Construction major Larsen & Toubro (L&T), which had earlier talked about an acute shortage of engineers and skilled blue-collar workers at its sites hitting project implementation schedules, has since embarked on a plan to address the issue on its own by offering free training to willing persons. However, even this doesn’t seem to work beyond a point, with at least one-fifth of seats lying vacant.
L&T intends to give free training to 15,000 youth every year to help them hone their construction skills. The programme is funded out of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) budget.
In June, L&T group chairman SN Subrahmanyan said that the firm was faced with a shortage of over 25,000-30,000 labourers and 20,000 engineers across its businesses. With its massive project pipeline — the target is `9 lakh crore for the current financial year and 40% at overseas sites — the manpower challenge continues to be serious.
The lack of enough demand for construction-site work is a reflection of the low labour force participation among the youth, even as the unemployment rate is high. “The bottleneck is in terms of attracting people to join the training programme. The problem is about mindset of the younger generation,” Anup Sahay, head (corporate strategy and special initiatives), L&T, told FE. Sometimes, inclement weather at construction sites becomes a deterrent. Also, some sites are at remote locations.
“That is why not just at a workman level but even at an engineer level, we are finding it difficult to get good-quality people. Graduates from top institutes often are reluctant to work for construction business. Rather, they would want to get into IT, consultancy, financing, and technology areas,” Sahay said.
Despite engaging local government bodies and NGOs, L&T’s nine training institutes — called construction skills training institutes (CSTIs) — are currently training about 12,000 youth every year which is lower than the capacity of 15,000. Nevertheless, the company is leaving no stone unturned to make the CSTIs work.
For instance, it’s adding new training modules like imparting basic computer education within the overall curriculum. “If we want to improve the student intake, we have to mix the construction skills with other kinds of training like the use of digital technologies in construction and other related activities. Trainees want to learn computer skills, and we are bringing that into the curriculum gradually,” said Sahay.
In 1995, L&T set up the first CSTI in Chennai with an idea to plug the gap of skilled workmen in the construction field. The trainees are provided three-month training followed by one year of apprenticeship under the government-run NAPS (National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme). Sahay said that nearly 80% of the trainees continue to work with L&T post the apprenticeship, and after 2 years, 50% leave the company for other opportunities, especially in countries in West Asia.
“They do work for us through the subcontractors because we don’t employ workmen directly at our sites. We get subcontractors to hire them and work for our projects. We have also made a beginning by training women for the first time in the current financial year in our various types of construction trades,” he said.
For trainees, L&T’s brand name does help in speeding up their career path. For instance, it typically takes a workman anything between 8 and 10 years to move to the next level of becoming a supervisor of a small group of workers. But through L&T’s programme, this wait period gets reduced by 2-3 years.
Currently, the company is spending about `65 crore every year on CSTIs. It is also utilising synergies between the key business verticals and the training arm. “All the trainers are from L&T who have spent years in the trade. Each CSTI is being adopted by one of the construction verticals. We have nine construction verticals within L&T for different types of construction activity,” said Sahay.