The war for talent is intensifying and has become an integral agenda in every Board meeting. To support growing talent needs, organisations are increasingly experimenting with newer employment models including gig workers and amplifying efforts on training initiatives
One such extremely important talent program that needs serious evolution is INTERNSHIP. Many employers probably still see it as a ‘good to have’ program and not an essential aspect. In fact, it has been the last priority for many organisations as they are adapting to ‘New Normal’ or probably because the organisations are not revisiting the design of internship programs to make it mutually meaningful both for themselves and the students.
With proven benefits to both parties, the internship program over the years has relied heavily on mutual commitment from both parties instead of strengthening the core design itself.
While IT and ITES industry too is grappling with integrating interns in a virtual set-up post- pandemic, it has set good benchmarks for others to emulate at a design level. Whether it is the stipend that is offered or the onboarding experience or creating tailor-fit internship projects for students that are aligned to strategic priorities of the company or the governance around internship projects… other industries have a lot of catching up to do if they want to overcome challenges in the current talent context. For our industry in particular, there definitely is a need to replicate the recipe for success
In discussion with Apparel Resources (AR), nearly all faculties, students and companies’ senior management unanimously agreed that the entire process of internship needs to be strengthened and all three stakeholders need to work together on the same. At the same time, they are of the strong opinion that internship should be made mandatory for every professional course, it should be paid, and any project of the internship should get finalised with the mutual discussion of all three stakeholders only which is sometimes not the case.
Internship is not a ‘cheap’ ‘educated’ labour source and it should be paid…
Commenting on the issue, Sandeep Raut, COO, Laguna Clothing, Bengaluru says, “For Laguna Clothing, an internship is a pure engagement where our teams identify problems and opportunities as projects and they work hand-in-hand with interns to solve the problems and obtain the best benefit of opportunities for the organisations working together. It’s an ideal win-win as an organisation gets bright fresh talent that can be considered for placement and the students get hands-on experience of what’s expected out of them once they start their professional journey. It definitely can’t be looked at as cheap or free labour.”
Laguna Clothing draws out projects from all departments in the organisation in September-October every year and engages NIFT and Textile Engineering students for these projects. It has numerous projects which are now SOPs and businesses within the organisation. From lean practices, different apps for monitoring, paper-free production lines by having digital displays, to the launch of ‘Aldeno’ – the shirt brand of Laguna – all projects were carried out by industry interns only.
Both students and faculties are of the opinion that making internship paid will be helpful to students not only financially, but it will also motivate them to perform better during their internship period. It is often seen that utilising the free resources costs much more to the companies due to mistakes and errors done by interns than using paid interns!
“All internships should be paid and should not be treated as free and cheap labour. This is absolutely a wrong, derogatory and a very narrow view,” says Professor Dr. Binaya Bhusan Jena, NIFT, Bhubaneswar adding, “The internship is more about academia and industry partnership for building a better, stronger and healthier ecosystem.”
An ex-student Kalika Malhotra, who has done her internship with prestigious brands UCB and Jimmy Choo, believes that it should be paid only as many students also have their internships in other cities (not where their institute or home is), so they have to bear extra cost of living during this period. She suggests an interesting idea, “Companies should be allowed to treat it as their CSR expenditure, so it will not cost them also.”
Pointing out to another aspect in the same context, HS Jha, VP (HR), Pratibha Syntex, Indore shares, “It is not necessary that industry has to pay for scholarships; it can also be in the form of free accommodation, free food or even free transportation as motivation always matters.”
Interns add value to the organisation and the onus should be on companies to make the system workable…
As internship is an important industry-academia interaction, companies expect internees to learn from the organisations as well as take up projects to solve or to contribute some solution in the problems of the organisations. Companies like KAS Group Asia successfully retained 50 per cent of interns from past three years, offering them full-time roles on the completion of their internship…
“We believe that training our young graduates is also a way of giving back to the community as nurturing talent contributes immensely to nation-building. Internship is a powerful bridge between academia and industry. Viewing it as an exercise for getting cheap labour might not be a fair assessment. Having said that, it is important to design internship programs in a manner that is mutually beneficial to the industry as well as to the internees. Internship programs should provide organisations with an edge to strengthen their pipeline of fresh talent. Organisations with a culture that is receptive to new thoughts and ideas are most likely to reap the full benefits of a robust internship program,” says Deepti Pelluri, Regional Manager, Organisational Capability, KAS Group Asia.
HS Jha believes that it is not necessary that internee will increase the productivity of a particular department or will give any extraordinary results but what he/she will definitely do, is to add a breath of fresh air by showing new ways to do old things.
Similarly, companies like Laguna see internships as a deep connection between an intern and the organisations to solve a problem or take benefit of an opportunity. If an organisation or a student doesn’t make proper use of this opportunity, both are missing out in the long run.
Dr. Darlie Koshy, Former Director, NID, Ahmedabad and Chairman, National Design Business Incubator, Founding Chairperson Head of Fashion Management at NIFT New Delhi and former DG & CEO, IAM & ATDC shares an interesting experience, “I have liked the internship system in Christ College Bengaluru even for under graduate students to have mini-projects cum internships every Semester for just 2- 3 weeks only. That works well on both sides as it gets linked to the scholastic and professional progress of the students.”
Dr. Koshy further mentions that talent acquisition is a major strategy for forward-looking organisations and if so, developing the right individuals with knowledge, skills and competencies becomes an integral part of that strategy.
“So working with good institutes on a long-term basis is essential. As part of that effort, the students need to be given opportunities to reduce the gap between the on the job competencies and theoretical knowledge and skills. So apprenticeship program as part of vocational education and training and internship for higher education are essential prerequisites,” states Dr. Koshy.
Internships should be made compulsory with extended support from the organisations…
The first and foremost thing is that an internship should be a compulsory thing in every professional course because without this exposure, the course will not be complete in the real sense. Be it classroom’s year-long courses or the new growing trend of online certificate, nothing can substitute hands-on industry experience and on-the-job learning!
“Industry internship should be made a compulsory pre-requisite for completion of all professional programmes. Further to it, there should be a dissertation and other projects also should be taken up by the students under the mentorship of industry member. There is a need for strong association between industry and academic institutions and industry also needs to accept that learning from the internship will ultimately benefit in the development of the intern which will help the industry to grow in the days to come,” says Prof. (Dr.) Pradeep Joshi, Director (ASFT, ASFA & ASPA).
At Amity School of Fashion Technology (ASFT), industry internship, dissertation, summer trainings are mandatory and they are termed as ‘Non-Teaching Credit Courses (NTCC)’. Amity encourages students to undertake them in the leading organisations for enhancing their classroom learnings. It is one of the key USP of its programmes.
As far as factories are concerned, companies have to make sure that if internees are given any responsibility, the same has to be done under careful monitoring and evaluation.
HS Jha suggests that every factory should have a dedicated person to support or manage internees who can monitor their work, gauge their contribution, and make sure that they don’t have any problems. It will benefit to factories as well as students. It can be mentioned here that the employees of Pratibha Syntex prefer their children to complete their internship in Pratibha and the company also takes this up at utmost priority.
Endorsing what Jha mentions, Kumkum Das, Student of Master of Fashion Management, NIFT who is doing her internship in Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail shares her experience, “I am getting full support here and Rahul Jindal, GM & Cluster Head Operation who is also from NIFT alumni is guiding me. At the same time, I see some students (doing internship in other factories) do not get full attention from their guide as their guide often remains very busy in their routine work.” She also highlights that it majorly depends on the internee as to how aggressive he/she is to learn, get support from guide/company’s employees!
With regard to colleges, the industry suggests that all projects should be finalised with proper discussion with the factory so the factory will not only get value but also be able to support the internees to the maximum.
Deepti Pelluri adds here that generally academia is focused on building conceptual knowledge and a lot of emphasis is placed on historical industry knowledge and exposure. This does not adequately prepare students to be absorbed directly into the industry on completion of their courses. Their success will stem not only from an academic understanding of the subject but also from vocational application and adaptability to dynamic industry requirements. She suggests two factors that will help students to land internships.
“Clarity about what they want to achieve from the internships. It’s not just a project and proof of internship that matters – clarity helps them target specific organisations and achieve what they are looking for. Secondly, institutes must build a good relationship with the industry to promote internship programs similar to the processes that have evolved around job placements. An organisation will always be open to giving opportunities to fresh talent as it is in their interest to build their talent pipeline. However, a larger emphasis is on the institutes to assess the measures of success of their academic courses. While the pass percentage and placement percentage etc., are considered to determine the success of a course, it’s important to build measures to assess the industry readiness of students and the internship program design. These factors will play a key role in increasing internship opportunities becoming available to students,” says Deepti.
One more aspect is that colleges should send interns only to such companies which support interns and have full opportunities for them, not just where they have just simply worked and completed their stint to get a certificate.
“Prestigious institutes like NIFT should utilise their alumni network in this regard,” says Manish Sondhi, Partner, Valencia Apparels, Noida, a company that has given opportunity to interns for its Ranchi’s new factory layout plan also. He also says that the industry needs to learn from apprentice which is also a kind of internship.
Recent efforts of Government to make apprenticeship more valuable…
The stakeholders can seek an apprenticeship system to make internships more effective. Recently there were major developments regarding apprenticeship.
The department of higher education has proposed to have a modified National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) for the period from 2021-2022 to 2025-26. As of now, on an average, 2.5-3 lakh apprentices are trained a year with only 17,000 establishments undertaking apprenticeship training.
The Government hopes the changes in the Apprenticeship Act will increase the number of apprentices in the country up to five times in the next few years. As per the existing provisions, units with 30 or more employees have to train a minimum of 2.5 per cent of apprentices each year while maximum could go up to 15 per cent of the total employee strength. As per reports, no company, including all sectors, train apprentices beyond 2.5-3 per cent of the total workforce as a result of which the number of apprentices trained each year in India remains very low.
