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Leveraging Occupational Standards to Drive Skilling at Scale

July 6, 2020

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The Transformational Power of Standards

Introduction

In India, the f ramework of creating and using occupational standards has been set up and follows some of the best practices f rom across the world. However, implementation of NOS across sectors has been slow. One of the key challenges can be the lack of awareness of what these standards are and how they can help. It may also be that in the initial days the rigidity of the process turned some participants away. It is time to re-look at the benefit the
standards f ramework provides to industry that are still unexplored. This paper is an attempt to highlight the benefits of the framework and how industry can leverage those parts of it that can be woven seamlessly into existing processes of hiring and assessment. Before this paper delves into the world of Occupational Standards and how they could transform the way we look at education and skilling, it is important to illustrate how standards have the power to change entire industries, markets and occupations and indeed, have done so, time and time again.

The GMAT test is an example. The nine universities that created the test, went on to become the top universities in the world because of their ability to select the best candidates from a massive pool of talent.

Standards can be called a common vocabulary that can be used to drive transformation at scale since everyone participating in that world speaks the same way. In the world of occupational standards, they are the common language across academia, industry and government to drive talent transformation at scale since everyone is able to use the standard definition to define a job, skill or proficiency level.

India is expected to have 104.62 million fresh entrants in the labor market by 2022. However, a report by Labor Bureau suggests, that the present skilled workforce in India is only 2.3 percent, much lower than the developing nations like Korea (96%), Japan (80%), Germany (75%) and the UK
(68%).2 Is this because India simply lacks skilled manpower or is it because we have simply not been able to count the number of skilled manpower we have as well as the other countries have? The lack of common definitions and classifications, one of the most important applications of Occupational Standards, could be a major reason.

Who creates Occupational Standards?

The creation of the National Policy on Skill Development in 2009 was a defining moment in India’s approach to skill development as it introduced fundamental changes in the way vocational education was approached in the country. Several crucial steps such as developing the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF), setting up Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) for each industry and sector, and creation of NOS, have been undertaken in the past few years.

Explaining QPs and NOSs

NSDC has created 38 Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) which are responsible for the creation of job standards or Qualification Packs (QPs) for every job role in their respective industry or sectors. A QP for a job comprises a set of National Occupational Standards (NOS) aligned to a job role.

The NOS specify the standards of performance, knowledge and understanding when carrying out a particular activity in the workplace. The definition and description of the QPs drive the creation of training curriculum for that job role and assessments linked to that curriculum. It was found that, at times, QPs can be restrictive since companies like to define their job roles to fit their organization structure. NSDC has therefore allowed for NOS based certifications. Think of a QP like a loaf of bread and NOSs as slices. It is possible to select different ‘slices of bread’ to make up a ‘custom loaf’. This modular structure of NOSs and QPs can allow organisations to either use a QP as it is or build their own using a combination of NOSs.
Taken together, NOS describes occupational competence, and can be used to undertake needs assessment, benchmark Indian standards with other countries, develop model curriculums and content based on the national standards, carry out assessment and certification, undertake affiliation of training partners, and measure quality of execution of any step in the skill development ecosystem.

For more details, click on the link below and download Leveraging Occupational Standards to Drive Skilling at Scale

https://bit.ly/2A7c2TT

Contributors: Kirti Seth-Lead, NASSCOM FutureSkills | Reema Aswani, Research Lead, NASSCOM FutureSkills
NASSCOM would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Benori Knowledge Solutions for helping us build this whitepaper


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