“We are now hiring 12th class and ITI (industrial training institutes) graduates from the hinterland under the (government’s) Kaushalya programme where we offer on-the-job training and enable them to continue their education," said Ravindra Kumar, president and chief human resources officer (CHRO), Tata Motors.
These workers are being trained in the latest digital skills.
The automaker with seven factories in India has 14,000 temporary staff, almost double the 8,000 ITI and class 12 graduates. The programme in Tata Motors started two years ago.
In auto plants, the shift from temporary workforce who typically work on seven-to-nine-month contracts started during the pandemic. “During covid-19, there was a phase when it was very difficult to get temporary workforce because many of them are migrants and they went home," said Kumar.
Besides blue and white collar workers, automakers also hire temporary workers in larger numbers. The recruitment for this segment goes up when automakers start churning out vehicles to meet pent-up demand.
“While availability of temporary labour is no longer a challenge, with the changes in the skill sets needed on the shopfloor our approach to staffing has evolved," the CHRO told Mint.
Mint wrote last week that passenger vehicle sales in India scaled a record one million units in the September quarter amid an easing of the global shortage in semiconductor chips and ramping up of production by automakers to meet large orders during the festive season.
Recruitment firms have noted the change in the auto sector. “There are government incentives which are pushing manufacturing firms including auto sector to hire more from ITIs and similar education centres," said Aditya Narayan Mishra, chief executive of Ciel HR Services.
National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) and National Apprenticeship Testing Scheme (NATS) are some of the programmes aimed at bridging the skill gap.
Mishra said that while temporary staffing or contract hiring has grown in most industries after two years of covid, there was barely any uptick in the auto industry.
