Page 22 - CIJ May 2023 Digital Edition

Skilled Talks

It all started during a conversation with a facility head of a leading
manufacturing company. “Why do facility management companies make
tall promises of providing ‘professional services’ at premium rates and end
up giving us local workers, who hardly have any skills? We are hiring top
FM companies for our property but are being serviced by those who are
just being trained in basic skills at our site for the first time.”

The above statement definitely stirred up emotions, with FM companies

countering, criticising, correcting and clarifying what is true and what is
not true, and finally on what should be, during an informal discussion
over WhatsApp on this topic. Read on…

hile talks are on hardly the case. Local semi- ‘immediately’, which leads to
for ‘skills, skilling skilled workers are not available hiring locals to begin services.”
and upskilling’ to service a site on day one of
of workforces, the contract. We end up training And why not?
Wtheir demand has our folks and placing them at “Hiring staff locally boosts
percolated down from gold- sites; unless there is a client local employment as per state
collared professionals to the who insists on starting services government notifications and in
white-, yellow-, pink-, blue-
and even the heavy blue-collar
workers in the service space.
Specifically, those instilled
in the heavy blue-collar
category, the ‘semi-skilled’
workers who are expected to
be well-dressed in uniforms,
have the best of the etiquettes,
perform every task that is
demanded of them (including
those mundane tasks beyond
their job description), never
complain, work beyond duty
hours with no overtime… And
yes, any deviation from the
expected, always involves a
‘penalty’. This is particularly
true when it comes to
engaging untrained workers.

Why is hiring locals
such an issue?
Getting locals to take on
job tasks at a new facility “is

MAY 2023•Clean India Journal
22 www.cleanindiajournal.com