The Hindu Business Line : Training India Inc

The American Society for Training has estimated the spend to be in the range of 2-2.5 per cent of company turnover on employee skill development programmes., though progressive companies are known to spend up to five per cent of their turnover on training.

Participants at a game show: Corporate executives participate in a programme organised by NIS Sparta, a company that provides solutions to enhance the performance level of employees through interactive game shows.

If India's demographic advantage is an opportunity for organisations to ramp up their workforce numbers quickly, the same resource is also presenting another window for the growth of the budding training industry in the country. Though no exact estimates are available, the country's training industry, imparting both technical and non-technical knowledge, is now worth around Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 crore, says Muralidhar Rao, President and COO, NIS Sparta. "This is further complicated by the fact that the industry is largely dominated by individuals and consultants, and companies do a lot of in-house training through their line managers," he adds. But it's also true that companies generally outsource about half of their training needs.

On an upswing

Pallavi Jha, Managing Director of Dale Carnegie Training, says that training budgets in India Inc are definitely on an upswing. Dale Carnegie, which has a presence in 80 countries, has worked with most of the top companies in India. "We have conducted managerial training programmes for 350 companies in the areas of leadership, sales, customer service, communication and negotiation skills," she says.

In a country where the knowledge economy is booming, training budgets are estimated to be low and restricted to certain `progressive' companies. Traditionally, Indian companies spend anywhere between 0.5 and 2 per cent of their turnover on training their employees. IT and ITES companies, which are essentially people-oriented businesses, spend about 3-5 per cent of their revenues on upgrading employee skills, says Jha.

The American Society for Training has estimated the spend to be in the range of 2-2.5 per cent of company turnover on employee skill development programmes, though progressive companies are known to spend up to five per cent of their turnover on training, says Rao of NIS Sparta.

Another reason why the industry size cannot be pinned down is that most companies include F&B and lodging costs under training budget heads which, again, may not present the true picture, he explains.

Focus area

Speaking for the IT sector, D. Selvan, Vice-President, Talent Transformation, Wipro Technologies says that training is definitely a focus area nowadays. The company currently invests five per cent of employee time, which works out to about 12.5 days a year, in training.

This, of course, excludes time spent on e-learning and constitutes only instructor-led training. The company's spend on training over the last three years has doubled in absolute terms, he adds.

Apart from IT and ITES, sectors that are booming and therefore looking for training programmes for their employees are retail, automobile, sales, service, financial services and banking, telecom and manufacturing.

"The Government has also realised the need for training its employees in the areas of soft skills like customer service and responsiveness," says Rao.

Both NIS Sparta and Dale Carnegie have worked with several Government departments in this area. "We have also worked individually with several political leaders in leadership skills development," explains Jha.

NIS Sparta has trained employees of the Ministry of Tourism during the Athithi Devo Bhava campaign, has worked with Indian Railway employees, the police department in some States and several IAS officers in areas like customer service, leadership skills development and teamwork.

Nascent industry

All sectors across the economy are reeling under pressure to recruit. And the training industry is no different.

Being a nascent industry, sourcing talent would be its biggest challenge today. Agrees Rao, "There are two sets of people that we look at. One group consists of trainers from across the industry and this pool really does not offer a huge talent base.

Domain knowledge

Therefore, we try to get people with domain knowledge to get into this industry." The second group would comprise people with 8-10 years' experience in their respective industries and with a passion for training. "About 30-40 per cent of the people come from this pool," he says.

Agrees Selvan of Wipro, "We have a lot of line people coming into the training fold as they see it giving them a huge opportunity for self development and fulfil their aspiration of serving society." In fact, this surge has helped Wipro address its training requirements successfully.

"We see that if we can attract the best of talent in this area, it would only plough back for better benefits to the organisation," he says.

NIS Sparta currently has a pool of 6,500 trainers which includes both full-time and part-time trainers and plans to take this number to 7,500 people, says Rao. Dale Carnegie currently employs 35 trainers and expects to increase that to 75 people in about a month's time. "More and more young people now are seeing this as an industry offering a corporatised professional work environment," says Jha of Carnegie.

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