Net staff addition for Randstad poised to stagnate this year
In the wake of the ongoing economic slowdown, global staffing agency Randstad is looking to maintain its net addition of employees across sectors in India at 10,000 - 12,000, as opposed to a 67 per cent growth last year.
However, it feels there is no cause of an immediate alarm in the job market even though growth is muted.
It’s Indian entity, Randstad India, has close to 56,000 contractual employees working for clients across different sectors like IT & ITES, BFSI, retail, infrastructure and others.
“In the past six months, we have hired around 5,000 employees and hope that this year, the total hiring will be atelast 10,000. In the last year, the net addition was 10,000 as well. We started the year very bullish considering the government data on GDP and World Bank predictions on India but clearly, there has been a slowdown”,
Paul Dupuis, managing director and CEO of Randstad India, told Business Standard.
Against a projection of a flat net addition in its headcount in India this year, the figure stood at 10,000 in 2018, while the net addition
was 6,000 in 2017. It was flat in 2016 and in 2015, the net addition had declined. “We have a few big clients who have asked for very big numbers and I’m yet to see a company in India that is not hiring,” Dupuis said.
The major sectors seeing demand for white - collar jobs, despite the economic condition, are infrastructure, retail, and FMCG, among others.
The company contested that unemployment stood at a 45-year high, claiming that its own data reflects that the unemployment rate is 7.5 per cent and proportionate population growth, besides changed demographics and the change of balance between t he formal and informal economy has to be factored in before coming up with a conclusion based solely on data.
Randstad entered India in 2007 with the acquisition of Ma Foi and currently, India accounts for around 10 per cent of its total workforce.
“We grew 22 per cent last year in India. India is the fastest-growing market for us, followed by Japan and Singapore in the Asia-pacific region,” Frank Ribuot, CEO of Australia, New Zealand, South-east Asia and India at Randstad NV told this newspaper. However, in terms of revenue, India accounts for around ^450 million out of Randstad’s total global earning of ^28 billion.
From January- October this year, Randstad had registered a 19 per cent growth in India.
Ribuot said in Europe, the j ob market is muted except France; and in the UK, owing to Brexit, the growth rate has come down to one per cent from the previous growth of 5-6 per cent.