Sekar Jeganathan, AVP-HR, Amara Raja, speaks to the India Employer Forum about skilled and semi-skilled workers on the shop floor, green jobs, sustainable and cleaner technologies, attrition, and more.
Moderated by Shylaja P, General Manager / Account Director, TeamLease Services Ltd.
When asked how organizations in the automotive and battery sectors, which depend heavily on skilled and semi-skilled workers to meet production and operational needs, can ensure they’re hiring the right talent, Sekar Jeganathan responded, “Hiring the right talent has always been challenging. Right now, what is the right talent? The definition itself keeps changing. We know our education systems; we know our schooling and colleges. They actually create a few products that may or may not be directly usable in industries. Any industry has that challenge. Therefore, partnering with them becomes the key. One is partnering with those institutions directly before somebody joins us, or budget and plan a certain time period for acclimatizing those people who come out of those institutions to suit our way of working. These two are primarily going to be required. So what we do is, we have our own skill development centers, we call it Amaraja Skill Development Center, where we take people for our shop floor. We take people who are 10 standard pass, 11 standard, 12 standard fail, even those kinds of people, and we take them, we put them through a structured training for 18 months, both classroom training as well as on-the-job training. We provide stipends. It’s a stipended program. We provide them with technical skills as well as soft skills.”
He elaborated further, saying, “In Amara Raja, our cultural training is an extremely important part of all training. Therefore, we have extensive training on getting them to understand the Amara Raja way and train them accordingly. So after 18 months, when they get into our shop floor, they are completely ready. 18 months is not a short period; it’s a long period. But still, that is required for them to also build a long-lasting career within Amara Raja. So that’s something which we do for the shop floor. Then we also do a similar thing for the other trainees. For the diploma graduates or undergraduates, professionals, BE, BTech, and MBAs. We have different programs.”
Watch the full Samvaad: In Conversation with Sekar Jeganathan, AVP-HR, Amara Raja
About Sekar Jeganathan
Sekar is an MBA from Bharathiar School of Management and certified in Strategic HRM from IIM-A. He has an Honors Diploma in Information Systems Management. He is trained as a facilitator by the International Facilitators Association (IAF), Singapore, and as a Business Excellence Assessor in CII Business Excellence. Sekar has undergone extensive training in “Transactional Analysis” under the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA) and Transactional Analysis for Organization Development. He has in-depth experience in the entire gamut of HR and, in particular, Organization Development, Culture Building, Large-scale interactive programs (LSIP), Leadership development, Change management, Talent Acquisition, and strategic HRM. He has been chosen as one of the ‘100 most Influential Leaders’ (2016) by the Employer Branding Institute. He has been adjudged as ‘Great Manager’ (2019) by People Business and Economic Times. Since 2006, he has been part of Amara Raja Group and presently plays the role of AVP-HR at the Group Level handling OD, L&D, and Talent Acquisition. You can connect with Sekar here.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article, including any accompanying data, are the sole responsibility of the author and should not be construed as reflecting the official policy or position of India Employer Forum.
