India Inc Looks At Flexible Hiring Practices

At a time when scores of companies are reeling under massive layoffs, the nature of the job in India is changing and employment in the traditional sense of full-time jobs are being replaced by contractual assignments.

Sectors such as media, real estate, legal, medical and education are all open to flexible hiring practices. The opportunities for remote work by freelance workers are increasing especially in the services sector, says Bidisha Ganguly, Chief Economist at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). "This is being facilitated by the increasing use of co-working spaces, video conferencing facilities and document sharing platforms," she added.

"It is difficult to characterise the current situation as one of jobless growth…..Sectors where automation or digitisation could lead to some job losses, other jobs are being created, says CII's Ganguly. "Emerging sectors such as e-commerce and the emergence of platform-based sharing networks are having a net positive impact on job creation."

Several sectors, in the last one year, have made headlines for adhering to retrenchment measures as corporates are struggling to keep their bottom lines intact and stay afloat amidst severe competition. While telcos, reportedly, have lost over a fourth of its total workforce that makes up for about 75,000 employees, in the last 12 months, job cuts have been hounding the IT sector too. E-commerce and startups - categorised as the new age economy - have had to let go of a major part of its workforce as most players operating in the said sectors lack strong business models in place.