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Workforce to surge 30-50% at e-commerce, FMCG, retail & BFSI companies ahead of festival season
This festive season that’s just around the corner will see a jobs boom—staffing companies are being flooded with demands for more workers as the economy starts looking up again and consumers feel emboldened enough to loosen their purse strings after being frugal through a prolonged slowdown.
Amazon, McDonald’s and others are set to hire a large number of people — some of them temporary, some full-time — and the trend is seen extending to smaller towns as well.
Workforce numbers will likely surge 30-50% at e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods, retail and BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) companies as consumer spending is expected to shoot up in the next three months.
Workforce to surge 30-50% at e-commerce, FMCG, retail & BFSI companies ahead of festival season
Staffing firms are going all out to grab as many people as they can and some companies are getting innovative as they look to sweeten the bait. E-commerce giant Amazon will pay an ‘attendance bonus’ for members of its logistics team over the next three months to ensure minimum absenteeism and strengthen the delivery team with more contract employees.
“They will almost double their numbers in the logistics section and the attendance bonus is one of the many incentives the company has planned,” said a person who didn’t want to be named. “We do not comment on what we may or may not do in the future,” Amazon said in reply to an email sent by ET. It’s not just temporary staff, companies will also take on permanent workers who are directly employed. Temporary workers are supplied by staffing firms, which pay their salaries and benefits. Such workers will be especially in demand to handle an increase in customers in segments such as call centres, housekeeping, deliveries and those who track goods.
The $6-billion taxi rental market in India will see Ola Cabs adding more drivers, incentivising them through a possible cut in the commission it charges for the next three months. “This will help to get more drivers on our platform and more incentives may be rolled out,” said Anand Subramanian, marketing communications head for Ola Cabs.
The company has 18,000 cars and about 24,000 drivers on its platform and expects a 30% increase during the festive season. Rituparna Chakraborty, senior vice-president and co-founder of staffing firm TeamLease Services, said there has been a sharp uptick.
“There is definitely a welcome surge in hiring at the moment in anticipation of the festival season and (this) shall carry on till about the end of January 2015,” Chakraborty said. “Our projection shows that the surge (in temporary hiring) would be around 50% of what happens all year long in these sectors.”
The boom won’t be concentrated to just the big cities. A large part of the hiring is driven by optimism shown in consumer durables, ecommerce, hospitality and airlines and will take place in tier II and III cities, noted the staffing firm.
For Randstad India, another staffing company, mandates have come from BFSI and consumer durable firms. “Home, auto loans shoot up during this period and more workforce is needed to manage customers,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, president, staffing, Randstad India.
The Bangalore-based company said there will be at least a 30% increase in demand for workers this festive season compared with other months of the year.
Another Bangalore-based recruitment company’s staffing team expects a 40% surge in demand for temporary employees during the festive season based on mandates it has got this month. “One company almost plans to double the number of its customerfacing employees,” said a senior executive of this company who refused to be named.
Fast food chain McDonald’s is also geared up for higher staffing during the next three months. “We are looking to add about 10% of our total workforce across all our restaurants (including delivery) in anticipation of the demand peaking during the forthcoming festival season,” said Rudra Kishore Sen, director, operations, McDonald’s India (north and east). This additional hiring stems directly from consumer sentiment picking up, Sen said.