IMPRESSIONS || May 2022

IIM ROHTAK HUMANE-R PRESENTS IMPRESSIONS May 2022 HUMANE.R@IIMROHTAK.AC.IN

Do apprentices hold the key to solving your staffing challenges?

Running a business might look glorious to the outside but the problems that come with it are not that fun. It includes big problems that can be seen to the naked eye and some that you will probably ignore that can create a great trouble in the future. Some of them are common and some will take additional step to solve. Let us see what are they, and discuss if this fancy word apprentices can help solve the problem.

The points that we are going to discuss in here are ·What is apprenticeship? ·Why apprentices are beneficial for the company? ·The problems that can be solved by apprenticeship ·The problems that can not be solved by apprenticeship ·Cost of apprenticeship ·Future of apprenticeship in India ·conclusion

WHAT IS APPERNTICESHIP? So, in simple terms a appernticeship is when you train someone for a particular time period to learn the trades of your company and you pay them half of the wages you normally give to you employee. You teach them real time trade which are combined with live learning classes too. You hire a tutor, a senior employee who has experience in the given field mentors them and give appropriate feedback for improvement until they are skilled enough to get a full salary and skilled enough to replace their own seniors. You can either fire or hire them and it totally depends on you.

It’s quality should be good enough because they are going to work for a long time here.

It requires a great effort from the company and a heavy financial investment. You should try to hire the people you are training because if you can’t even believe your own training who would and it might negatively impact the reputation of the company.

We understood the fancy term so no need to google it. Now let us discuss what are the common staffing problem that a company faces.

BENEFITES OF RUNNING A APPERENTICESHIP PROGRAMME ·You can choose who you want to work with you don’t need to think every now and then if they are good enough or not and you will have a blue print of specific skiils and personality type that is suitable for your company.It will make future hiring smoother. ·You can align them with values of your company you will know from the very beginning that if they are the candidate that you want and since you trained them they are more likely to be loyal with you and may work longer for the company so that you might not need to think constantly about filling open positions. ·You can pick and choose which skillset you want to instill in them and not be worried about if they can handle the task well or not. Your company may know by now that what kind of skills are needed to complete the kind of project that you get and it will surely help you. ·If you will be able to run a programme which promises quality they you can gain the trust of clients, share holder and potential employee which will be beneficial. You might sell it too , you can run a training program which means you can train employees from other companies too. If you are successful to run a program like that more candidates will be interested in your company. ·People now a days quit because they want to balance work and home now they are demanding flexible work hours, the option to choose from where they want to work. These problems can get solved by taking a empathetic approach and understanding individual needs.

STAFFING PROBLEMS THAT CAN NOT BE SOLVED BY APPRENTICESHIP 1.When someone in a critical position quits you can not hire an apprentice because they are trained for a specific role and they might not be flexible and It depends on which part they are on on their training period and if they are even eligible for the specific post they

are being trained for.

2. When market demands something different or the technologies are changing quickly, can someone who is being trained for a specific position adapt that? And if the new thing will be taught to the candidate the company will suffer from additional financial burden because you may need to charge for a new tutor and you want have to pay another one of your employee to mentor these candidates .This might result in employee dissatisfaction.

3. When a company loses it’s star performer, they should be replaced by someone equally talented but since apprenticeship program is teaching them slowly that knowledge will not be enough to replace someone like that. For example if someone you is master in a coding language and no one in your company knows that the apprentices might not help because maybe they are learning a different language, and maybe the language they are currently learning could be a foundation for the other language.

4.Your company can only afford to train people form a particular sector but can’t afford it if they have to train people from every single sector. The people who are mentoring them also will burnout in no time and it will decrease the productivity of the company. You can specifically choose a sector where your company sees a high turn over or there is talent gap that you can’t seem to solve. In this kind of situation the program will help grow the company. For example if you need to train every single sector then there might be a problem because your company will see a have to hire tutors and need to pay extra money to the senior employees who are mentoring them.

5.People also quit because their environment is not friendly, unfair amount of workload or that position doesn’t promise much growth. This problem can’t be solved by apprenticeship rather it can be solved by effective communication. You can hold weekly sessions where you can ask the employees what they are going through or if there is something that needs improvement or if they are facing any kind of pressure from their

seniors which contributes the unfair workload.

6.People can quit because of the salaries they are getting paid. This problem can be solved by adding different perks that can compensate for the less salary that you are giving.

7.The market is always changing and new challenges are coming along apprentices will not be able to handle that. Because they are training and they have not completed their training yet and on top of that if you teach them a new skill they will feel burdened and not grasp the concept well.

STAFFING PROBLEM THAT CAN BE SOLVED BY APPRENTICESHIP 1.Sometimes you can not get candidate with specific skills that you want, in that case apprentices come to rescue because you can train them with which ever skill that you want or require. You might not get this perk if you hire people from colleges or some other source.

2. You can train people and you can give them less salaries.

3. You can train tell your senior employee to mentor their junior which can help the employee to improve their profile and you can trust their mentorship because you have worked with them.

THE COST OF APPRENTICESHIP There is a lot of cost that comes with this program. You need to hire tutor and maybe you need to pay your senior employee a ittle extra money who is going to mentor them. Apart from these financial cost there are hidden costs too. The employees who are training them they might less productivity so, it might affect the overall results that the company produce.

THE FUTURE OF APPRENTICESHIP IN INDIA Now, Government of India is focusing on developing apprenticeship program according to the global standard. they are trying to focus on health care sector and various other

sector. It will help bride the talent gap. There are a lot of unemployed people in India and it can help them be engaged in some kind of work and give the countries economy a boost.

CONCLUSION Not every single staffing problem can be fixed by apprentices. Sectors need to take a broad approach towards solving these problems. These problems can’t be solved by training people for a specific trade. Markets are changing rapidly and you need to be up to date with that. Day by day people are acknowledging their worth so gone were the days when people were solely working for money.

So, company needs to take an empathetic approach and understand and tend to their needs and not just see them as money making machines. With empathy and effective communication you will gain their trust, they will be loyal and will not lose your best employees in the future.

Companies that deal with product manufacturing like bottles or any kind of services that can take help from these apprenticeship but companies that deal with IT related product it will send it into a frenzy if they adopt to this kind of situation cause its ever evolving and it is not going to work. So, without jumping to any program every companies needs to evaluate if they need it or not.

ASHRITA PRADHAN CHIKITI DEGREE MAHAVIDYALAYA