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Manish Sabharwal
Employers in India should reimagine their people supply chains by rethinking their fresher hiring, revamping training programmes, reworking their organisation structures from ‘pyramids to Eiffel towers’, according to Manish Sabharwal, Executive Vice-Chairman of TeamLease Services.
On the challenges before HR managers in a post- pandemic job market, Mr. Sabharwal said, “Employers must recognise that employees have plenty of choices. There are only three solutions in front of HR managers: matching, repairing and preparing.’’
He further said, despite a booming job market, India’s staffing industry was still at an infant stage in evolution.
“Our staffing industry is still a baby in diapers as we have not yet scratched the surface on our addressable market despite the current boom in employment,” Mr. Sabharwal remarked.
‘Taxicab relationship’
The phenomena of employment shifting from a lifetime contract to a taxicab relationship had been long in the making but obviously the pandemic reminded employers that they needed to view staffing as a series of concentric circles (permanent, direct contract, consultants, third-party contract, gig, etc.), he stated.
‘Challenges galore’
“I think the challenges our country is still facing are around matching (connecting demand with supply), mismatching (repairing supply for demand), pipelining (preparing supply for demand) and migrating (taking people to jobs).
“Progress is happening on all fronts but it could be faster, broader and deeper,” he observed.
On India’s poorly-developed apprenticeship culture, Mr. Sabharwal said, it was a ‘shame’ that the country had only seven lakh apprentices, when we could have had 1.5 crore of them.
“This despite passing legislation in 1961 and identifying apprentices as the 20th point in the 20-point plan in 1975. But change is coming. We are now able to convince employers that a well designed apprenticeship programme is not charity or CSR, but the only way to create a sustainable/scalable people supply chain,” Mr. Sabharwal added.
It was a shame that the country had only seven lakh apprentices, when we could have had 1.5 crore of them
