4. Practical Skills Development Programs

Skill Development is the process of identification of the skills gap in youth and providing skilling training & employment benefits to them. Skill development programs aim to acknowledge the ability of the youth and extend their support by serving them with the proper guidance, infrastructure, opportunities, and encouragement that help them achieve their ambitions. Education and skills are essential for everyone, and they both walk hand in hand in everyone's career journey. They are the roots behind the economic growth and community development of a country. Therefore, both central & state governments are continuously making efforts to provide skill development to the youth with their skilling partners around the country.

The benefits of Skill Development include increased business profits, improved performance, improved accuracy & quality, improved communication, complies with rules & regulations, improved recruitment & career opportunities, and development of good customer relations.

 

We provide skills training and employment-related support to young people across the nation, focusing particularly on people living in vulnerable and hard-to-reach areas, people forced to migrate as a result of climate change and people pushed into poverty by unexpected circumstances.

 

Skills development is at the center of changes happening in education and labor markets amid the global mega trends, such as automation, action against climate change, the digitalization of products and services, and a shrinking labor force, which are changing the nature of work and skills demands. Consequently, skills and workforce development systems must proactively adapt to fast transformations posed by automation, climate action, digitalization, and the evolving labor markets.

These evolving trends will redefine the paradigms of education and workforce development systems globally. In the dynamic landscape of the modern global labor market, education and workforce development systems must become more personalized, accessible (allowing for remote and hybrid learning), and continuous along throughout workers’ careers– placing “skills development” at the heart of these global transitions. Moreover, skills systems globally (and notably in LMICs) will need to adapt to the fact that many workers will engage in freelancing/informal jobs or self-employment that need to become more profitable, productive, and conducive for economic growth.

To succeed in the 21st century labor market, one needs a comprehensive skill set composed of: 

1. Foundational and higher order skills, which are cognitive skills that encompass the ability to understand complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, learn from experience, and reason. Foundational literacy and numeracy as well as problem-solving, communication and informational analysis are cognitive skills. 

2. Socio-emotional skills, which describe the ability to manage relationships, emotions, and attitudes. These skills include being able to navigate interpersonal and social situations effectively, as well as leadership, teamwork, self-control, and grit.

3. Specialized skills, which refer to the acquired knowledge, expertise, and interactions needed to perform a specific task, including the mastery of required materials, tools, or technologies. Specialized technical and cognitive skills as well as entrepreneurship skills are included in this category. 

4. Digital skills, which are cross-cutting and draw on all of the above skills, describe the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate, and create information safely and appropriately.

Skills are a cornerstone for the green-digital transition. The development of skills can contribute to structural transformation and economic growth by enhancing employability and labor productivity and helping countries to become more competitive.

Yet, skills gaps are a main constraint, especially in LMICs, to achieve jobs rich economic growth for the digital and green transition. In this regard, most countries continue to struggle in delivering on the promise of skills development:

• There are huge gaps in basic literacy and numeracy of working-age populations, as 750 million people aged 15+ (or 18 percent of the global population) report being unable to read and write, with estimates being nearly twice as large if literacy is measured through direct assessments. Large-scale international assessments of adult skills generally point to skills mismatches as well as large variation in the returns to education across fields of study, institutions, and population groups.

• Megatrends such as automation, action against climate change, the digitalization of products and services, and a shrinking and aging labor force, will transform over 1.1 billion jobs in the next decade.

• About 450 million youth (7 out of 10) are economically disengaged, due to lack of adequate skills to succeed in the labor market.

• Over 2.1 billion adults need remedial education for basic literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional skills.

• About 23 percent of firms cite workforce skills as a significant constraint to their operations. In some African and Latin American countries, this share rises to 40–60 percent.

• Most African and most South Asian countries do not have data on workforce skills.

• The global economy could gain an estimated US$6.5 trillion in the next seven years by closing workers' skills gaps, representing 5-6 percent of their GDP. Nonetheless, most countries invest less than 0.5 percent of the global gross domestic product in adult lifelong learning.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the pre-crisis vision of equitable, relevant, and quality skills development into sharper relief, adding unforeseen urgency to the calls for reform and highlighting the huge costs of inaction. As a result of the pandemic, 220 million post-secondary students (est.) dropped out of school or lost training opportunities.

The key issues countries need to tackle for skills development are: 

• Access and completion. Across the world, investments in education and skills development—from preschool through post-secondary education to vocational training—have high returns. The wage penalty for low literacy is nine percentage points in Colombia, Georgia and Ukraine, and 19 percentage points in Ghana. And the opposite is also true: in Brazil, graduates of vocational programs earn wages about 10 percent higher than those with a general secondary school education. Still, provision of equitable access is a challenge in many low-income and middle-income countries.
  
   

• Adaptability: The rapid pace of technological advancements and evolving labor markets can make technical and specialized skills quickly outdated. On the contrary, transversal skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and adaptability, will become more transferable and resilient to changes in the job market. Evidence shows that post-secondary graduates who possess adequate occupation-specific technical skills but lack strong foundational and transversal skills, often face challenges in adapting to work-related changes.

• Quality. Many young people attend schools without acquiring basic literacy skills, leaving them unable to compete in the job market. More than 80 percent of the entire working age population in Ghana and more than 60 percent in Kenya cannot infer simple information from relatively easy texts. For those who access technical and vocational training at secondary and post-secondary levels, returns can vary substantially by specialization and institution. In particular, technical and vocational training (TVET) systems in many countries face challenges related to quality assurance, resulting in perceptions of the vocational track being a second-best option compared to general secondary or tertiary education.

• Relevance. Technical and vocational education and training —which can last anywhere from six months to three years— can give young people, especially women, the skills to compete for better paying jobs. Nevertheless, more needs to be done in terms of engaging local employers to ensure that the curriculum and delivery of these programs responds to labor market needs.

• Efficiency. Challenges related to governance, financing, and quality assurance also impact the efficiency of skills development programs. The resulting unnecessarily high costs can limit opportunities for disadvantaged youth and adults to access these programs. The good news is that the evidence on what works and what does not in skills development, and for whom, is growing. At the World Bank Group (WBG), we support governments around the world in collecting data and designing, implementing, and learning from reforms and programs aimed at addressing the most fundamental challenges of skills development.

Types of Courses We Offer

Vocational Training

We are an apex skilling partner for skill development and coordination of vocational training, including men's and women's vocational training to the unemployed youth in several states of the country. We aim to provide a skilled workforce to every industry vertical besides providing placement services.

Short-Term Training

Acadecraft offers short-term training modules to unemployed college students. We provide these training sessions to empower unemployed people under the guidelines of the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

Under this training criteria, we provide certificates to unemployed individuals with prior experience who will easily access the Bridge Courses to cater to knowledge gaps.

Special Projects

Under this training program, we provide mentoring services exclusive of the standard framework, which help individuals with a specific knowledge requirement.

 

Skill Development Domains

 

Banking and Financial Services

 IT & IT-Enabled Services

 Electronics Design

 Engineering Design

 Retail

 Beauty and Wellness

 Health

 Hospitality

 Apparel

 Textile

 Food Processing

 Gems & Jewellery

 Handicraft

 Media & Entertainment

 Automotive

 Strategic Manufacturing

 Telecom

 Power

 Rubber

 Business Process Outsourcing

 Sports, Physical Education, Fitness & Leisure

 Management & Entrepreneurship and Professional Skills

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Knowledge Sharing & Training Platforms

Smart Training Centres: We provide vocational training in diverse domains across the service and the manufacturing industry through our smart training centers. Under this program, we provide courses like Foundation skills and domain-specific areas that ud are aligned to the QP (qualification pack) and NOS (National Occupation Standards) as specified by the Sector Skill Council (SSC).

Workshops & Webinars

For the reorganization and promotion of our country's skill development ecosystem, Acadecraft organizes several national-level workshops and training programs that led to the conception and operation of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) for unemployed youth.

Quality Content (E-Courses, Flyers, etc.)

As a leading content development company, Acadecraft has an experienced team of subject matter experts (SMEs), editors, content writers, graphic designers, instructional designers, and proof readers who are well versed in creating high-quality content for our training manuals, e-learning training modules, presentations, brochures, flyers and all kind of e-courses as per government guidelines.

Certified Mentoring Skills for Training

Under this skill training, we provide sessions to discuss all the mentoring perspectives and what it takes to be a mentor. This training program focuses specifically on what mentoring means, the mentoring model, benefits of mentoring, the roles and responsibilities of mentors & mentees, critical skills required by mentors, and potential phases in the mentoring relationship.

 

Our systematic Steps for effective execution of Skills Development Programs

Many organizations know that they need to pursue skills development efforts but are quickly overwhelmed. This can have a downstream impact that actually makes the skills gap worse for them.

That’s why we’re sharing four key phases for a successful skills development strategy, including practical examples of how we’ve partnered with organizations to execute on their skills development program.

1. Define Focus

It's essential your company knows where its employees excel and where they fall behind to develop a plan to bridge the talent gap. One way to do this is by conducting a gap analysis to identify strengths and weaknesses. A skills gap analysis should encompass physical, cognitive, emotional and technological skills. The analysis will help you understand who needs to complete skills development (roles, partner types, etc.) as well as how fast the skills development needs to happen. In a pinch, you can also use surveys to gauge the gap between knowledge, understanding and execution.

2. Build Awareness

Change can be uncomfortable for workers, especially if they believe they are in a vulnerable position as a result of their necessary development. That’s why clear and compelling communication is critical to the successful launch of your initiative. During this stage, be sure you’re addressing common questions and potential concerns, including:

• What skills you need from them

• Why their development is important to the company and/or customers

• What’s expected of employees/partners during the process, including how you’ll be supporting them

• What’s in it for them (personally) if they adapt their skills

Real-World Example: In the wake of COVID-19, it was paramount for a professional services provider to mitigate risk-related behaviors by educating workers on how best to keep safe and healthy. A branded campaign was designed to make the invisible risk more approachable, relevant and ultimately, make it easier for employees to know how they could navigate potentially risky situations.

3. Boost Engagement

Telling employees and partners they need to engage in more learning and development activities in addition to existing workload often leaves them feeling overwhelmed. That’s why it’s imperative you keep your employees and channel partners motivated to actually complete their skills development training. Constant communication to reinforce foundational messages and promote training opportunities will ensure you build excitement for change while mitigating fear and change overload.

Real-World Example: A global retailer recently recognized there was an opportunity to improve training completion for a specific type of technical worker. Additionally, they were struggling to retain those employees once they were upskilled, putting further strain on the organization. To address both issues, we recommended a shift in their engagement and reinforcement strategy to focus on a combination of leadership coaching to improve motivational appeal and individual performance-based incentives. This shift from relying solely on tenure in role has already positively impacted employee engagement and retention. 

4. Reinforce Progress

In today’s high-velocity work environment, offering ongoing incentives and recognition to create excitement along the way is essential to reinforce learning and sustain long-term behavior change. Highlight and reward top performers (both individuals and teams) for making progress. Peer examples can serve as a success story for others to see how those developed skills helped accomplish better outcomes.

Make sure you’re celebrating along the way, too. As individuals complete skills development training, be sure to celebrate and reward their achievements. This can be as simple as awarding certificates of attendance for training sessions or programs. If you offer multiple courses, combine related topics into programs and celebrate when students “graduate” from topic-specific programs or levels of achievement. Take it a step further by hosting an awards banquet quarterly or semi-annually to recognize team members who reach development milestones.

Real-World Example: A global technology services and hardware manufacturer had been facing a shift in sales style from product to service and needed to reskill and upskill their partner engineers to turn them into presenters. We built, communicated, delivered and continually reinforced the program geared toward shifting the skillset of this non-traditional audience through intrinsic motivators like badging, recognition and learning milestones, while gamifying the development with merchandise and contests. This effort engaged partners across 89 counties, and led to successful skills development resulting in $70 million in pipeline generated in the first six months of the program.