Tata International Ltd is a leading global player in the area of finished leather and leather products with an environment-friendly production facility at Sriperumbudur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. LSSC launched RPL-Type IV, Best-in-Class Employer Scheme at their premises on 24th July 2018 in the presence of Mr.R. Ramesh Kumar, CEO – LSSC,  along with Mr. Atul Nagrath, Head – Footwear, Ms. Geethapriya, Head-HR and Mr.P. Jaganathan from Tata International Ltd. Let us know how this scheme can benefit the industry to recognize their employees by certifying their knowledge and skills and show a path towards career improvement by providing a co-branded certificate.

RPL-Type IV, Best-in-Class Employer Scheme formalizes informal learning

Since many employees in the leather industry have come from the informal sector, mostly by learning the required skills on their own, they do not have a formal proof of their competencies. The absence of certification for skills acquired through informal channels such as family members, master craftspersons and on-the-job learning has blocked many opportunities for the workforce to improve their career prospects. With the launch of RPL-Type IV, Best-in-Class Employer Scheme, these employees can get recognised as per NSQF levels and get access to better employment, and make use of the certificate to apply for educational courses and create a path for progression.

An employer-driven scheme to accelerate skill development as per industry demand

“RPL with Best-in-Class Employers (BICE)” has been introduced to enhance the industry acceptability of RPL certification and extend the outreach of the scheme directly to reputed employers/ industries across sectors. This is a new type of RPL category envisaged under PMKVY 2016 – 2020 to ensure certification of skills available in the organized sector with best in class employers. This will help achieve certification at scale while ensuring its economy and quality of certification since it is conducted at the employers’ premises. Following are the key features of the scheme:

• A reward of Rs. 500 for certified candidates through Direct Benefit Transfer
• Accidental insurance to all the certified candidates for 3 years as per PMKVY guidelines
• Co – branded certification with the logos of the company and LSSC
• Tab – based online assessments
• Reward of Rs.100 to the supervisor
• Minimum experience of one year for the employee

Implementation strategy

RPL-Type IV, Best-in-Class Employer Scheme is implemented with the help of four key stakeholders. While LSSC plays a prominent role in creating awareness and sensitizing the industry about the need for certification and benefits of the scheme, the industry will work closely with LSSC to identify job roles and carry out other procedures. At the same time NSDC and MSDE look into monitoring, financing and policy level issues.

LSSC in collaboration with the top employers, shall help to enhance credibility of certification and help to promote mobility of the workforce across the sector. Industry will also benefit from their workforce being certified under National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF).

Role of LSSC

LSSC starts with project preparation and submits the details to NSDC. This is followed by:

• Onboarding and sensitization of employers, along with identification of job roles and targets for certification
• Orientation of the ‘Employer Assessors’ regarding NSQF and assessment criteria of the concerned job roles
• Certification of employees and upload on the SDMS for distribution to the concerned employees

Role of the industry

The industry works with LSSC for finalizing the job roles for certification. They also take up:

• Identification of eligible employees for the project and scheduling of the assessment
• Assessment and grading of the employees by the ‘Employer Assessors‘ as per the guidelines
• Result upload on SDMS to enable certification