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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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’.

The idealism of an economic regime built on equality of outcomes resonated with many countries coming out of monarchies and colonial rule, as it should have. But it also confused many of them, including India. Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech before the 1955 Avadi resolution was actually quite logical: “We cannot have a welfare state in India with all the socialism or even communism in the world unless our national income goes up. Socialism or Communism might help you divide your existing wealth but in India there is no existing wealth for you to divide; there is only poverty to divide. Our economic policy must, therefore, aim at plenty. Until very recently economic policies have often been based on scarcity. But the economics of scarcity has no meaning in the world of today.”

But the Avadi resolution led India down the path of economic stagnation, underinvestment in primary education, zero-sum view of competition, kneecapped private sector, and finally banks without governance, culture or consequences (sorry; the last one is better known as bank nationalisation). It was not god’s wish that it should take 71 years for 1.2 billion Indians to cross the GDP of 66 million Englishmen. This dragged-out journey to our prosperity is a consequence of the socialism — Marxism on a diet — that killed our national, firm, and individual productivity. And I’m baffled why the communists didn’t support the Independence struggle in the early 1940s, opposed Constitution writing in the late 1940s, and formally declared war on the Indian state in the 1950s.

The economic apocalypse that Marx predicted never came. Instead his book probably marks the turning point for global progress in food, sanitation, life expectancy, poverty, violence, literacy, and individual freedom. And people who believe that today’s globalisation and technology-driven world has much in common with Marx’s mid-19th century world are making the same mistake. Marx — like many gurus pontificating about the future before and after him — was overly negative because pessimists sound wiser than optimists. Wherever he is, I’d love to send him two great books — Progress by Johan Norberg and Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker because I’m confident that reading them would nudge him to revise his unfinished book (most people don’t realise Volume 2 and 3 of Das Kapital were not completed by Marx and were edited by Engels after his death). I also think he would revisit his dim view of us; he viewed Hinduism as “a religion of absolute deprivation” and India as “a country that was a predestined prey of conquest with no history other than the history of successive intruders who founded their empires based on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society”.

Marx was a good writer whose genius was to recognise that we don’t live in an economy but a society. But life is the art of progress, not perfection and Marx was what Einstein would call a “terrible simplifier” who did not recognise the profound wisdom in Princeton Professor Avinash Dixit’s quip that “life is second best, at best”. More sadly, he did not believe in the ability of humans to heal themselves and their stories but believed in the power of forces above our pay grade. Two recurring themes of Urdu poetry — chirag (oil lamp) confronting hawa (wind) and kishti (boats) confronting toofan (storm) — represent the power of the human heart and mind against circumstances. Not only was Marx wrong about the power of the human heart and mind against circumstances — 4.5 billion people have been pulled out of poverty since he wrote his book in 1867 — but he was the spiritual and intellectual inspiration for much murder, violence and pain. Of course, it’s not Marx’s fault that millions died or lived in poverty longer than they needed to but surely teachers must get partial — or full — credit for what their students do. Outcomes matter more than zehniyat.

Though in India flexi staffing, or temporary staffing, is yet to gain traction, the industry is beginning to come of age, with incumbent players beginning to focus on new offerings, increasing investment in technology, improving consultative selling capabilities, and focusing on operational efficiencies while also making their presence felt at the right places. Initiatives like goods and services tax (GST), demonetisation and the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act have opened up this market for newer entrants, and we are seeing newer staffing players entering the organised staffing sector.

In other words, the staffing industry is all perched to make a new leap.

The staffing industry in India over the past five years has been growing at 20–25% a year. It is showing no signs of slowing down because it continues to be in a structural stage of transformation.

While on the one hand, employers are beginning to show their increased reliance on flexible staffing to meet their business imperatives, the regulatory environment in India is also beginning to ease, making it easier for the employers and the staffing players. The future of the staffing industry is also linked to the job scene in the country. We can address the issues of jobs by firstly enabling farm-to-non-farm movement of labour at a faster rate and secondly formalising the non-farm sector in India.

In addition, India would also need structural reforms, especially in the areas of labour, skill development, and higher education, and an enabling regulatory and macro-economic environment for industries, start-ups, and MSMEs to thrive. To improve the productivity of our enterprises, which will ultimately aid job creation, our policymakers will need to push formalisation, urbanisation, industrialisation, financialisation and human capital.

In the immediate future, we will see acceleration on each of these agendas, which augurs well for the staffing industry.

Apart from these, I see five distinctive trends that will have a bearing on the industry and will drive the next phase of growth:

Skill and talent gap issues in India

India Inc. needs an industry-ready and job-ready workforce but is facing an acute talent and skill crunch. More than 60% of the 8 lakh engineers graduating from technical institutions across the country every year remain unemployed, according to the advisory body, the All India Council for Technical Education.

Up to 39% employers state that attracting and finding quality talent is one of the most challenging aspects.Remember, 90% of jobs are skill-based, and only 2% of the population (in the 15–25 age group) is currently enrolled for vocational training, compared with 60–80% worldwide.This apart, talent attraction, engagement, and retention remain a big challenge for most employers.

Against this grim backdrop, employers are looking at contingent staffing in a big way. This represents a huge business opportunity for the staffing industry. The industry has to play its part as well in addressing the skill and talent issue for the economy as a whole.

Rise of the Gig Economy in India

While the gig economy is in its infancy in India, it is expected to grow in the near future, much like it has grown in the US and other developed markets. A recent study by McKinsey has estimated that up to 20–30% of the workforce in developed markets is engaged in independent work. A recent survey by Flexing It, a platform for independent consultants, indicates that more than a third of the 500-plus organisations surveyed in India expect to rely up to 50% on flexible talent in the next five years. This will have a bearing on the talent strategy of organisations, and therefore should be an important area of focus for the staffing companies in India.

The rise of digital staffing platforms

Given the rise in need for contingent staffing, several digital staffing platforms, such as Upwork, Shiftgig, and Catalant have emerged overseas. These companies match the talent needs of enterprises and the job requirements of individuals in a cost-effective manner. They are expected to be present in India. This represents a risk and an opportunity for traditional staffing companies. While they represent competition, it can also force the traditional players to go digital and look at diversifying their offerings and building or acquiring digital platform capabilities. This will also lead to M&As and consolidation, as the staffing players will look to acquire digital platforms to build scale, reach, and access.

Technology as an enabler and differentiator

Technology will become an important enabler and differentiator for staffing companies. They would need to increase their investments in automation for improving efficiencies and technology for improving the hiring and recruitment processes. For example, AI can help automate up to 75 percent of the recruitment process. Of all the staffing industry trends, AI is ready to shake up the marketplace in terms of efficiency. AI has the ability to focus on candidate skill levels over unconscious biases. It will also help reduce the time for sourcing, keep you organised, and help analyse big data. Clients would also expect staffing firms to provide productive employees, not just employees, and this would mean investment in technology-enabled productivity improvement solutions. Staffing firms will need to invest in automation solutions for time, attendance, and expense management to increase operating efficiency and improve accuracy for compliance and approvals. The growth of contingent labor, the transition from on-premise to software-as-a-service-based solutions, and the heightened awareness for tracking the hourly workforce will create demand for technology-aided solutions. It will become an important source of revenue for staffing companies in the future.

Candidate experience and employee engagement

Given that recruitment is a significant cost element, staffing companies need to improve their talent sourcing capabilities to improve targeting while reducing cost. While investment in recruitment technology will be one aspect of this, they also need to focus on a candidate’s hiring experience. Today, social and digital technologies, coupled with newer forms of engagement and assessment through gamification, provide companies with newer avenues to engage effectively with their candidates. Once hired, companies will need to focus on talent from an employee engagement perspective. Millennials have different aspirations, and they have their own requirements from any employer. So it is important to manage them effectively. Candidate experience and employee engagement are critical to building a strong word-of-mouth for the brand, improve the attractiveness as an employer, and driving referrals. Referrals have emerged as one of the cost effective channels for continent hiring, and it will become critical for staffing companies to tap into this.

In the words of Dwight D Eisenhower, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”. While we can never predict the future, showing up unprepared shall be inexcusable.

Fixed Salary Components

Basic Salary: This is fully taxable. The employees can opt for a lower basic salary to CTC ratio (Existing Basic Salary cannot be reduced however) and add other fixed allowances in the salary structure such as food allowance, telephone, etc. However, a lower basic does not automatically lead to lower tax as some of other components of tax exemptions like HRA (house rent allowance) and Provident Fund are linked to the basic pay. Therefore employees must carefully evaluate the full benefit of a lower basic salary before opting for the same.

Allowances/reimbursements: Allowances includes HRA, LTA/LTC, Mobile / Telephone / Internet Reimbursement, children education allowance, children hostel allowance, research allowance etc. These allowances are exempt at source from tax; however there are limits / rules applicable for the same. For exampler, House Rent Allowance exemption is the lower of the following three – a. Actual HRA received; b. 40-50% of basic (depending on whether you stay in a metro city or other cities) c. Rent paid less 10% of basic salary. Similarly there are other rules and guidelines for other aforementioned allowances and reimbursements as well.

Perquisites: These include meal voucher, health club, sports and similar facility, gift voucher, and company leased car. Here again there are specific rules to be considered. Meal voucher will be treated as nontaxable at Rs 50 per meal up to Rs 2,200 per month. Health club, sports and similar facilities can be considered exempted from tax only if provided to all employees. Gift voucher is exempted if the same is upto Rs 5,000 per annum.

Retiral Contributions: These include provident fund contributions and contribution to NPS or National Pension Scheme. In provident fund, where an employer’s contribution is exempt up to 12 per cent of salary, the contribution made by an employee qualifies for tax deduction up to Rs. 1.5 lakh under Section 80C of the Income Tax Act. Employees with low basic can also claim additional benefit by way of opting for a Voluntary PF. In NPS, employer’s contribution is exempt up to 10 per cent of Basic + DA and that of employee qualifies for deduction up to Rs. 50,000 over and above the limit of Rs.1.5 lakh under Section 80C.

Most employers and employees are now exploring Flexible Benefits which trade one element of a salary package (Basically Special Allowance) for another – Allowances /Reimbursements /Perquisites. According to a recent survey even though flexible benefits account for 10-15% of the total CTC, their perceived benefit for the employee is nearly 40% of the salary package making it win -win for both.

Rasookh, or otherwise influence is key to our success at work place. And that influence counts when we have the ability to influence those who are not directly associated with us. Its easy to influence one’s toddler or one’s subordinate but it is a different skill altogether being able to influence peers or external stakeholders who have little or no allegience towards us. As woman our sensibilities, are inherent ability to empathise puts us at an advantage in our ability to influence – of course only if we choose to exercise as we must at workplace.

Rob or an image of awe is critical for anyone in leadership. Research again shows that women tend to underplay themselves and undermines the importance of creating an aura and “market” themselves. Our need for authenticity usually outscores the need to build an image which is larger than life and aspirational thereby being counterproductive in our career progression.

Rishtey or our network and relationships on the professional front have important consequence in our career progression and several study shows that women do this very differently from men leading to different outcomes. Women tend to focus on fewer yet deeper relationships with those with shared values and that leads to a limited network. Its important for us women to break out and learn to get along with those at work place beyond our likes and values. Sponsorship and visibility are key ingredients for growth for women at all levels.

Each of these four factors are interdependent and interrelated. Absence of either leads to undesirable consequences. Before our environment changes, as women, we need to be the change we seek it is matter of time the rest shall follow. For that we simply cannot sit back and watch. Instead lets lead from the front “Each time a woman stands up for herself , without knowing it possibly, without claiming it she stands up for all women.”

Featured in Financial Express