DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

INTRODUCTION

Economic growth and employment are crucial to achieve the same. It’s a global need to protect this basic right, which requires all the countries and industries to ensure protection of labours and safe working environments. Dignified living is a basic right of every individual. The year 2021 was the year of second and third wave of COVID-19 which disturbed the global economy and many workers lost their jobs. Economic growth is important for factor in bettering the quality of life in a country. It provides increasing employment opportunities, allows and expands the scope of economic activity on which workers earn income.

Nitte (DU) has engaged itself in capacity building in the areas that provide excellent employment opportunities. Nitte (DU) is contributing to the society in this sector by providing decent employment to over 561 faculty members and 2175 support staff.

Demand increased for skilled workers, and upskilling became significant. Higher education provides better skills to the workers as well as easy mobility and globalization. Universities can upskill their students and employees in the domains required in the market and provide better employment. Nitte (DU), strives hard to be a centre of Excellence in imparting quality education, generating competent, skilled manpower to face the scientific and social challenges, with a high degree of credibility, integrity, ethical standards and social concern. The university continues to empowering tens of thousands of youths, by providing high-quality education and skills.

Care and Concern for the Employees and their Families
The university staff were taken care of during the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite the national lockdown, massive loss of jobs worldwide and closure of colleges and workplaces,

• Nitte (DU) paid the full salary to all employees,
• Granted increments in DA of the salary to make up for the personal and financial losses incurred during the pandemic.
• Appointed 386 new permanent employees; 81 being the teaching faculty and 305, the non-teaching support staff.
• Three doses of COVID-19 vaccination to all employees free of cost.
• Several appointments of family members who had lost their other jobs and businesses due to the pandemic.
• University policy of providing free accommodation and conveyance, along with fees concession to their children and free day care facilities for the geriatric dependents.
• Creche facility is available for the free day care of children.
• Other benefits like Health and Accident Insurance, 6 months paid maternity for each pregnancy and paternity leave are a part of the Healthcare benefits given to the employees.
• The University is committed to Gender Equity and provides equal access to men, women and transgenders.
• The University ensures a safe atmosphere free of stress as well as intimidation. The university has a good complaint system which protects the complainants and witnesses of harassment,
• State of art surveillance system for reducing crime and ensuring safety for all its employees.
• All the employees undergo free medical examination and Comprehensive dental care every year and free Mammography screening for breast cancer is offered to all its women employees.
• There exists a grievance cell for the employees

Labour and Employer Relations
The group insurance health care policy is provided by the university to cover the medical expenses of the staff and their family members. The university offers conveyance services to its employees for their daily commute to and from the workplace. It also allows the professionals to run their own businesses along with the job provided by the university. The relationship between the labour and the employer is stress free and of mutual respect.

i. Policy on Staff welfare


ii. Policy on Maternity, paternity and childcare benefits

iii. Code of conduct for administrators


iv. Code of conduct for students

v. Code of conduct for teachers

Economic Growth
The University regularly audits its resource mobilization and has a policy for the same.
i. Resource mobilization policy

Thudar – Psychiatry rehabilitation service
“Thudar” which means “light” in the local language is a Day-Care Rehabilitation Centre which provides training in vocational activities like making of greeting cards, jewellery, cooking, tailoring and gardening. It offers free day care services with transport for beneficiaries. A full- time social worker co-ordinates the rehabilitation services. Some of the psychiatry patients have got employment following rehabilitation and retraining.


Ensuring Safety of Employees

Fire & Safety Training for the entire staff
Regular Fire Safety Theoretical & Practical training for the entire university staff is conducted in the hospital campus. Training for all the categories of staff of the hospital, i.e., doctors, nurses, technicians, housekeeping, office assistants and other hospital staff. Disaster Management and Fire safety drills were conducted on 22nd, 23rd, 25th, 27th & 28th Jan 2021. The training program contained classroom training and practical sessions.



Upskilling manpower constantly to ensure decent work: Patient care training programmes are conducted quarterly, as well as blended teaching training programmes are organised to keep the doctors and all the teaching faculty of the University updated. The staff is trained to use the tools and contents of the e-learning platform to help them develop an effective e-learning module on the internal e-learning portal.


i. FDP on Fundamentals of outcome-based education for the teaching staff of Nitte Institute of Speech and Hearing was conducted with group activities and group discussions in August and Sept. 2021.


ii. Comprehensive Emergency Care and Life Support Course for four days for the Clinicians are regularly conducted to keep them updated with first aid in emergencies involving cardiac, airway protection, obstetric, newborns and snake bite, etc. Induction programs are regularly conducted for the new employees by the Human Resource Department, Nitte (DU).


Regular training on Infection Prevention and Control, Hospital Policies, SOPs and NABH Standards Training for Nurses, Hospital staff and Housekeeping Staff of Justice K S Hegde Charitable Hospital are conducted to maintain the quality by updating the faculty.


iii. Technical and Technological Upskilling a. Faculty Development Program (Online) on Teaching technologies for faculties was conducted on Teaching technologies for Nitte Institute of Architecture’s teaching staff on 18th to 20th January 2021. Prof. Ravindra Punde, Director, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai and Prof. Prasad Shetty, Dean, School of Environment & Architecture from Mumabi were invited to teach.

The university also organized the Invitation/ Brochure & Flyer Creation Training Programs using GIMP software on the 15th, 18th & 26th Mar 2021 for the staff of constituent Institutes of Nitte (DU). Creating Logos, image editing was taught to the trainees. The participants learnt to create the invitation samples.




b. Basic Computer Applications Training for the Nursing Staff Assistants of Justice K S Hegde Charitable Hospital was done on from 24th to 30th March and April 08 & 09, 2021. Dr. Jnaneshwar Pai Maroor, Assistant Professor, JKSHIM, Nitte (DU), facilitated the program of 10 hours for each batch. The program focused on how to use LibreOffice, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint for day to day work-as- usual. This training covered Basic skills on Word processing, Data entry in the Excel spreadsheets, managing files and folders, accessing the internet etc. It helped participants to use the various layouts, slide formatting, customized designs of templates for their presentations. More than 75 nurses participated and benefitted from this program.

c. Basic Computer Training (Hardware & Software) for the Non-teaching staff of Nitte (DU) constituent institutes
Basic Computer Training on Software & Hardware was done for the Office assistants of Nitte (DU) Constituent institutes on 15th & 22nd April 2021. The program focused on the operating the hardware peripherals and software applications like Google meet/Zoom etc.

d. Microsoft PowerPoint-Intermediate-Online Training Program for the teaching and non- teaching staff of constituent Institutes of Nitte (DU) was Online Short-Term-Training Program on “Microsoft PowerPoint-Intermediate” for the teaching and non-teaching staff of the NITTE- DU Constituent Institutions was conducted from 18th May to 10th June 2021 for teaching staff and 14th to 17th June 2021 for non-teaching staff. More than 220 faculty members and 64 non-teaching staff were benefitted with this program.


Training programme on “Graphic Design using Canva”, was conducted on 14th and 28th September 2021. Training included topics like how a poster, a presentation and a video is made using this software. The program involved training in graphic designing using Canva, a popular graphic design platform used to create social media posters, presentations and other visual content. The program involved training in graphic designing using Canva, a popular graphic design platform used to create social media posters, presentations and other visual content. The program had more than 185 registrations from teaching and 123 registrations from non- teaching staff from the constituent colleges of Nitte (DU). They learnt the basics of graphic designing using Canva.


Faculty Development Program on Mentoring Skills Regular quarterly workshops on Mentoring Skills are organized. It was organized on 9th and 10th July 2021 as well as in December 2021 to reflect and redefine the mentoring skills of the mentors of various constituent Institutes of Nitte (DU). The programme included interactive lectures and many group activities. The resource persons discussed mentoring benefits to the mentor and mentees. The sessions were well narrated through the oral presentation and role-play by the participants. The speakers shared their experiences as a mentee & a mentor, discussed the active listening skills, emphasized more on “Quiet Mentorship”-the need for encouraging ‘Thinking’ to transform performance and discussed facilitating positive changes by improving thinking.



1. Regular auditing of the training programmes
The Impact Analysis for the training programmes is also regularly conducted to learn the impact of these programmes to decide on further training initiatives for the same cohort. For the year 2021, it was conducted in April & May 2021.

2. Personality Development of Employees
a. Building Confidence


Capacity Building Programme on Professional Communication for the Non-teaching staff of Nitte (DU) was conducted from 5th to 8th Oct 2021 and 30th November to 3rd December 2021. Verbs and Social Expressions, Question Forms, Negatives, Exchanging Information, Formal and informal writing with special attention on e-mails, Passive Voice, Neutral Voice and Data Interpretation in the programme.


b. Professional Communication training for Non-Teaching staff of NSAM English Medium High School, Nitte was conducted on 26th November 2021. The resource person shared some videos of famous and inspirational speakers to understand effective speech delivery. The importance of 3 Vs of communication such as “Visual, Voice and Verbal” was presented very effectively.


c. English Language Enhancement Classes for the Nursing staff were conducted from 15th to 27th March 2021. The participants learnt the Language Focus, Letter Writing, and Nursing English. Activities like role-play and controlled practice were deployed. The learners were provided with links and tools to practice their grammar further and improve their language.


Teaching Methodology and Presentation skills for the teaching staff of NET Constituent institutes was conducted on 21st and 22nd October 2021. They also detailed the various methods they used in their classroom management.


Webinar on ‘Professional Ethics’ was organized on 26th November 2021 by Nitte Institute of Physiotherapy.

d. Career Guidance

Webinar was conducted on 6th August 2021 on the theme : Which country to study & how to choose? Ms Shivali Mehendale, Country Manager India, Global Study Partners, touched upon the various courses being offered across the globe, approximate expenditure likely to be incurred for studies in various countries, whether studying in the US is better than Europe, etc. Those who participate in the webinar had an active interaction with the Experts from Global Study Partners.

The University has the policy to encourage faculty members to provide knowledge inputs sought by the industry outside the institution, and be rewarded.

e. Intersection of sustainability and wellness at workplace:
The university organised webinars with the entrepreneurs to encourage the staff for new start-ups, as well as for collaboration with the industry bodies. Webinar on the SDG 8 was conducted on 23rd December 2021with focus on “Intersection of sustainability and wellness at workplace” by Dr. Sandhya Professor, PGDM, Nitte School of Management, Bangalore, and Dr. Ramakanth Desai, Management consultant & Corporate advisor, Chairperson of Bangalore fintech forum, Chairperson of ASSOCHAM Healthcare initiative & Advisory panel of Karnataka BJP Economic cell, who gave lecture on “Importance of Inclusive economic growth for achieving SDG 8 Goals.

Out-reach programs
Public Service on World Sight Day
A public service advertisement was conceptualised and filmed by the faculty of Nitte Institute of Communication on the occasion of World Sight Day, 13th October 2021. Old Friends and Fun: Employees
The first ever Online Alumni Meet was held on 26th December 2021 by the Alumni Cell. A fun filled hour with music, contests and interactive activities was planned and executed. The event was well received by the alumni present.

Encouraging Innovations and New Trends
The University regularly conducts seminars and webinars to promote innovation and economic growth in the country.

A Special Lecture on New Trends and Innovations in Technical Writing was organised by IIC-NICO on 15th Nov.2021.An online event, the resource persons were Usha Mandya, Sr Technical Writer, Docker Inc, Cambridge, UK and Radhika Puthiyetath, Principal Technical Writer, Sysdig, San Francisco, USA.


Encouraging Entrepreneurship

Speaking at a webinar on ‘How to become a successful entrepreneur’ by Nitte (Deemed to be University) Institution Innovation Council (IIC), Ullas Kamath said that when industry and academia are collaborated, new thoughts will emerge.

Encourgaing Entrepreneurship in Women


Celebrating World Entrepreneur’s Day
The University) organized a panel Discussion as part of the “World Entrepreneurs’ Day” Celebrations on 31st August 2021.The theme of the programme was “Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Healthcare”.


Creating Awareness about Entrepreneurship opportunities




Management & Entrepreneurship and Professional Skills Council (MEPSC) celebrated India@75: Youth Ideathon 2021 to announce the association with Central Board of Secondary Education, India. University also celebrated Teacher’s and Engineers Day on 13th September, 2021 at NMAM institute of Technology.



Encouraging Creativity, Innovation and patenting