Festive season boosts manpower demand in India
Festive season hiring is in full swing and companies have started to build their manpower capacity to ensure high festive sales. Businesses have a fantastic opportunity to increase the visibility and accessibility of their items in the marketplace during the festive season.
A rise in consumer purchasing power during the festive period contributes to high sales across all consumer product categories. With a rebound in urban demand and discretionary spending, as well as price increases to offset the effects of rising raw material prices, the FMCG sector’s revenue growth is anticipated to double in the upcoming fiscal year.
To support the increase in sales, productive manpower requirement rises. With advanced recruitment technologies, organisations can increase the efficiency of the hiring process to have productive manpower deployed in response to today’s competitive market demands.
The demand for skilled workers in India has been growing, and with the current pandemic, acquiring new skills is particularly important. For candidates today, being able to adapt to changes in technology is key in every industry, as digital transformation is becoming more and more common.
Rise in consumer sentiments with the easing of pandemic wounds, especially during the festive season, there is an increased demand for in-store promoters, counter staff, merchandisers, customer support, onboarding partners, auditing, packing, customer service, loader-unloader and sales roles.
The development story of hiring in the festive season is expected to be scripted as:
Additional Job Creation during Festive Season
Hiring momentum is back, reversing the trend of the past two years, which had seen reverse migration, uncertainty about revival and shutdowns, Indian market seems to have come back stronger with most sectors indicating an increase in hiring trends. There is an expectation of at least 5 lac additional jobs to be created owing to the festive season which is 20-25% higher than the demand in 2021.
Mobility of the workforce has been a challenge but the post-pandemic workforce has been particular about their hygiene and is looking for better pay opportunities. The average pay scale for seasonal employees is projected to be 8-10% higher in 2022 than last year. Pent up salary hike pending now, paves way for upto 25% hike in order to retain B2C salespeople.
There has been a rise in demand in metro cities where Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai have showcased higher growth due to massive internet adoption, infrastructure development and higher digital adoption by small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Talent Demand Soars High in FMCG & Consumer Durables Sector
The Indian Consumer Durables/Electronics industry is shaping up to hire temp staff on a short-term basis for the festive season predominantly in the role of in-store promoters. The hiring is going to be to the tune of adding 20% more workforce to their existing base for a period of 45-60 days on average. The demand for Feet-on-Street salespeople (FOS) is back with a bang ever since the summer. Hiring by consumer-facing sectors across functions like deliveries and logistics is expected to increase by 25-30%.
In order to maintain this momentum every business is prioritising growth and needs to increase its operational efficiency. Achieving that is only possible when the people, processes and tools are in sync.
Here is a case study into how the most formidable brand in consumer electronics, home appliances, IT hardware and mobile communications space eliminated sourcing challenges to increase operational efficiency.
Although the long-term forecast for the FMCG sector is still favourable, there are still difficulties in the short term. The production process, retail and logistical channels, daily operations, consumer insights, and communication must incorporate resilience. It ought to be included in how businesses hire, train, deploy and manage employees.
The FMCD sector typically performs well during the festive season with a massive increase in sales. With new product launches and an uptick in demand for white goods during the festive buzz, it is crucial to employ skilled and productive counter staff and in-store promoters for desirable business outcomes. These are supplemented with bonuses and incentives to employees to ensure retention and business momentum.
Even though the high inflation will dent some demand, companies are cautious about the numbers overall but are optimistic that the sales will increase over the last two years. Firms are looking at a 20% increase in hiring for temporary staff.
Further exploring newer engagement models that successively is making more opportunities for staffing, contracting and gig workforce across sectors. The supply chain sector has coped with several bottlenecks over the past few months due to the pandemic and is finally starting to ramp up its recruitment processes to support consumer needs.
To achieve the set goals, organisations must leverage national staffing vendors to ensure tech-led payrolling operations, end-to-end employee management with the right sourcing, training solutions, adherence to compliances and productivity tracking.
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