Skill, Labour, Talent for MSMEs: Even as apprenticeship continues to stay the smallest funnel for hiring folks vis-à-vis permanent and contractual employment sorts, the outlook or the sentiment to employ apprentices amongst modest and medium enterprises (SMEs) has jumped 3.5X to 32 per cent for the present half-year period (January-June) from 9 per cent in the course of July-December 2020 period. According to the most current survey of 600 providers like SMEs by TeamLease Skills University’s degree-linked apprenticeship programme Netap, 47 per cent SMEs had a positive intent to employ apprentices in HY 2021, up from 32 per cent in the preceding HY 2020 when 15 per cent SMEs anticipated decline in apprentice hiring in comparison to 23 per cent in the course of July-December 2021. The outlook is referred to the distinction amongst the proportion of employers indicating their improved intent to employ apprentices and these with a decreased hiring intent.
“Apprentice hiring has embarked on a very positive trajectory in the last couple of years as more employers are realizing the merit of the apprenticeship model to build a robust pipeline of employable talent. In fact, from 2018 to now, we have seen a 2.5 per cent y-o-y increase in employers who are willing to increase their apprentice intake. This positive momentum has happened despite the dip in the labor market during the Covid-19 lockdown,” mentioned Sumit Kumar, Vice President – NETAP, TeamLease Skill University.
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Segment-sensible, modest firms saw the highest jump of 23 per cent in outlook from adverse 15 per cent to 8 per cent in the course of the mentioned period. On the other hand, medium enterprises searching to employ more apprentices jumped 7 per cent from 30 per cent for July-December 2020 period to 37 per cent for January-June 2021. Moreover, with respect to different sectors, SMEs’ in the manufacturing sector had the highest apprentice hiring outlook of 43 per cent followed by 38 per cent by SMEs in the services sector, and 27 per cent by SMEs in agriculture. The most sought-right after job profiles for firms across sizes have been fitter or welder (25 per cent), production engineer (31 per cent), automobile or mechanical technician (28 per cent), pc technician (29 per cent) and so on.
However, employers all round preferred permanent employment more than apprenticeship as only 4 per cent of employers across sectors and cities had their preference for apprentices in comparison to 78 per cent towards permanent jobs and 18 per cent for contractual employment. The important motives discouraging employers from hiring apprentices have been lack of awareness about the apprenticeship model and its connected policies and offerings (25 per cent) and no clear visibility of worth addition to the organization via the apprenticeship plan (20 per cent). However, the quantity of apprenticeship contracts crossed 3 lakhs in 2019-20 up by 50 per cent from 2018-19.