It is a well-known fact that India finds itself currently in a demographic “sweet spot”, with a low dependency ratio, which denotes the ratio of the dependent population to the working population. A low dependency ratio can boost the economy significantly, and in India’s case, a positive economic trend is expected for the next 25 years. In addition, the rest of the world is currently looking at India to bridge the manpower shortfall that they are foreseeing in terms of skilled professionals. Hence, the youth in India has a huge opportunity in terms of demand for its skills both at home and abroad.
However, though this is a story with a lot of promise, there are certain aspects which need to be taken care of to ensure that the outcome is also positive. One concern raised by many business leaders is that though India has an adequate pool of qualified working population, not all of it is employable as per the standards required by most organizations. While academic proficiency is found to be adequate in most cases, the main weaknesses lie in the areas of soft skills and vocational skills.
The gap in soft skills and vocational skills can be effectively addressed through a program of focused training. While vocational skills can be addressed through a compulsory course of apprenticeship before one begins formal employment, soft skills are much more complicated to impart and absorb. Moreover, performance in a vocational training program is easier to quantify. In the case of soft skills training, performance can be at best evaluated qualitatively. Keeping this in context, the following are some areas of training that can enhance the employability of Indian professionals. The list, though not exhaustive, highlights areas of general weakness observed in most Indian professionals and thus identifies probable quick wins.
Assertiveness – Assertiveness is one of the most talked about soft skills. Closely related to the concept of EQ (Emotional Quotient), it is an attribute critical to effective relationships and interactions, especially in the global business context. Unfortunately, most Indians lack assertiveness as an inherent trait (due to cultural reasons), and hence have to acquire it through training. Training on assertiveness serves to modify passive, aggressive or passive/aggressive behavior and channel it towards assertive behavior. Some important aspects of assertive behavior include developing the right approach towards stress management, communication, negotiation and even saying an effective ‘No’.
Business Communication – Communication continues to be the single most critical ability for anyone, irrespective of whether it is work-related or otherwise. While being average to adequate on most aspects of communication, Indians have a peculiar weakness in this area. Due to historical reasons, most of them receive education in the English medium. This has proved to be an advantage, as English is the de facto business language across the globe. However, Indian professionals tend to forget that not everyone they communicate with comes from a similar background. For instance, people from Western Europe and South America learn to use English as a business language, since most of them receive education in their respective national languages. Problems occur when Indians (being more at home with English) tend to use the language conversationally and colloquially, which their counterparts may find confusing and difficult to understand. Training in this area should focus on sharpening skills in the use of business English depending on the background of the person they are communicating with.
Working In Virtual Teams – In today’s global business environment, it is common to have peer team members spread across various geographies. When a particular team goal is defined, a virtual team consisting of some members from the larger distributed team is created, led by the team member geographically closest to the customer. Hence, there may be a situation where one is the leader of a virtual team for a particular goal, and a team member for a different team goal. In addition, one has to coordinate with other team members across different time zones and geographies, belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds. A great deal of versatility, flexibility and agility is required to work effectively in such organization structures. Indians are more comfortable working in a hierarchical, localized and top-down type of structure, again due to cultural reasons. Hence, training in the areas of managing multiple roles simultaneously in the context of a flat, diversified and distributed virtual team is an absolute must for Indian professionals to deliver effective results.
Knowledge Management (KM) – Approach to KM is a major factor in differentiating successful organizations in the knowledge economy. For companies with global workforces coupled with the constant risk of high employee turnover rates, KM is even more important. Also, KM should be seen in the light of IPR (Intellectual Property Rights), as weaknesses in one can impact the other adversely. The dividends an organization can reap through sound KM and IPR practices can be undone many times over by IPR violations. The Indian workforce, although aware to some extent of KM and IPR, lacks in the adoption of mature KM/ IPR practices. Related training should address all phases in the entire KM lifecycle, from knowledge acquisition to purging, and awareness of major technology platforms used for KM such as SharePoint. It should also focus on KM practices to safeguard the organization’s IP and prevent violations of IP of other organizations.
Web 2.0 – Web 2.0 components such as blogs, wikis and social media are at the forefront of community networking and the information explosion on the web. Apart from being repositories of “near-time” (nearly real time) information, they are channels of viral communication across the Web to such an extent that organizations have come up with contingency plans to deal with adverse publicity on the Web before it spirals out of control. On the other hand, the Web 2.0 platform can be leveraged to spread positive brand messages also. Either way, it is a platform that can simply not be ignored. It is observed that Indian professionals have a passive approach towards Web 2.0, by predominantly acting as information consumers rather than producers. Hence, training on Web 2.0 for Indian professionals needs to focus on a proactive approach, based on the three fundamental rules of ‘create, connect and collaborate’ and not just ‘consume’. The training should include case studies of popular sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook for full appreciation of the power of Web 2.0.
Global Outlook – This is more of an aptitude rather than a topic for training. However, some orientation is required for Indian professionals to enable them to discern global trends and more importantly, foresee their business impact and prepare mitigation plans. The events of 2000 (‘dot bomb’ crisis), 2008 (sub-prime crisis) and 2011 (sovereign default crisis) have underlined the fact that economies across the globe are tightly coupled, and an understanding of global economic events makes for not just good business sense, but sheer survival.
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—About our writer:
Debasis is an engineer who has also completed an Executive Program in Business Management. He is currently working as a process excellence consultant in a multinational IT services company, based out of New Delhi. Apart from article writing, he has experience in writing IT process audit / assessment reports and creating training material related to IT processes, leadership, strategy, knowledge management and human resources. He also dabbles in poetry in his spare time. He is a distinguished member of the International Society of Poets.
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