Why Diversity Matters: Women in Tech

India leads the way in the world chart when it comes to women in tech. As per NASSCOM estimates, women now make up 34% of the IT workforce, an increase of 10% since the last decade. India’s IT industry is a $150B industry- one of the largest sectors that drive the country’s GDP. Do you see any correlation between the two? I hope you do for the fact that diversity matters. It drives growth, widens perspective, increases emotional intelligence, builds a stronger foundation and redefines resilience. Last year, IT industry recorded 138,000 new hires.

Global reports have pointed out that top companies with gender diversity are 15% more likely to have financial returns better than their country’s industry median. While other companies that don’t believe in hiring from different races, religions and genders lag mostly when it comes to their performance and financials. NASSCOM, in partnership with India’s IT-BPM industry, launched women in tech initiative a decade ago and looking at how well India’s IT industry is growing there has been a solid impact of this diversity initiative on their performance.

screenshot-blog

Let’s explore some factors that have worked for the IT industry’s diversity program:

Socio-Economic Factors

The ever-growing middle class of India loves growing engineers in their family. Sons or daughters are pushed and pressured to build a career in engineering. While it sounds a little tough on the children, in the long run, this strategy has paid off for most households with children doing phenomenal work in their STEM careers. This drives the family out of poverty and builds a solid future for their generations. This traditional mindset has helped build a strong DNA of the country. Today in this technology-driven world, India is home to the best talent in the world, including some very talented women who sit in tech leadership roles.

Indian Schooling System

While most of us agree that there is a lot of work still to be done in India’s education system. We cannot disregard the fact that our education system has always been very emphatic about the importance of math and sciences. Early on, our children are motivated to learn more about math and science rather than any other subject. Both girls and boys are tasked with many mathematical problems and concepts, and they gradually integrate a second nature into themselves, which answers the question of why so many Indian students are good at math. They grow up to become world-class mathematicians, engineers, and doctors, including women whose average IQ is much higher. Also, about 50% of the technology graduates in India are women, and the youth under thirty significantly contribute to gender parity.

The Boom of India’s IT Industry

The IT industry accounted for 8% of India’s GDP in 2020. Exports from the Indian IT industry are expected to increase by 1.9% to reach US$ 150 billion in FY21. Growing at a rapid speed, the industry has to hire at a rapid pace too, and thus, the IT industry could not ignore any gender, religion, or race in their hiring; otherwise, their productivity would take a hit. Women in India can speak good English coupled with their ability to do good mental math and their engineering background, they made perfect candidates to depend on.

Skills that give women an edge up and helped IT organisations think better:

Networking Skills and Multitasking: Women are masters at navigation and brilliantly putting their ideas to work through their network. They intuitively are gracious and generous in building relationships, and this helps to build strong professional relationships, which is one of the most important ingredients to drive a profitable business. They can hold any business together like their household. Managing people, profits, and processes all together without batting an eye because they know each of those buckets matters in the long run.

Natural Nurturers and Givers:

Women seek to give back to their families, organisations, and communities. They feel indebted to do so—it’s natural to them. It’s ingrained in her to think about others first and then about her. This loyalty pays off for most organisations that promote women as their leaders. Any investment in her will give a better ROI. They make great long-term strategic partners for any organisation. Their motherly nature also makes them brilliant talent nurturers, for once they see the talent, they seek to grow it as much as possible, which makes way for future leaders of those organisations.

Natural Nurturers and Givers:

Women seek to give back to their families, organisations, and communities. They feel indebted to do so—it’s natural to them. It’s ingrained in her to think about others first and then about her. This loyalty pays off for most organisations that promote women as their leaders. Any investment in her will give a better ROI. They make great long-term strategic partners for any organisation. Their motherly nature also makes them brilliant talent nurturers, for once they see the talent, they seek to grow it as much as possible, which makes way for future leaders of those organisations.

All of these factors coupled together have today helped India’s IT industry grow a strong portfolio in diversity hiring, and they are not done yet, they aim to drive a 50-50% gender neutralization into their systems. It’s a benchmark the world needs to follow and learn from. The tech industry is in progression and tech-based roles receiving high traction from other industries as well. As per Jobs and Salaries Primer Report 2021, the tech industry is in progression with 6-8% growth, and tech-based roles are receiving high traction from other industries. The salary growth for jobs in this space has been rewarding as well. This surely aids in the fact that the future of work is not gender-dominated but gender-diversified.

What other industries should learn?

It’s incredibly important to have different perspectives from different genders for any healthy organisation. A boardroom filled with 9 men out of 10 is not a balanced boardroom. Senior leaders should not listen to any alibis when it comes to why enough women aren’t getting hired or promoted at certain levels. The makeup of a boardroom should be a priority for shareholders too.

Lack of diversity in any organisation undermines its ability for strategic thinking and inhibits long-term growth. Comparing a veteran male candidate’s seamless work experience with a woman who started her career at a later stage or with breaks due to motherhood is a wrong comparison. Give her a chance, even if she is too young, too inexperienced, too forgiving, or too emotional, and see how your organisation gets four times the return on its investment.

#PutWomenToWork

Author

Deval Singh

VP & Business Head

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

At workplace, FM means flash mob

An article in Hindustan Times talks about how firms are using flash mobs to increase workplace productivity, along with inputs from Rituparna Chakraborty.

When Paul Chan, the CEO of Pureprofile, an Australia-based media company, visited its Mumbai office early this year, he was greeted by a carefully choreographed Bollywood dance.

From building team spirit among colleagues and announcing discounts for customers to spreading official and social messages within the organisation, more firms are using flash mobs to achieve many goals.

While tech firms , including Accenture, Wipro and Infosys, often held flash mobs, the practice is catching on in other companies like Birla Life Insurance, Ernst & Young, IMS Health and Hotel Grand Hyatt.

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund recently held a flash mob for the first time at its Mumbai corporate office to tell its employees about the importance of systematic investments. “It gets people interested with most even sharing the message among a larger group. The flash mob took our employees by surprise and became a talking point,” CEO A Balasubramanian said.

Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, arranged a flash mob to inform the guests of various offers. “On the one hand, the associates welcomed the refreshing change, and on the other, the guests were thrilled to see them perform,” said the company spokesperson. “We try and theme our performances on festivals …”

“These not only help strengthen the bond among colleagues from various departments, but also refresh them, helping them perform better at the workplace,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder of staffing firm, Teamlease Services.

This article was published in Hindustan Times

Author

Rituparna Chakraborty

Co-founder & Executive Director
TeamLease Services Limited

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

Women in the Red

An article in Financial Chronicle talks about ‘despite the tall claims corporate India has been making in terms of ensuring gender diversity at the workplace and being gender neutral in terms of opportunities, the depressingly simple fact is that women are paid less than men’; along with inputs from Sonal Arora.
Despite tall claims, India Inc pays women less than men

Who says it’s a fair world? India Inc? Forget it. Despite the tall claims corporate India has been making in terms of ensuring gender diversity at the workplace and being gender neutral in terms of opportunities, the depressingly simple fact is that women are paid less than men.

Consider some statistics that a recent study by Monster.com has put out. As far as India Inc is concerned, on an average, men earned Rs 288.7 per hour in 2015 whereas their female colleagues earned just Rs 215.5, which is 25.4 per cent lesser. This pay gap was 27 per cent in 2013 and 24 per cent in 2014, the study points out.

While traditional sectors like manufacturing are still taking time to usher in the gender paradigm, surprisingly, in new-age information technology (IT), India’s trump card in its claim to economic fame, women are paid lesser than men.

Gender pay gap occurs in two ways — when men and women working at the same level get a differentiated pay as in the case of construction and healthcare sectors. In most other sectors, men and women with the same years of experience get different pay because women lag behind men while scaling up the career ladder, which offers better salaries at each step.

Says Suman Rudra, India HR leader, NCR Corporation: “At the entry level, most organisations do not make a distinction between men and women in terms of pay. But over a period of time, this distinction widens as women are not able to move up in a career as fast as men, for several reasons.” Predictably, societal and familial pressures take a toll on the woman’s career at some point of time while men are left with the freedom to pursue a steady flight in their career.

“Studies have shown that 25 per cent of women in the corporate sector drop out of a job after childbirth as taking care of children and other members of the family and household chores are primarily women’s responsibilities. In many cases, consciously or not, job takes a backseat. Even if a woman gets back to work, her priorities shift in favour of fulfilling family responsibilities. In the process, she is not able to give enough time at work and take up lucrative assignments, affecting promotions and increments,” says Sonal Arora, vice president, Teamlease.

It leads to situations, not uncommon, when women decline a promotion when it requires relocation and extensive travelling. They are also hesitant to move organisations in search of better job prospects, being tied down to family responsibilities.

Despite efforts to redress the balance, it is evident that gender can affect an individual’s earning potential. Points out Sanjay Modi, managing director, APAC and Middle East, Monster.com, “It is disappointing to note that the gender pay gap is evenly reflected across sectors in India. According to many critics, the occupational and personal choices women make explain a significant proportion of the pay gap. Women are constantly faced with tough choices to balance work and personal life. However, many forget that doing so is not her sole responsibility; rather it’s a choice that they end up making.”

When it comes to salaries, women brought up in the Indian cultural milieu are trained not to ask what they need. “During promotion talks and salary negotiations, men are found to be better than women. Men are also demanding when they join new organisations. Women are taught not to be demanding and wait for things to happen in their due course. This has much to do with their cultural upbringing,” explains Arora. This is one of the reasons why women in some sectors like healthcare and construction are paid lesser than men even at the same level.

There are also few sectors which prefer male to female employees, going so far as to even favouring them for promotions to supervisory positions. These sectors have traditionally been male-dominated. Many companies tend to judge performances by the hours an employee spends at the workplace. Men, who hand around for longer hours, are considered better workers compared to women who finish their work and leave early.

Women too find comfort in certain jobs, the selection of which have less to do with career betterment and salary prospects and more with the comfort level they offer in striking a good work-life balance. There are a few factors that are common to women across sectors, the challenges in each one as diverse as the sectors themselves.

Information technology

In case of IT, a sector seen as the most progressive in terms of human resource practices, this gender gap was shockingly high at 34 per cent in 2015. In median, men earned Rs 360.9 per hour whereas women earned only Rs 239.6. While men’s wages have increased marginally between 2013 and 2015, remuneration for women has recorded a significant drop by Rs 55, finds Monster.

IT is also one sector that carries less historical baggage. The companies have a global clientele and are more aware of international best practices and importance of gender diversities. Being a people-driven industry, the management of human resources too is key to the success of an organisation. The employees are largely younger compared to other sectors and the men-women ratio too is much better balanced than in other sectors.

“Women, as in other sectors, face challenges when it comes to taking care of their children and family. But IT companies have always tried to get them back to work. They are proactive in taking steps to provide better work-life balance to their employees, especially women,” explains Hema Parikh, director HR, Ajuba Solutions.

IT companies always claim to adopt women-friendly policies and measures to provide a better work-life balance, but it comes at the cost of pay, increments and promotions. Most companies are flexible in their timings if women have other responsibilities to meet, with some providing options like work from home. Women are also allowed to opt out of overseas assignments, odd-time projects and extensive travelling. But being a constantly evolving sector, employees have to keep pace with changes. There have been occasions when women who take a break find themselves outdated when they join back.

“In IT, performance alone matters. A person who runs around, takes up additional responsibilities and assignments, is going to grow. Women are encouraged to take more responsibility at work with passion. But at the end of the day, women who seek more work-life balance will be recognised accordingly, not equivalently,” admits Parikh.

That’s why, the strength of women staff tapers down as people move up the career ladder. At the junior and mid-level, the ratio between women and men is almost 40 to 50 per cent in IT. But when it comes to the top-level, it is just 10 per cent. Parikh adds: “It was four to five per cent a few years ago, but has moved up to 10 per cent now.”

Says Teamlease’s Arora: “The percentage of women in leadership roles in IT is much better than the entire industry, which is around 5 per cent. But the salaries are significantly higher in the top positions in IT. When you take the weighted average, men will be earning more, as 90 per cent of the highly paid employees are men. This increases the disparity in pay between men and women and hence we are seeing such a gender pay gap in IT.”

Manufacturing

In manufacturing, where the women workforce constitutes hardly 20 per cent, the gender pay gap in 2015 was pegged at 34.9 per cent. The average hourly wage for men was Rs 259.8 and women Rs 192.5. This is a difference in wages of Rs 67.3. Men’s wages have increased slightly over the years (a yearly average of Rs 2.45), while women’s wages have slipped from 2013 to 2014, but has picked up slightly in 2015.

“Manufacturing is an old-economy sector with a traditional mindset and heavily dominated by men. In most of the segments, including auto and ancillaries, power and capital goods, we would largely see men across different levels. The mindset is that women are not capable of doing heavy jobs in the sector, though most of the companies have become fully automated,” says Arora.

Manufacturing also does not figure in the list of sectors traditionally preferred by women. “Women find manufacturing less attractive than services. There is a perception that women are inflexible to the needs of the sector like doing night shifts, odd hours and reaching factories away from the cities,’ adds NCR Corporation’s Rudra.

In addition, labour laws for the manufacturing industry do not allow women to work in night shifts, as it is not considered safe. But women in IT and ITeS work on night shifts and odd hours and travel far to get to their offices. The industry has understandably been seeking labour reforms to change some of these archaic perceptions.

Indeed, finding women on the shop floor is difficult in India. Most of them get employed in support functions like administration, finance and human resource management. Even within the manufacturing sector, women employment is different is different segments. Textiles, especially garment manufacturing, employs a lot of women. But textiles have always been driven by cheap labour and women are inadequately paid for the work they put in.

Adds Rudra: “The number of women is slowly increasing in segments which need patience and fine motor skills like electronics, hardware, telecom products.”

Healthcare

A 26 per cent gender pay gap exists in this sector, as men earned Rs 240.6 per hour in 2015, but women only Rs 178.3. In healthcare, women constitute a healthy 22 per cent of the workforce. The numbers, naturally, come down to 16 per cent in mid-level and four per cent at the top level.

The bulk of this women workforce is concentrated in the role of nurses. A nurse takes home a salary, which is a pittance compared to what goes into the pocket of the doctor. In cities, a starting salary of nurses would be Rs 6,000-Rs 8,000 per month, while doctors take away Rs 1.5 to 2 lakh. While the salaries of nurses would have gone up 20 to 30 per cent in the last 10 years, that of doctors have risen by 10 to 15 times. Unfortunately, the number of women doctors in India is a lot lesser compared to men. Due to the rock-bottom salary structures, every year a large chunk of Indian nurses move out to West Asia, the US and the UK, despite scarcity back home.

Points out Ashwajit Singh, managing director, IPE Global: “Nurses work long hours, do night shifts and their working conditions are far from desirable. But their pay is not even comparable to doctors. Even among nurses, male nurses are paid better than their female counterparts. Hospitals, which pay differentiated salary to male and female nurses, justify that men are made to do nursing jobs which need more strength like lifting patients and heavy equipment. Men also get easily promoted to supervisory roles.”

He adds: “The differentiation is evident even among specialised doctors. Generally, women are found in specialties like gynaecology and paediatrics. Cardiology, orthopaedics and neuro surgery, which are the forte of men, are better paid than gynaecology and paediatrics in many private hospitals.”

Missionary hospitals have always propagated the perception that nursing is a social service and hence looking at it as just another job and demanding salaries, is not proper. Women getting into the service are expected to be meek, never demanding salaries due to them. The absence of workers’ unions among nurses too adds to the problem.

In the biotechnology and pharma sectors, which are also part of healthcare, the presence of women is strictly limited. “One has to dedicate more years to education in order to get into research and the job too requires extended hours at work. So women tend to opt out of research,” admits Teamlease’s Arora.

Construction

Wage discrimination is rampant in the construction sector as well, which is also highly unorganised. Organised players account for hardly 10 to 15 per cent of the industry. Women in this sector are unskilled labourers at the worksite. For years, their wages have been at least 50 to 60 per cent lower than that of men. Wages go up for skilled labour like masonry, carpentry and plumbing, but these again, are men’s domains.

In supervisory roles too, there are hardly any women. Even within construction companies, women take up support functions like finance and accounting. “Educated women hardly prefer construction-related jobs, as they are expected to deal with labour unions, liaison with government departments and on several occasions, pay a bribe as well. There are very few at leadership positions in construction companies, apart from those women who belong to the promoter family,” points out Arora.

Way ahead

Studies indicate that only 33 per cent women in India are part of the workforce. The contribution of women to the country’s GDP is 17 per cent and India can add at least 16 per cent to the national income if women joined the labour force in proportionate measure, finds a study by Teamlease. Achieving this requires the country to recast its outdated societal outlook substantially. Outdated attitudes and beliefs perpetuated through decades of cultural sanctions and patriarchal hierarchies have set gender roles that hinder equal opportunity.

Says IPE Global’s Singh: “Lower the workforce, lesser will be the salaries. We need to get more women into the workforce and this will automatically raise the pay levels.” He has a point. But typically, efforts to get more women into the workplace needs initiatives from different levels — the government, industry and family.

Extending maternity leave is one such recent initiative to encourage women to get back to work after a break. The recent Model Shops and Establishments Act allow women to work late hours in stores. It will also push up their employment in the retail sector.

“The government should undertake labour reforms for the manufacturing sector, allowing women to work in night shifts. This will increase availability of labour in this sector, especially textiles. Initiatives like startup India should reserve a portion of their funds for women entrepreneurs and also help them with mentoring,” opines Rudra.

Adds Singh: “The government has to fix a minimum wage structure for nurses in order to avoid exploitation by hospitals and drain of nursing talent.”

A proactive industry can bring back the women workforce, which drops out after the proforma maternity break. Some IT companies are beginning to provide creche facilities, flexibility in timing and training to keep women updated, post a break.

When women too find that they are not being discriminated against for bearing a child and taking up family responsibility, they will be motivated to get back to work. Some multinational companies have been setting such examples for others to follow in the industry.

Points out Vinita Shrivastava, senior director, Harman India, HR & global mobility: “There have been occasions in our office where women who had returned from maternity leave were promoted within a week. Also, there are women on our shop floor. There was a glass ceiling a few years ago, but it is breaking at least in the top cities and among companies like ours. Women account for 22 per cent of our workforce and we expect this to go up to 30 to 35 per cent in the near future.”

Companies have also been conducting programmes to sensitise employees about gender diversity at the workplace. “These sensitisation programmes should also be conducted for families of the employees. If families are willing to share household responsibilities, women can dedicate more time and energy for their work,” says Arora. If all goes according to plan, hopefully, this gender-gap would get a lot less narrow than it is now.

This article was published in Financial Chronicle

Author
TeamLease Logo

TeamLease Services Limited

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content

It is a long-established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here,’ making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Author

TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

A skill is worth more than a degree on paper

The value of something is shown by demand: 23 lakh candidates (including 2.22 lakh engineers and 255 PhD holders) applied for the 368 vacant peon posts in Uttar Pradesh recently. Some of this excess demand represents the above-market wages and job security of government jobs but most of it is just the unemployability of the educated.

The biggest challenges for employability lie in engineering, MBA and MCA degrees. In Maharashtra, only 1.07 lakh students applied for around 1.56 lakh engineering degree seats last year. Similar statistics are seen for many states whether Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Telangana or Andhra Pradesh. The national regulator of engineering education suggests that capacity will come down from the current 16.7 lakh to about 11 lakh in the near term.

Clearly, the focus has to be on skills than degrees. This is the first year when the top 20 per cent of ITI graduates will get more salaries than the bottom 20 per cent of engineers. But vocational training all over the world is usually for other people’s children and not yours; the Nobel Prize for Economics went to Michael Spence who suggested that employees are able to use their education credentials to get social signalling value. In India, we have amplified this problem by poor strategy, execution and accountability.

Vocational training is a policy orphan because strategy is set by Delhi but delivery systems are in the hand of states. There is a mismatch between what is taught and what employers need; we still teach automobile mechanics on a carburettor but no Indian car is now made with one. We teach engineering drawing using boards when all over the world employers use computer-aided design tools. India’s skill crisis requires solutions that create new connections between the education and employment system to reduce the mismatch between what students learn and what employers want.

One of the best possible routes to learning skills and also getting a job is through the apprenticeship programmes, which have been the path to a career for decades in countries like Austria and Germany.

Setting up a ministry of skills is one part of the solution. Twenty three central ministries are involved in skills but as Socrates said, a slave who has three masters is free. Same is the case with the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC).

Skilling, as seen internationally, is not the end-of-the-pipe training but something which needs to be integrated into college education. We need to significantly revamp syllabus across the board and have each state set up a Skills University, which prays to one god of the employer.

Skills Universities, which offer academic modularity (mobility between certificates, diplomas and associate degrees), flexible delivery, and a new apprenticeship regime will offer both employability and social signalling value. The National Skills Qualifications Framework is a good start. The government should take the lead in hiring based on skills’ evaluation and create a Skills Mission, which converges all such programmes into one. States need to recognise that labour law reform is a job creation agenda. Lastly, the toxic Right to Education Act – it confuses school building with building schools – has to be amended to become the Right to Learning Act.

With India’s large youth population – 10 lakh children will join the labour force every month for the next 20 years – we need to act firmly, quickly and boldly. Indian education faces the impossible trinity of cost, quality and scale, and we need a number of independent and different solutions. The vocationalisation of higher education is an overdue reform.

Author

TeamLease Skills University

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

India became more formal job friendly with recent ESIC reforms

In 1965 Professor Milton Friedman warned India that the Mahanalobis economic model being adopted “threatens an inefficient use of capital by combining it with too little at one extreme and an inefficient use of by combining it with too little capital at the other extreme”. Unfortunately, he was right; a dysfunctional labor law regime over the next fifty years ensured that most of our 6.3 enterprises have created informal jobs with low productivity that pay low wages. Much regulatory cholesterol still last week’s of health insurance premiums to reflect for the Employee State Insurance (ESI) was not only an overdue recognition that salary is the property of employees but it is an important law reform will accelerate social security penetration.

ESI is often insultingly described as self-financing; unclear what that means because Rs 22,000 crore was confiscated from employee salaries last year by the Employee State Insurance Corporation (ESIC). More painfully, ESIC only paid out 50% of the contributions it collected as benefits (laws in many countries require insurers to refund all premiums below 75%. This overcharging has not only led to an unacceptable Rs 75,000 crore cash hoard, but made ESIC the company with the highest Return on Equity in India (5000%+) despite angry customers, weak health outcomes, and mission creep. The revision of contribution rates from 6.5% to 4% will reduce employee salary confiscation for low wage employees – the only kind covered by ESI – by about Rs 7,000 crore. This tweak is not an argument against ESI but an acknowledgement of Renaissance physician Paracelsus’s warning “The dose makes the poison”. Anything powerful enough to help has the power to hurt if administered in the wrong proportion.

This revision to contribution rates for the first time in 20 years is important for many reasons. It recognises that a government corporation has no reason to be accumulating huge amounts of cash confiscated from employees. It recognises that past contribution rates have been higher than required. It recognises that in a cost-to-company world of compensation, salary is the property of employees. It recognises that an unreasonable gap between salary (gross) and Haath-Waali salary (net salary in hand) breeds informal employment. It recognises that ESIC treats contributors not as clients but as hostages. It recognises an appetite to take on vested interests. It recognises that social security reform is an important component of labour reform. Most importantly, it recognises that social security schemes must be social and offer security.

This scepticism about ESI is not cynicism about social security; a modern state is a welfare state, and spreading India’s prosperity needs a well-designed and financed safety net. However, ESI’s accountability for outcomes is weak even for plumbing problems; the portal is down often, hard copy requirements still exist, hospital visit are often required for photos and doctor signatures, a 6 month block instead of 3 months or real-time, challenges in transferring contributions, mergers or continuity of numbers between employers, moving away from sub-code wise remittance, disconnect between branch offices and dispensaries, accidents reports could not be filed in portal online during the last three months, address of dispensaries has not yet provided in portal for newly implemented and fully implemented districts. No clear procedure for correction of names and dates of joining, Joint undertaking procedure (like in PF) not implemented, and much else. Additionally, the family pension obligation fits better with EPFO’s mandate, and ESI’s decision to run medical and dental colleges must be unwound.

Over the decades ESI has had weak oversight; what else explains the board not considering excessive contribution rates and poor dispensary service as harassing contributors? The only sustainable fixes are competition and governance. Sustaining reform will need a governance overhaul; the current board of ESIC is too large (58 members), has too many generalists (no specialised sub-committees), is a geriatric ward (no age limits), has too little turnover among non-government members (no term limits), and has too much turnover among government nominees (poor institutional memory). The board currently does not think strategically about the Institution of ESI (the provision of health insurance) and ESI as an Institution (its human capital, technology, training, performance management, and structure). ESIC will only get its act together if it faces competition; we must implement the previous NDA budget announcement that employees can choose who manages their premiums. Maybe we should merge CGHS with ESIC; nothing improves services more than getting rid of VIP rooms, lanes, and access. If that is not acceptable, a second-best choice may be merging ESIC with Ayushman Bharat; a medical rather than trade union “thought world” is better for contributors. ESI’s dysfunctionality is demonstrated by only enrolling 12 lakh of India’s 6.3 core enterprises over 70 years. GST enrolling the same number of enterprises within two years demonstrates that design is a powerful lever.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar – whose 1943 report laid the foundations for the ESI Act in 1948 -said, “A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant to society.” ESI’s greatness comes from its monopoly rather than service to society via capabilities, outcomes, and politeness. This must change. Social security is vital infrastructure, but blindly copying the West without their incomes or recognising the current problems of their safety nets is delusional. Important design issues for ESI – who pays, who delivers, who governs – need further review because an unintended consequence of the past design is widespread low-productivity employment, with most Indian enterprises being dwarfs (small that will stay small) rather than babies (small that will grow). With few formal employers, there are few formal employees. Thankfully, recent ESI reform indicates a willingness to deal with the labour laws that don’t protect employees and discourage formal employment.

Author

Manish Sabharwal

Exec. Vice Chairman & Co-Founder
TeamLease Services Ltd

Rituparna Chakraborty

Co-Founder & EVP
TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

Ignore the jobs doomsayers

Notion that India has peaked in manufacturing & IT employment is at best premature; at worst, dishonest

Einstein said that if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing it is stupid. Only 0.7 percent and 11 percent of India’s labour force work in information technology (IT) and manufacturing, and yet, many pundits predict that India’s IT and manufacturing employment has peaked — let’s call it the jobs doomsday prediction — because of automation, robots, the immigration backlash, and anti-globalisation-driven trade barriers. I believe this prediction is wrong for a low-income and low-productivity country like India and am willing to wager that in five years, IT employment will rise from the current 3.5 million to 6 million; in 10 years, manufacturing employment will rise from 10 percent to 20 percent of the labour force. I’d like to make the case that this job’s doomsday prediction is shallow, ahistorical, and impulsive.

The jobs doomsday prediction is shallow because it blindly extrapolates the labour market context of a rich country like the US (with a per capita income of $45,000) to a poor country like India (with a per capita income of $1,500). America is rich because it has highly efficient and productive land, labour, and capital markets. India is poor because 50 percent of our labour force produces only 11 percent of our GDP, and we only have 18,000 companies with a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore. Preventing people from falling into poverty (the US’s problem) is a more difficult problem than pulling people out of poverty (India’s problem).

The jobs doomsday prediction is ahistorical because it suffers from the “presentism” disease identified by historians as a belief that the times we live in are unique. History acknowledges that technological change is powerful, but it takes more time than people think. Carlota Perez’s wonderful book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, says, “The full fruits of the technological revolutions that occur about every half century are only widely reaped with a time lag. Usually decades of turbulent adaptation and assimilation elapse, from the moment when the set of new technologies, products, industries, and infrastructures make their first impact to the beginning of a ‘golden age’ or ‘era of good feeling’ based on them”. Technological change is not a bulb that goes on but a gentle sunrise.

The jobs doomsday prediction is impulsive because it does not fully process the implications of India’s huge domestic market for manufacturing and the hard-to-replicate ecosystem for India’s IT industry. India retained the top spot globally for inward Foreign Direct Investment because the $60 billion is clustered in manufacturing for areas where domestic consumption is reaching critical mass; Make-in-India could be Make-for-India till the global storm passes.

India’s IT industry has network effects in software that parallel China’s in hardware; we produce more engineers than the US and China combined. Also, the passing shower of H1B visas pales compared to the climate change in technology — all companies are technology companies, all hardware has a layer of software, data and smartphone costs are cratering, etc. And Bangalore and Hyderabad are probably the only cities in the world where you could hire 1,000 Hadoop programmers in a week.

It’s not my case that India is immune to the march of technology or that India’s economic renaissance is a given; just that since we are so poor and come so late to the productivity party, our solutions are more obvious and lower-hanging. Wutbürger—the German compound word for angry citizen — is a Western political reality because it’s unclear what can be done about technology deflating employment in countries used to high incomes (video rental chain Blockbuster’s 83,000 employees have been replaced by 2,000 people at Netflix).

Technology’s deflation does raise the question of whether India will ever be able to get to the per-capita levels of America, but India is far from the productivity frontier; policymakers finally have a 10-year plan to create a middle class of 800 million, and many Indians believes that the next generation will have better lives than them. India is more than a country; it is a continent that may already have the world’s highest population. A new book called Scale by Geoffrey West is a wonderful meditation on the non-linearity and exponentiality that arise from size. Scientists experimenting with drugs killed the elephant Tusko because the 297 mg dose they injected was calculated by extrapolating from earlier research on cats. Actually, despite the huge difference in mass, non-linearity meant that the right dose for the elephant was only a few mg more than the cat.

India is an elephant; most data and anecdotes for the jobs doomsday prediction come from countries that are, relatively speaking, cats, if not mice (Rajasthan is bigger than Germany, and UP has more people than Germany, France, and the UK combined). India’s scale has delivered in the past; remember how the Green Revolution trumped Stanford economist Paul Ehrlich’s suggestion in the 1960s to let Indians die of starvation because the world was running out of food?

We optimists know that pessimists will always get more intellectual respect because they sound wiser. And only a fool would believe India will create enough good jobs without finishing the huge tasks of building infrastructure, reducing regulatory cholesterol, and raising human capital. But the jobs doomsday prediction of India having peaked in manufacturing and IT employment is at best premature and at worst, dishonest. And therefore, it is crucial for policymakers to realise that if we lose our 800 million middle-class-creation battle, it will not be because of automation or protectionism but our own inability to make our land, labour, and capital markets more productive.

Author

TeamLease Services Limited

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

Talent deficit can derail Make in India programme

An article in Financial Chronicle talks about Indian industry facing a chronic shortage of talent in the manufacturing sector, derailing the Make In India programme; along with inputs from Sonal Arora.

Despite the government’s ambitious target to make manufacturing account for 25 per cent of the GDP by 2022 from current 16 per cent, Indian industry finds that a chronic shortage of talent in the manufacturing sector can derail the Make In India programme.

The government has set a target to create 100 million jobs by 2022, centred of its “Make in India” initiative, but least estimates suggest that the manufacturing sector has created only four million jobs since 2010. This, despite 30 per cent to 40 per cent talent deficit on the shop floor that accounts for almost 80 per cent of jobs in the manufacturing sector.

“This deficit can go up to 50 per cent to 60 per cent, if investments speed up in new facilities,” said Sonal Arora, vice president at hiring agency Teamlease. In India, manufacturing accounts for 11 per cent of employment against 40 per cent in China. To reach the official employment target, this must go up to at least 25 per cent, though the government has not set industry specific targets or a roadmap to achieve this.

Experts say India does not face scarcity of manpower, but skilled labour, with only 2 per cent of the population comprising skilled workforce, as per government data.

“Today, there is increasing automation the world over. Manufacturing requires a higher level of skill to operate sophisticated machinery. Any unskilled worker cannot get into factories, as was the case a few years ago,” said Arora. According to her, post recession, companies have been increasingly focussing on cost control and productivity. Hence, they have become selective about inducting talent.

What’s worse, there are very few institutions to train people for manufacturing. The ITIs still have pedagogies that do not match up with current requirements. “The curriculum that they follow has not changed much in the past 70 years,” said Suman Rudra, India HR leader at NCR Corporation.

“There are issues with regard to the talent passing out from the training institutes and colleges and this is not just specific to ITIs, but engineering colleges and management institutes as well. The teaching methodology, content and the delivery method in these institutes do contribute to mediocre output,” said Aditya Narayan Misra, CEO and director at CIEL HR Services.

For sometime now, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has been preparing training modules in collaboration with industry segments, but in many cases, the requirement and skill sets would have changed by the time it identifies the requirement in a particular sector, prepares a module and trains people.

This expectation and delivery mismatch is not only an issue with the industry, but also with the employees. “The job profile, ecosystem and the remuneration might not match employee expectations. As a result, at least one-third of the hired workforce drops out,” said Rudra.

Of late, the industry has been shifting its reliance on talent made available by the government, with several large companies running their own training programmes.

“But we too have our limitations, without the government initiating reforms in labour laws. We cannot induct too many people without changes being made in the Industrial Disputes Act or those that allow units to close due to financial loss. Several automobile and telecom companies have been in trouble due to labour problems,” said Rudra.

The pay structure in the manufacturing sector too is not very attractive for people to migrate from villages to industrial hubs. “After meeting all the expenses of relocating, the job provides very less opportunity to save. Social security schemes and job guarantee schemes in the villages tempt them to stay back,” said Misra.

The expectation-delivery mismatch is not limited to the jobs on the shop floor alone. “There are jobs in sales, customer service and operations. But employability and productivity expectations have gone up. A few years ago, companies used to hire three out of four candidates we sent. Now, hardly one gets hired,” said Arora.

A study by Singapore-based Emeritus Institute of Management suggests that India Inc has been struggling to source the right talent even for middle managers that align with current requirements and for future growth. The companies are unable to hire, retain and upgrade existing talent to take on new roles in a competitive business environment.

The study says that almost 90 per cent of the respondents in the manufacturing sector found that retaining good talent affected organisational growth.

“One of the key challenges of India Inc is locate able middle management talent to lead, manage and mentor employees with varying skill sets and work experiences. Assuming a 1:10 ratio between managers and low-skilled jobs, India will still need to groom 3-8 million managers in the next 10 years. This middle management represents 30 per cent of the entire workforce,” said Ashwin Damera, the institute’s executive director.

This expectation and delivery mismatch is not only an issue with the industry, but also with the employees. “The job profile, ecosystem and the remuneration might not match employee expectations. As a result, at least one-third of the hired workforce drops out,” said Rudra.

Of late, the industry has been shifting its reliance on talent made available by the government, with several large companies running their own training programmes.

“But we too have our limitations, without the government initiating reforms in labour laws. We cannot induct too many people without changes being made in the Industrial Disputes Act or those that allow units to close due to financial loss. Several automobile and telecom companies have been in trouble due to labour problems,” said Rudra.

The pay structure in the manufacturing sector too is not very attractive for people to migrate from villages to industrial hubs. “After meeting all the expenses of relocating, the job provides very less opportunity to save. Social security schemes and job guarantee schemes in the villages tempt them to stay back,” said Misra.

The expectation-delivery mismatch is not limited to the jobs on the shop floor alone. “There are jobs in sales, customer service and operations. But employability and productivity expectations have gone up. A few years ago, companies used to hire three out of four candidates we sent. Now, hardly one gets hired,” said Arora.

A study by Singapore-based Emeritus Institute of Management suggests that India Inc has been struggling to source the right talent even for middle managers that align with current requirements and for future growth. The companies are unable to hire, retain and upgrade existing talent to take on new roles in a competitive business environment.

The study says that almost 90 per cent of the respondents in the manufacturing sector found that retaining good talent affected organisational growth.

“One of the key challenges of India Inc is locate able middle management talent to lead, manage and mentor employees with varying skill sets and work experiences. Assuming a 1:10 ratio between managers and low-skilled jobs, India will still need to groom 3-8 million managers in the next 10 years. This middle management represents 30 per cent of the entire workforce,” said Ashwin Damera, the institute’s executive director.
Innovation and strategic thinking is the most notable skill gap in middle management. They also lack a global mindset to take the organisation to the next level and efficiency in leading people and team.

“Attrition is a problem in the industry. Retaining talent depends on how the organisation treats the employee as an asset and what he feels about the company. The manufacturing industry, especially the consumer durables and telecom sectors, is fast evolving. Manpower too has to be constantly upgraded,” said Eric Braganza, president, Haier Appliances.

This article was published in Financial Chronicle

Author

Sonal Arora

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

A skilling crisis, not a jobs crisis: Need to make skilling a key goal towards nation-building

Skills should have been a priority after Independence because an unskilled or unemployed Indian is not a free Indian, and the launch of the Skill India campaign in 2015 seemed a fresh departure from the past. Taking a historical perspective, the phase 1 of skills in India was largely about a purposeless drift without vision, execution or institutions. In phase 2, while the vision was sound, but the execution was affected by the lack of institutional structures—anybody could say no and nobody could say yes—and the lack of nesting skills into a broader job-creation vision. And when the Skill India campaign was launched by our current government, it seemed promising because of three reasons. First, it was part of a multipoint agenda for creating jobs. Second, it struck the right balance between continuity and change. And third, it seemed to have struck the right balance between poetry and prose.

It was clear that Skill India was shaped based on the learning of misgivings of the previous two attempts. We have three distinct problems—matching (connecting demand to supply), mismatch (repairing supply for demand) and pipeline (preparing supply for demand). We can’t teach kids in three months what they should have learnt in 12 years of schooling. We have witnessed the diminishing returns and value of education where class 12 is the new class 8 and we are not even talking about engineering yet.

We confront a financing failure; employers are not willing to pay for skills nor candidates, but are willing to pay a premium for skilled candidates; candidates are not willing to pay for skills, but willing to pay for a job; and banks and microfinance institutions are not willing to lend for skills unless a job is guaranteed. Young job-seekers are unable to get a job without experience, but it is unclear how they can get experience without a job.

India’s firm size distribution—6.3 crore enterprises only translate to 18,500 companies with a paid up capital of more than Rs 10 crore—is a binding constraint for skills because the low productivity enterprises create the vicious circle of being unable to afford the skill wage premium. The massive divergence between real and nominal wages in our 45 job hubs is hindering migration at the bottom of the pyramid. Finally, college isn’t what it used to be, but the social signalling value of a college degree matters; vocational training is usually for other people’s children, not your children.

If we fast forward from 2015 (when Skill India got launched) to now, according to various estimates a little over 1 crore people are expected to enter the workforce, but there are only 60 lakh jobs being created. There is, interestingly, no reliable source of each of these data points, and given the crucial juncture we are at, the political rhetoric around job crisis has become such a gotcha game that no one seems to have the time to ask the bigger question, i.e. of the jobs that are still being created, how many of them are being filled? Nation-building being last on anyone’s priority list (the ardent appeals of an unemployed youth to warring political parties in a recent television debate left an eerie after-effect of that) and there is little consensus being built around the huge gap that still remains in this country on skill inadequacy.

India doesn’t have a job crisis; we have a wage crisis—everyone who wants a job has a job, just doesn’t have the wage they aspire for. The gap can only be resolved through a concerted effort in making Skill India real—that’s exactly where the rubber meets the road and changes the life of our youth. We have seen a few affirmative steps have been taken in this direction by the central government, and under the aegis of MSDE, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana has been set up to enable youth to take up industry-relevant skills training and improve their employability. The government has also made available several other skilling initiatives: the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana, and National Urban Livelihoods Mission and National Rural Livelihoods Mission. Also, the National Career Service, launched by the ministry of labour and employment, aims to provide job-matching services in a transparent and user-friendly manner.

However, surprisingly, the recent Union Budget speech by finance minister Arun Jaitley seemed muted around the plan ahead for Skill India, besides the notable exception of renewed focus on creating more options for medical students and impetus for higher education (both benefiting the above-average youth). At the moment, we need to focus on three things: (1) a clear, committed strategy towards making skilling a key goal towards nation-building—we need a sustained goldilocks approach to skilling, rather than oscillating between hot and cold; (2) invite co-participation amidst all political parties to come up with a shared vision and plan around building skills for a resilient future; and (3) create a high decibel awareness that paves the way for the right skills for the right jobs.

India’s war on poverty cannot be won without skilling India. We may still not get there, but let’s start with what’s necessary, then do what is possible, and then suddenly we would be doing what is impossible.

 

Authored Article by Rituparna Chakraborty

Featured in Financial Express

Author

Rituparna Chakraborty

Co-Founder & EVP
TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

How digital technologies are shaping the HR industry

A few years ago, when ‘digital’ entered the corporate lexicon and boardroom discussions, few knew or anticipated the far-reaching impact that it would create. Today, for organisations, it is no longer about preparing for digital or making a transition to a new of way of thinking and doing business and work.

It is now about harnessing the power of digital for competitive advantage, increasing market share, gaining share of the customer wallet, enhancing customer experience, improving an organisation’s processes and productivity. It is also about leveraging digital to hire, engage, retain the best talent and building their skills for tomorrow.

Now that is where the Human Resources function comes into the picture. Traditionally, this function was viewed as paper-intensive, non-innovative functional area. When hit with the digital avalanche, most HR functions in the organisation were slow to react.

Given that HR was deemed an internal function and that its systems and processes were separate from sales or operations, and their legacy systems had years of highly personal employee data, it wasn’t really a priority for the functional leadership or the organisational leadership to change in response to the advancement of digital technologies.

The Digital Transformation of HR

But this thinking and orientation changed very soon — when organisations realised that they can’t compete in the digital world — without their most important resource ‘the talent’ transforming. As the connected workforce started emerging and as the new technologies such as AI, big data, analytics, robotics, mobility started gaining prominence, the HR functions across organisations started envisaging the digital world of work.

The Future of Work was to change and the change had to occur at a rapid pace. Now the HR functions depend on the extended HR and recruitment services industry – for fulfilling their internal functional mandate – as not everything can be managed and delivered internally in a cost-effective and scalable way.

The HR and recruitment services industry, which comprises permanent and temporary staffing services providers, recruitment firms, hiring portals, out placement firms, learning and training providers, assessment services providers, compliance service providers, payroll and employee benefit service providers, human resource outsourcing (HRO) service providers, HRM consultants and solutions providers, among others, is an important part of the HR ecosystem.

The HR industry saw the impact and benefit of adopting digital much before the HR functions within the organisation did. The new thinking around HR — and the future of work in a digital era — was largely shaped and driven by them. They propagated the use of intelligent technologies, automation tools, use of design thinking, digital learning and assessment solutions to get an organisation’s workforce ready for the future.

Earlier, technology was about doing day-to-day tasks, but now the HR industry is acting as a change agent and catalyst to make technology a way of life in the workplace — their new focus is around finding right people, connecting people, engaging people, skilling people and replacing people — finding an answer about what to do when replacing people becomes imminent.

The Global HR and recruitment services industry, which is estimated to be a $600 billion industry, is just not playing the advocacy role today. They are becoming the cradle of innovation and making substantial investment in technology for improving their own functioning and service delivery for the clients as well as developing services and solutions for the HR functions within organisation.

Much of the innovations in products, processes, offerings and services come from their stable. Mobile-based gamified learning and assessment, online university education, HR analytics, cloud-based HR solutions and digital workforce solutions have all become a reality thanks to digital.

All this also means that spending on HR tools and technology continues to grow. Large companies spend the most on technology (almost 10% of their HR budget), and this increased growth has fueled a huge market growth in cloud-based HR technologies. The entire HR software market is estimated to be over $10 billion in size and many segments within this market are growing at double digit rates.

‘Techtonic’ Shift Underway

The Talent Management market is now radically changing and venture capital is rapidly flowing into new HR vendors that sell tools for employee engagement, recruitment, learning, and analytics. Analysts expect the HR technology market to grow significantly over the next few years with old/incumbent vendors, services and solutions providers getting replaced by agile, easy to use, mobile applications.

This explains the rapid growth of startups focused on tech and digital HR Solutions. These startups are creating disruptive products and services and challenging the established players, who are now looking at acquiring some of these start-ups to strengthen their digital proposition.

So all in all-interesting time and possibilities for the HR Services Industry – they are poised for growth and digital is giving them the much needed impetus for growth.

Author

Rituparna Chakraborty

Co-Founder & EVP
TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

SchoolGuru: The mobile app offering certified higher education courses

While India has tried its hand at distance education models like massive open online courses (MOOCs), they haven’t really worked out well enough.

Amid a host of factors like distance, lack of accessibility, lack of engagement, lack of motivation, and so on, dropout rates for correspondence courses still remain high.

However, ed-tech start-up SchoolGuru has been trying to find a solution.

Here’s how.

Finding a solution SchoolGuru is trying to find the middle ground
Over the last two years, SchoolGuru, along with several institutes, has been trying to reach a middle ground between impersonal and un-engaging distance education and regular models of class education.

SchoolGuru has tied up with 17 universities to offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses via its mobile app, Lurningo, but it is going about it in a markedly different way from standard correspondence courses.

Lurningo appWhat the Lurningo app has to offer
Unlike regular correspondence courses, which involve paying fees, buying books, and taking exams at physical centres, Lurningo offers both full-time and part-time courses that can be completed online.

Additionally, these courses come with downloadable lectures, interactive learning material, online assignments, an internal assessment system, and chat rooms for peer-to-peer and group discussions.

Even placement options for some courses are available via the app.

Other advantages SchoolGuru also provides internship opportunities
SchoolGuru offers keen learners several other advantages.

For instance, the start-up’s industry tie-ups help students get internships and apprenticeships so they can get hands-on experience and learn on the job.

Notably, SchoolGuru also offers an employment-oriented programme which helps grasp fundamentals like command over the English language, communication, business etiquette, etc.

Impact: How SchoolGuru is slowly changing the distance learning landscape
In addition to helping distance learning students connect with faculty and engage with learning more interactively, the mobile app approach has also seen enrolment go up, especially in remote areas.

Options to download material also help candidates who do not have stable internet connectivity.

Furthermore, the mobile-based and completely online approach is helping several working people pursue courses as per their convenience.

Authored Article by Shiladitya Ray

Featured in NewsBytes

Author

Shiladitya Ray

TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More

Confidence, curiosity ensure millennials succeed in career

I find myself often in a rather unenviable position to predict the future of jobs. In spite of my valiant Nostradamus attempts, I have concluded that predictions are good for TRPs but are potentially misguiding for our youth. India’s job market has witnessed many unpleasant incidents in the past twelve months — while as a nation, through various noisy debates, we kept reacting to the symptoms but did not try to get to the root of the issue.

Since childhood, youth here have been told by parents that they need to study hard to be a rank holder — as it ensures admission in a good college. This, in turn, paves the path to becoming a doctor or an engineer, and if they become a doctor or an engineer they would get a job in great company. Thereon, they have nothing to worry, their road to sustained success has been chalked out — gadi, bungla, paisa as a guaranteed annuity.

While India still might need more doctors, it definitely doesn’t need more engineers (than it can absorb) and suddenly over last twelve months the rules of the game seem to have been changed. Everything a child grew up believing suddenly doesn’t exist and that leads to helplessness, disarray and disillusionment and it does make you wonder where did we go wrong. Why would engineers with more than average level of intelligence be compelled to consider suicide? Did they really run out of options? Before asking whether the government (our favourite punching bag) failed these children, the question we must ask is: Did the education system fail them? Did parents fail them?

So what should be the North Star for our future workforce to make them resilient in the face of any change? For anyone who is a first-time aspirant to the formal job market what should they groom themselves in. As parents, as teachers, as aspiring professionals would strongly recommend focusing on the following to stay ahead of the curve and never have a moment of despair.

Curiosity is the foundation of building a resilient career in pursuit of our dreams. And it has three clear benefits. First, it enhances our ability to learn and also helps us retain information longer and more meaningfully. Second, there is a direct correlation between our levels of curiosity and our level of openness to personal growth development and opportunities and our ability to connect with different kinds of people around us. Third, it has immense capacity to quash the stereotypes that we much more easily can get caught up in and helps us develop an open and growth mindset. It’s important the youth of today are encouraged to be curious and inquisitive — they should be encouraged to go beyond the boundaries defined by schools, colleges, and curriculums. And for youth — if you have to defy norms to earn your right to be curious —don’t look back.

I often meet extremely bright, academically qualified youth, however, extremely low in confidence. Confidence is key for youth in their earlier years when they are faced with difficult situations and decisions. Lack of confidence is a breeding ground for low self esteem and it will haunt them later in their lives. Confidence grows from taking action, speaking aloud without the fear of failure. Hence, encouraging youngsters to be participative in group events, speaking out in public forums and taking a stand are invaluable cornerstones in building their self esteem for the future.

For decades, we have created a supply pool of talent, which is excellent at solving mathematical, numerical problems. However, when faced with real life problems, they find themselves cornered. If not all, a vast majority of them. The innate ability of problem-solving and creating value with whatever cards one has been dealt with is what our future hinges on. How we negotiate the unexpected twists and turns when the road is neither even nor straight is what we have to prepare our future workforce on to make them ready for any eventuality. With millennials, my fear is parents have chosen not to expose them to such problems or have taken up the responsibility of solving those problems. ‘If someone beats you up in school, I shall complain to the school principal’. ‘If you cant share a room with your roommate — I shall rent an independent apartment for you.’ ‘If the school bus doesn’t have AC, I shall drop you to school myself’ or better still ‘change your school’. Well such triviality creates the foundation for what lies ahead. We have to expose our future generation to real problems and guide them to look for solutions on their own as early as possible.

What is common among Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mukesh Ambani (Jio), J K Rowling (Harry Potter), Vera Wang (Vera Wang), Elon Musk (Tesla), Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal (Flipkart) is risk-taking. Indian society has an antibiotic relationship with risk-taking. Hence, while Indian employees are making the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft speed ahead there are only a handful (4) of Indian names in Fortune List of Top 100 Unicorns 2016 list. Undeniably, we have made some progress in the last few years. However, in a country with a population of 1.32 billion — with the youngest contributing workforce — our entrepreneurial success has been way below par. Children are born with risk-taking abilities. However, with years of conditioning it gets subdued and at some point disappears. As parents, mentors and teachers we have to encourage them towards positive risk-taking — how to cope with the unknown world around, deal with people different from them, how to emotionally handle themselves around ambiguity, etc. All these skills come from experience and taking chances. As someone said, ‘Good decisions come from experience and good experience comes from bad decisions’.

Lastly, it comes down to how to make today’s youngsters responsible for being happy without seeking external validation or gratification. Good mental and emotional well-being is a key ingredient for success of our youngsters. And this inherent happiness helps them build warm relationships at work, home, et al. As parents, teachers, mentors we have to encourage young ones to have a seeking spirit and try out new things, have goals, value personal strengths and focus on the positive things in life.

Above all, its important for them to discern that the gap between their present and their future goals and aspirations is not the source of disappointment but true happiness. As an apprentice in the world of work, I believe, the secret recipe of building a strong career lies in creating our own mix of choices around curiosity, confidence, problem solving, risk-taking and learning to be happy. From my vantage point, I could easily suggest the top 10 job roles that would be in demand six to twelve months from now. But what would really matter is not to build abilities around those specific areas but to make us relevant lifelong, recession-proof and timeless in the world of work. In the words of Lynda Barry, ‘No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible be the unexpected’.

Author

Rituparna Chakraborty

Co-Founder & EVP
TeamLease Services Ltd

Latest Blogs

The HR Recruitment Process: More Than Just Hiring People

Walk into any organisation, startup or multinational, and ask what keeps the engine running. It won’t just be tech, products, or processes. It’s people. But...

Read More

How Staffing Partners Transform Recruitment & Selection Process

The recruitment and selection process in HRM (Human Resource Management) has evolved significantly, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of any...

Read More

Talent Acquisition vs Recruitment in Workforce Planning

In many boardroom conversations, “talent acquisition” and “recruitment” are used interchangeably, but the reality is, they’re not the same. While both deal with bringing people...

Read More

Evolution of Human Resource Management in India

The evolution of human resource management in India is a compelling story of how businesses have transformed their approach to people. What started as a...

Read More

5 Key Manpower Supply Strategies for Hiring Better Talent

In today’s competitive job market, ensuring a reliable manpower supply is critical for business continuity and growth. Whether managing large-scale operations or expanding your business,...

Read More
Business Enquiry