The New Collar Economy: Transforming Blue To White

In an exclusive conversation with BW People, Deepnarayan Tripathi, group HR head, Tenon Group shared his insights on the future of the blue-collar workforce in 2023 and beyond. He believes that multilingual talent and proficiency in technology usage will help transform the blue-collared workforce into the new white. 

What are the key trends shaping the future of blue-collar jobs in India?

Technological advancements across the globe including the persistent focus on AI-driven solutions across all sectors are necessitating the change in approach of what the future “blue collar” work shall look like. Technology education as an end-doer of things will drive efforts from here on. Given the arrival of information at a click, another area that will start playing a major role is the need for upgraded working conditions and better deals for this part of the workforce including but not limited to compensation, benefits, health and safety, wellness and more. 

How can organisations upskill their blue-collar workforce to transform them into the new white? What could be some relevant initiatives?  

First, given the penetration of smartphones and as internet connectivity continues to get better, organisations should start using this medium to cascade information and train their workforce on skills that they need to acquire to be more efficient in their current jobs and build readiness for the next job which may involve a higher level of connectivity. Given that, the usage of smartphones is well known to a much wider population this should act as a catalyst for an upgraded workforce. 

Second, the only roadblock to the first step could potentially be linguistic barriers, organisations should solve this with a two-pronged approach--start imparting basic English linguistic skills and in parallel offer all upskilling initiatives in a multilingual format for it to suit the needs of all of its workforce rather than just the ones who currently have basic proficiency in English.

How is technology navigating the shortage of blue-collar talent? What are some challenges that lie ahead as a result of technological disruption? 

While technology continues to take away menial and repetitive work, talent availability remains a challenge. What the industry is looking forward to is a solution where the right people for the right jobs are identified with a higher degree of success. There are platforms which are enabling this to some extent but there is still a lot of work to be done in this area. There are more than enough instances when we continue to look for the right workforce to do a job and we take an unreasonable amount of time to find the same. Technology will not make anything challenging for the blue-collared workforce, in fact, it will act as an enabler of their success.

Despite layoffs happening across industries, why are blue-collar jobs unaffected and on the rise? 

The layoffs are primarily impacting organisations dealing with tech as the core offering or an allied service. The market is going in for a correction, the un-thought hiring both in terms of the number of people hired and the compensations offered had to be rationalised at some point. On the contrary, areas which employ a majority of the blue-collar workforce continue to demonstrate promising growth and will continue to do so. In the times to come, it will be purely driven by higher levels of disposable income, a large group of aspirational middle-class consumers and high consumption of goods and services on offer.

What skills are employers looking for in the blue-collar workforce today?

A large part of the talent is the blue collared workforce which still comes through inter-state migration. Multilingual talent, especially in English and the knowledge of the local language is highly desirable. Basic communication skills to deliver pleasant first-hand customer service is again something that the industry aspires to. A basic proficiency in the usage of technology like smartphones, operating a tablet, PC helps reduce manual intervention, increasing the end-user experience at the client's site.