BSmart HR Conclave: Experts Say Internship Program Should Be Made Mandatory

(L-R) – Hema Bajaj, Head of Faculty, MBA – HR, NMIMS, Ruhie Pande, Group CHRO, Sterlite Power, Amit Das, NOVO Nordisk India, Suryanarayan G. Iyer, Head, Human Capital Management Cloud Solution Engineering Team, Oracle India at the BSmart HR Conclave

Das called the internship programme a “good move” by the government and said that “a mandate always works better in India” and that it would be a good idea to make the programme mandatory.

In her Budget speech last month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) would work with the top 500 companies to release funds for industrial skills training.

Under the programme, interns would receive a monthly stipend of Rs 5,000 and a one-time assistance of Rs 6,000. The companies would cover the cost of training these interns through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund. Unlike apprenticeship programmes, companies are not required to offer permanent positions to interns.

On Wednesday, the panelists agreed that the program was a “mammoth-scale great idea,” adding that humans could differentiate themselves from machines by learning the skills of the future: the art of judgment and contextualization. The challenge was to create a mechanism to monitor progress in skilling.

“While the government mandate is a great idea, the government should monitor the performance of students. Organizations should also create meaningful projects that students can participate in so that they learn skills that they can apply in the future. Depending on that, this mandate is a great initiative,” Pande said.

The duration of the training was another point of discussion. Consensus was reached on a duration of at least 6-8 weeks to ensure a ‘meaningful’ impact.

Bajaj stressed the importance of ‘application of concepts’ and ‘field learning’ and said internships are ‘extremely important from a skill development perspective’.

By teaching her students certain skills before they begin their internships, they can maximize their value, she says.

Skills Gap

At that time, India was facing a major shortage of skilled workers, which further exacerbated the problem of employability.

“India has a skills shortage of 56 percent. This is a very interesting paradox – the unemployment rate is 6-7 percent, and at the same time 20 percent of the skilled are unemployed,” Das pointed out. Among those who were illiterate, the unemployment rate was 0.5 percent, while 1.46 percent of those who had studied up to fourth grade were unemployed. But the unemployment rate among graduates was as high as 18-20 percent, she said.

This led to something of a divide, with ‘hundreds of thousands of people applying for a few thousand jobs’ – not just office jobs, but also blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, for example – versus a shortage of workers in other jobs.

Bajaj explained that this was because jobs had evolved with technological advancements, and the skills required for these jobs had also changed. “Automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation are not limited to a particular sector or domain. While jobs have evolved, the skills have not,” she added.

Pande explained this with an example from her own sector: energy. She said her company could not find a single institute that offered a course that was ready to hire talent for renewable energy operations.

About 40 million people in India worked in the organised sector. Of these, about 21.4 million were in the government sector, while the private sector employed the rest. The panellists said that India had until 2040 to make the most of its demographic dividend.

Technical strength

There is no other option than to adopt technology. “Machines also learn and get better,” Das said.

HR experts have therefore started using AI in HR processes. For instance, Pande said, “AI has made our lives easier and the younger generation is very comfortable with it. As HR, we can leverage AI by using it (via chatbots and other means) to identify disengaged groups and see what can be done.”

In multi-generational and diverse teams (including people with disabilities, third genders or people with different sexual orientations), it is crucial for HR functions to be able to cope with technological developments.

And when it came to best practices, India was not far behind.

Bajaj said that best practices, which may be available for a select population, should be taken to a broader population at different levels of education. “We need to focus on the application (of theoretical concepts) right from our school education system, where we see that curricula of different boards are more about learning concepts,” she said. This was now changing with several international education boards entering the scene.

“We have seen reinventions happening in recent years. One of the big changes is that we are not just understanding concepts, but applying them to real-world problems, challenges and opportunities,” Bajaj said.

Another important focus was on engaging students in real-life challenges, with a focus on learning in practice.

Pande also said that application-based learning was extremely important to ensure an industry-ready workforce. “From my experience, I can say that I have learned a lot by rote. Application-based learning is extremely essential, which means students go out into the field for 4 to 6 weeks,” she added.

Institutions are also adapting to these new needs.

For example, Bajaj said NMIMS was working on creating an AI policy. “Students are going to use AI anyway. They’re going to go to ChatGPT. It’s also okay — why not take advantage of technology like this. So we’re creating a policy of what all students can use and how,” she said.

Institutions are increasingly hiring practice teachers who are experienced in the sector and who can identify projects in the sector where students can work as interns.

Professors and lecturers should also spend time on internships, they said, so they can experience for themselves how to better prepare their students for the job market.

This two-way exchange indeed increased, as Das pointed out when an institute in Delhi recently sent one of its professors who taught business analytics to work at their company for six months. While the academic helped Novo Nordisk with his domain knowledge, he also brought his first-hand experience into the classroom.