To cope up with the growing problem of higher attrition rate and non availability of skilled manpower, Indu Projects Ltd, engaged in the infrastructure and real estate business, has embarked on a training program for fresh graduate engineering trainees (GETs) and the existing employees of the company. The company has set aside a budget of Rs 2 crore for training during the current financial year.
Speaking to FE, V Pardhasaradhy, vice president (HR) of the company, getting talented workforce is a big challenge for all the infrastructure and real estate companies today because there is a huge gap between academics and the industry requirement. ?At Indu we are planning to conduct a eight-week long training program for the fresh GETs selected through campus interviews before putting them on job. This will be like an additional training for the freshers. It is definitely a burden on the company but it is necessary as the quality of talent coming out of the educational institutions is not anywhere closer to what the industry needs. We have taken 174 people through campus recruitments this year and all of them will undergo the training program in batches. We plan to start the program sometime during the end of the month. The idea is to create quality manpower and make them employable.? The company would be incurring an expense of at least Rs 15 lakh to train the fresh GETs alone. This would include their food, accomodation and training related expenses, he added.
Apart from training the freshers, Indu is also bringing back some of its existing staff into the training program (retraining) to sharpen their skill sets. ?We have overall 1,000 staff working with the company including 600 engineers. For the first batch of the retraining program, we have first selected 60 engineers. There is a need for quality surveyors including land surveyors, planning people and quality controllers and we will try to create this talent in the retraining process,? he said adding the overall budget for training for the year is about Rs 2 crore.
He said, ?over the past couple of months, the company has worked extensively with experts in the industry, retired professors and heads of various strategic business units (SBUs) within the organisation to create a curriculum for the training program. The curriculum is a lot closer to what the industry needs.?