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Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Industry Evolution

What is true? Genuineness and pretense are co-existing, hiding behind each other for different reasons

In a nutshell…..
Diversification and adaptation are the only way for Corporates to survive and succeed.
Pandemic has posed a complete array of challenges.

We have observed many Companies beginning from Engineering design to traditional business houses like Tata or Reliance venturing into diverse businesses from Steel or Hydrocarbons to Projects to Fmcg to Jewelry to Textiles. Like the saying goes, ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’
The other trend is the Companies who have been into Oil & Gas- Engg Design and eventually shifted or accommodated different verticals like Engg Design, PMC, or Survey assignments in Infrastructure – Water supply, Metro, Rail, Highways and Plant Design.

We’ve heard stories of Nokia or yahoo- the impact of resistance to change.
Post pandemic, the term ‘Change’ is replaced by ‘Evolution.’
In the past, the challenges did exist and were never dying. But now, the intensity and nature of challenges have become unpredictable in terms of magnitude or impact. There is no downtime for repair or Turn-around time for the resolution, which can be visible collectively or calculated methodically.

What sounds opportunity today might turn out to be a disaster over time to come. Pricing for services and products might get revised and remain standard for years to come as a survival instinct. The company’s processes will get digitalized; practices will become more stringent. Virtual platforms are being set up to monitor human beings’ performances to be at par with robots. Gauging performances will be easier for the organization because judgment will be only through outcome. Performing will be difficult for employees since every activity is being recorded, and efforts must be infinite. Efforts and time spent won’t be counted; results only will be.

Retrenchment will increase where resources fail to adapt to the new normal on one side. And Attrition will increase at the junior level in search of the old normal. Layoffs for Senior positions are growing on one side to cut costs. On the other side, Junior resources have been vested with higher responsibilities. The Industry has taken this opportunity to clear out the extra baggage – cost-wise and head-count wise. Pandemic has given a genuine reason to exit non- performing or higher cost employees, Doubling the activities and workload for performing employees.

What is true? Genuineness and pretense are co-existing, hiding behind each other for different reasons based on the Industry’s requirement in the current scenario or the expected scenario.

Categories
Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Human Resource Industry Evolution

Industry trends during COVID and Post-COVID

According to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy 27 million youth in the age group of 20-30 years lost their jobs in April 2020 following a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Further, 33 million men and women in their 30s lost jobs in April, out of which 86% of the job losses were among men, it said.

In addition to the job losses, pay-cuts, and furloughs, the other trends Industries are adapting are:

  • Deferring any incentives, appraisals to employees.
  • Laying off roles where there are repetitive jobs.
  • Performance-based layoffs due to skill or will issues.
  • Layoffs due to the non-adaptability of employees to post- COVID scenario.
  • Layoffs considering resources on the bench even for 15 days as a burden for the organization and shedding overheads.
  • Decrease of numbers in Support functions.
  • Laying Off Senior People in Senior positions in the age group of 50+ yrs addressing cost and as perceived by the Industry – limitation in the utilization of such resources due to mobility, multitasking, adaptability, rigidity, etc.,
  • Promoting Junior resources to Senior roles due to resource availability at a lesser cost, maximum utilization, flexibility, more accommodative, etc..,
  • Hiring resources across geographies due to Work from home model.
  • Doubling the expectations in terms of deliverable’s and accountability.
  • Transferring Permanent resources to contractual employment – this will reduce the overhead cost for the Companies and retrenchment cost based on future Industry uncertainties that can be well accommodated at lesser cost and no brand defamation.
  • Out-placement of retrenched employees.
  • Engaging skilled white – collared resources on assignment/ day/ month basis is the new trend.
  • Hiring experienced resources at the cost of an entry-level resource.
  • Deferring all Campus hiring offers to infinity.
  • Expanding the job description of new and existing employees.
  • Measuring performance only on results delivered and not on the engagement time.
  • Work from home, not limiting working hours to 9, 10, 11, or 12 hours.
  • Major Companies adopting to Work from home trend due to the cost saved on infrastructure.
  • Expecting Industry ready resources minimizing training time and training cost.
  • Human Resource engaging more in virtual employee engagement platforms.
  • Adopting Project-based engagement through contractual hiring.
  • Building effective virtual platforms of communication to make the Work from home model better.
  • Reducing trial time and adaptability time of any new resource joining the organization.
  • Transfer of employees to the most challenging locations or work area.
  • Bidding with extremely Competitive rates to gain business and sustain.
  • Keeping only the primary and lean benefits to the employees active.
  • Emphasizing on survival than growth.

Every aspect of the industry has undergone substantial modifications. Should it be called New -Normal or New World? But change always is initiated, implemented, adapted, and better successful in chaos.

Categories
Current Affairs - Corporate Employment Trends Industry Evolution Outsourcing Model Sectors

How will Resource Outsourcing/Staffing help the Industry Post –COVID?

How will Resource Outsourcing/Staffing help the Industry Post –COVID?

India has generally seen a trend of engaging blue-collared, support staff resources on third-party/ off-roll/outsourcing/ staffing engagement. Post-2008 recession, the pattern of engaging white collared, skilled resources widespread by the IT Industry but still was limited to IT Industry alone. Post-COVID, the trend of engaging white collared, technical employees into Contractual engagement excluding few Senior Management and strategical roles is envisaged as a necessity and is in demand now irrespective of any sector.

IT Industry shifted to this trend after the 2008 recession based on the following observations.

  • Bench cost was consuming revenues of the Organization affecting the financial health of the Company,
  • Having resources on bench based on the projection of growth didn’t turn out to be a wise decision.
  • Expansion plans delayed due to many factors
  • Competition,
  • Pricing,
  • Clients’ Approvals,
  • Licensing,
  • Global Economic trends,
  • Currency conversion,
  • Downtime between projects,
  • Mapping of the maximum capacity of each resource
  • On the other hand, holding back employees with no complete engagement led to the attrition of resourceful employees, leaving behind only the average people in the stream.

Why is the Non-IT Industry ( Construction, Infra, Energy, etc..,) following this trend 13 years later?

Non-IT Industry, on the other hand, has been most apprehensive about this model. And there have been justifying reasons for the same.

The reasons for non-acceptance were many concerns.

  • Accountability and Integrity of skilled resources on contractual engagement.
  • Gauging of work in manual ways and not digital ways which make it challenging to monitor the process
  • Empathy towards fellowmen for the insecurities in contractual jobs
  • Comparatively smaller players in staffing with an unclear or obscurely defined scope
  • Payroll agencies with only documentation capabilities or partial responsibilities.

Development and transformation was slower owing to

  • Multi-level external challenges
  • Delay in deliverables where the line of activities got disrupted without a possibility of back up or control
  • Support from all departments on time
  • Inventory availability
  • Govt approvals
  • Fund shortage due to delayed receivables from the end client,
  • Change in instructions from management/client since this Industry has been extremely dynamic in nature.

All the above reasons led to resistance to change or non-prediction of uncertainties or inability to collectively assess the cost and business benefit.

In the current scenario, ambiguities are intensified to the extent of the uncertainty raising questions like “IS THERE A TOMORROW? IF YES, WHO ALL WILL JOIN US AND BE A PART OF TOMORROW?”

Limited visibility to the future by even big giants of the Industry, failure of long term plans, long term plans being replaced by short term plans have forced every Company to lie low and sustain. This, in turn, has led to Pay cuts, Lay-offs, Furloughs, increased pressure for people to perform. In such a scenario, the Human nature of sympathy, empathy towards fellowmen, bothering about developing people for long term returns, consideration towards others’ jobs, feeling stressed due to workload have taken backstage. What has been more critical is working towards sustaining the Organization (a foundation which houses employees) through the chaos irrespective of all reasons – genuine, significant, logical or fake, insignificant, illogical.

This situation has led Industry to adapt to staffing/ outsourcing as a stop-gap to cater to the active projects, or newly acquired projects for the next three years. Approximately three years expecting all the cascading effects, chain reactions, transitions, transformations, adaptations to be completed in three years, and implementation of new normal to start functioning successfully.

Hopefully, this opportunity should transform the staffing industry with a place in the Industry as an organized sector- breaking barriers, inventing, innovating, and leading to great opportunities and aspiration to the youngsters to step in this Industry by choice and not by chance. Because decisions are made out of interests, and interests lead to innovation.