enhancing the skills, knowledge and quality of tutoring. Because of the support provided, in terms of branding and discovery, training, content and administrative tools, tutors can focus on doing what they are good at – teaching," informed Asgar.

"Re-skilling has helped physically challenged teachers, who in spite of having the required skills sets find it difficult to compete with other tutors, find a platform. Today, they have been trained, placed and provided with tuition connects as well," he shared.

Re-skilling Motivates Employees in Be U Salons

Vikas Johari, CEO and Founder, Be U Salons, feels that one of the biggest missing links is the absence of tech infrastructure. Hence, it is imperative to build and implement a tech platform, which interlinks the entire value chain and allow all stakeholders to operate and benefit from it.

"If successfully done, half of the jobs are done given that all stakeholders see the value created through the tech platform and start using it as a part of their day to day life. Bringing this entire offline ecosystem to online is the most challenging and important part of the skill development," said Johari.

He maintained that re-skilling training modules should be customized and should depend on the identity of the company. "A full-time training academy might not be the answer for start-ups that can have on demand modules based on performance and evaluation matrix," he opined.

"Interestingly the results are impeccable," declared Johari and added, "The unsupervised employees all of a sudden come under trainer-supervised and a transparent reporting system. Psychologically this improves 50% of their learning capabilities. With the hands on training psycological training, evaluations, performance analysis, this employee is highly motivated and excited due to the personalised recognition he gets."

"The biggest impact in the entire ecosystem," said Johari, "is how technology adaptation is adding value to all stakeholders and bringing fresh belief of hope, hunger and thirst to do and learn more."

Bridging the Skill Gap of Employees

An online training aggregator connecting training seekers, Hunarr is a sister concern of Aasaanjobs focusing on blue and grey collar job trainees and connecting them with suitable training institutes.

Dinesh Goel, Founder of Aasaanjobs and Co-founder of Hunarr, felt the existing and increasing skill gap between the current-level and that required by the employers in the country and launched the online platform through which job seekers could get re-skilled.

"A large number of job seekers on Aasaanjobs were not getting the jobs they wanted because they lacked certain skills or the other. The idea behind Hunarr was to connect these Job Seekers to relevant training institutes in their locality so that they can gain the necessary skills for the job they wanted to secure," shared Goel.

The majority of skills on the platform are the relevant job skills required in the country today including IT, Marketing, Finance and a an array of soft skills.