Study: 46% of Corporates Are Now Willing to Hire More Apprentices

NETAP [National Employability through Apprenticeship program, India’s largest degree apprenticeship program from TeamLease Skills University has launched their latest report “Apprenticeship Outlook Report. An in-depth analysis of the current apprenticeship hiring trends in India for Apprentices, the report highlights that 46% of employers are keener to increase their apprentice pool in the period July to December 2020. Despite the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic, apprentice hiring is seeing a positive sentiment across many sectors and regions. The net apprenticeship outlook for this half-year stands at 33%.

Reasons for Increased Apprentice Hiring 

One of the primary drivers for this positive momentum is that more employers, about 32%, have been looking at apprenticeship to offset the workforce scarcity that they have been facing due to reverse migration that has happened because of COVID 19. Additionally, about 25% companies have also been hiring apprentices to meet the increased demand for products and services due to the pandemic. Other than this another contributing factor is that employers are increasingly accepting the merit of apprenticeship as a successful model to create a productive resource pool of skilled talent. About 27% of the organizations interviewed, expressed their intent to hire apprentices to optimize the manpower cost at the basic level.

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The Impact of Pandemic on Hiring

A detailed drill down elaborating the sentiments across sectors and cities, as per the findings of the net apprenticeship outlook will be promising in cities like Ahmedabad (42%), Hyderabad (40%), Mumbai (39%), and Chennai (38%). The top sectors where apprentices will be in demand are Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals (42%), Manufacturing & Engineering (40%), Retail (38%), and Ecommerce (38%). Additionally, the report also analyses the categories under which apprentices will be engaged. From a category perspective, the proportion of employers increasing hiring for Trade, Technician and Graduate apprentices is 31%, 22%, and 16% respectively and this is predominately across sectors like Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare & Pharma, E-commerce and Automobile.

Commenting on the study, Mr. Sumit Kumar, Vice President – NETAP, TeamLease Skill University, said, “Despite the predicament that the current pandemic has brought, the overall sentiment amongst companies to hire apprentices has been very positive. While in the initial months of the lockdown, we witnessed a dip, the hiring intent has bounced back quite aggressively, especially since June/July. On one hand, more employers are continuing to accept apprenticeship as a solution to create a skilled productive workforce. Nearly 78% employers find their apprentices to be productive. On the other hand, the current pandemic has made many realize the potential of investing in apprentices and building a talent pool, especially local talent to mitigate workforce scarcity in such situations. Close to 24% organizations have increased their apprentice hiring during the pandemic.”

“Additionally, more sectors like e-commerce, healthcare & pharmaceuticals, etc. have also warmed up to the model now. They have been extensively hiring apprentices to meet the increased demand that COVID has brought in”, added Mr. Kumar.

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Current Apprenticeship Hiring Trends

Further analyzing the net apprenticeship outlook, the report indicates a positive outlook for large enterprises at 38% and medium enterprises at 30%. In the large enterprise category, Manufacturing (36%) and Services (29%) have a higher net outlook. Further according to the report, some of the profiles that will be in demand are Machinist (35%) and Mechanic (30%), Helpers (31%), and Sales Executives (32%).

Additionally, the report also analyses the gender parity in hiring apprentices. Interestingly 34% of the companies interviewed have expressed a gender-neutral approach and openness to include even the LGBTQ community as well; 43% of companies prefer male candidates and 23% prefer female candidates. While Hyderabad was more open to women candidates, Bangalore and Mumbai were gender agnostic.

The Apprenticeship Outlook report contains insights on employer sentiment in relation to apprentice hiring for the period July 2020 to December 2020. The analysis is based on the historical data of apprentice hiring and findings from a survey of 600 employers across 18 sectors and 14 cities.

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