Top HR, skill development leaders join hands to bridge skill gap in India

Top Human Resources and Skill Development leaders from India held a meeting on Friday in Delhi in a bid to collaborate to resolve the jobs and talent crisis in the country.
The first-of-its-kind initiative is aimed at bridging the skill gap and employability, thereby making India’s workforce future-ready and globally competitive.
Notably, the event comes in line with the collaboration of the National Skill Development Corporation under the aegis of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) India which seeks to create pathways and build actionable frameworks for future-ready skilling and employability in a fast-changing world, a press release informed.
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Industry leaders and senior HR professionals came together to discuss strategies for reskilling and upskilling the corporate and industrial workforce.
Ved Mani Tiwari, CEO of National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and Managing Director at NSDC International (NSDCI) spoke about the collaboration and said that NSDC and SHRM both are purpose-driven organisations, adding that the partnership is aimed at skilling India better in line with Prime Minister’s vision.
“We want our employees to be proficient and it is important therefore to be able to help reskill and upskill them in response to skill gaps. It’s imperative that we not only unlock value for each employee but this unlocking should also happen at the company and the industry level and taken in the aggregate, this would serve the larger skilling requirements for the country as a whole,” Tiwari said.
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Tiwari further stressed that it was necessary to accelerate the pace of skilling to transform India into a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
Achal Khanna, the CEO of SHRM, India APAC, and MENA shed light on the the significance of skilling initiatives for India’s workforce and said that the HR Leadership Council Connect serves as a transformative platform that bridges the gap between the corporate world and the skilling ecosystem.
She pointed out that the aim is to create an efficient skilling eco-system that is adaptable and addresses the current and future needs of the workforce.
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As part of the initiative, deliberations were also held which included presentations from senior leadership on NSDC’s business verticals and interactive focus group discussions with three cohorts aimed at identifying sector-specific skill gaps and opportunities for collaboration, the release informed.
During the program, participants from diverse sectors such as IT, Telecom, Energy, and Automobile shared best practices aimed at developing actionable insights for creating a future-ready workforce.
Moreover, CHROs from the biggest companies in India debated at length about the changing industry landscape across the corporate spectrum and the skill gaps this has triggered. According to the CHROs, newer technologies particularly in areas like robotics, IoT, electric battery technologies, semi-conductors, etc. have resulted in a skills gap across levels, which needs to be mitigated.