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| Employability:-Skill Development Initiative | | |
By R. C. SHARMA
Employability skills are the career capital that a person needs to get a job and acquire job specific skills while on the job. From the point of view of employers, employability skills are the generic skills, attitudes and behaviors that they require in all their employees. We define "employed "as "having a job", and "employable" as "having the qualities to maintain employment, progress in the work place and to be employed in different work places".
An important question emerges. What processes generate employability? The increased demand for skilled labour in a variety of work situations makes it important to examine the strategies that create appropriate human resources , not only for sustaining economic growth, but also to ensure the decent livelihood of workers. In this context, developing employability assumes critical significance.
In the first stage, the endowment of basic skills is required to satisfy the screening process in the job market. Upon successful entry into the workforce, employees face two choices: to specialize in a particular skill without considering future changes, are to prepare for functional flexibility by acquiring complimentary skills. (Complimentary skills are those skills which can be pursued without a trade -off, or with no opportunity cost) The first path is focused on employment, while the alternative is focused on employability.
Becoming functionally flexible includes enhancing behavioral and social competences, which leads to higher order learning. This process, enhanced by performing multiple roles, develops the versatility requires in today's highly integrated labour markets. Ongoing learning and moving through different stages of employability is a lifelong process.
Employability and flexible labour market
While considering which measures are useful to understand whether a person is employable, it is insightful to reflect on the following figures.
In effect, lifelong Learning, in which employees continue to acquire skills over time, is the key to employability; Employability is based in three skills and qualities:
Key technical and academic skills:These are skills that an employer is often able to test, and to a great extent, the academic curriculum prepares students with these skills. They include (but are not limited to) reading, language numeric capacity, listening written communication, oral presentation, global awareness, creativity and self -management.
2) Process skills: Unlike technical skills, which can be demonstrated during the interview or intake into employment, process skills develop from general reasoning capacity and work experience and are developed in the work place. Generally speaking, these skills include problem solving, decision making. planning and delegating, ethical sensitivity, understanding business and its commercial interests, prioritizing, team work, and negotiating.
3) Personal qualities: These qualities are functions of the personality type and are shaped through life-experiences; they include self- confidence, self-control, self¬esteem, social skills honesty, integrity, adaptability, flexibility, willingness to learn, emotional intelligence, stress tolerance punctuality, efficiency and reflectiveness.
Employability puts a heavy emphasis on "soft skills", and the development of these skills could be more advantageous then technical skills. From the perspective of employability, however, there is little meaning in separating out these three sets of indicators. Rather, the synergy produced in a worker through different combinations of these indicators is the curx of employability. The focus on employability, therefore, should be on the individual's potential, rather than specific skill sets.
What organizational and societal approaches promote employability? An emphasis on Lifelong Learning. From an Organizational point of view, the emphasis should be on training: apprenticeship schemes, upskilling/ multiskilling, product knowledge and change training, training in dealing with clients, team building exercises, and career development, While hierarchical control in a workplace may create 'good workers'. Delegation and encouragement creates 'employable individuals'.
From the individual point of view, the ability to continue to learn is the critical criteria. Indicators used to measures individual employability include the readiness of the worker to engage in different tasks, propensity to develop oneself through career development programmes and adaptability to organizational chang
Employment and Employability
Due to advancements in information and communication technology (lCT), especially since the 1980s, labor demands have undergone extensive; the focus shifted from specialization to versatility, from monotony to initiation and interaction.
The way employability is seen by educational institutions, government and labor market differs significantly depending on the orientations of these institutions. Educational institutions position themselves in the role of knowledge imparters. Labor market institutions tend to look at the instrumental value of the education and argue that educational institutions contribute to the 'best interest' of the students when they are made employable. The government is looking at the individuals who are entering the labour market as well as those who are unemployed (rather than unemployable). These competing foci of employability create policy complexity. Loosening the boundaries between the academics, government and business will enable each to contribute to new paradigms of integration.
Govt. of India has announced a scheme namely "Skill Development Initiative" (SOl)
for the skill development of early school leavers and existing workers especially in unorganized sector under Modular Employmynt Skills (MES) frame work. After in depth, demand driven short term more than 400 training courses in 34 industrial sectors have been identified in consultation with industry, which has been approved by NCVT .. J&K State and Technical Department have to arise to occasion to address the problem of Unemployment by opening Vocational Training centers besides post training support to the the trainees for getting employment through centrally sponsored scheme such as PMEGP which can provide good opportunity to unemployed youth in state as Micro and Small industry has good scope in the state and in past three years it has generated over 1.5 lakhs employment opportunities through KVI sector only.
Conclusion
The increased demand for skilled- labour has put the concept of employability into the spotlight. Enhancing employability will not only sustain economic growth, but will also ensure the decent livelihood of workers. Employability can only be achieved when all stakeholders- academia government and industry, commit to promoting lifelong learning.
An integrated approach connects the individual's aspirations and freedom to move between jobs with education systems, corporate business strategies and government policies for social security. The core concept is that it is only through 'learning to learn ' that employability can be truly realized.
In the Indian context, the concept and application of employability is a powerful challenge, and brings the competitiveness of the Indian labour force to the forefront. The issue of employability is important enough to reorient the politics around job creation and trade unionism, and poses a challenge for policy makers involved in education policy, employment policy, and industrial (and economic) policy and social policies.
The writer is presently R.T.O Jammu div.
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