Small companies step up hiring of women amid labour crisis

Mumbai: A few years ago, in the weeks running up to Dussehra - which marks the beginning of the festival season in India - Raghavendar Gupta, the owner of Tweakymod, a mobile phone cover manufacturing company based in Hyderabad, faced an exodus of experienced workmen from his company. Amid a heavy production schedule and growing order backlog, Gupta and a group of women workers at Tweakymod rolled up their sleeves to meet the deadlines.

In just a few days, they had managed to get their flailing output numbers back on track. It was this support that made Gupta promise to himself that he would hire more women to man his work stations. "Over 60% of our people are women now; for day shift, this number goes up to 80%," said Gupta.

An increasing number of Indian micro, medium and small enterprises (MSMEs) have stepped up their hiring of women talent to meet the labour shortage prevalent in the market, said MSME owners and staffing companies ET spoke with.

The post-pandemic migrant labour crisis-when many workers moved back to their hometowns and several of them did not return--has prompted MSMEs to increasingly rely on the female talent pool by hiring from local areas.

According to the estimates of , two out of three MSMEs are looking to employ more women.

That apart, a whole lot of qualitative reasons tilt the balance in favour of women, say MSME owners. Women are more diligent, stay on the job for a longer time, are more punctual, and gel better with line supervisors, said several MSME owners.

"With every increasing challenge of finding the right talent, ensuring employee retention, tackling the increasing trend of sudden resignations, employers, especially those in MSME, are leaning towards hiring more women," said Rituparna Chakraborty, executive vice president, Teamlease Services.