Demand for blue-collar workers up as firms look to cash in on festivals
MUMBAI: Companies such as Amazon India, Flipkart and Zomato are busy recruiting bluecollar workers ahead of the festive season, luring them with joining and performance-linked bonuses, as pandemic-era curbs have fuelled strong growth in online ordering.
E-commerce companies and logistics operators are expecting a bumper season, with sales estimated to rise as much as 15% more than the pre-pandemic festive season in 2019, said Nilabh Kapoor, business head, OLX People, a recruitment service provider.
“With businesses recovering in most parts, hiring of temporary workers has seen 3-4X growth in the recent past and is expected to double during the festive season to keep up with rising demand across platforms,” Kapoor said.
Although shoppers are slowly returning to the malls after the lockdown restrictions were eased following the second wave, e-commerce companies are betting
that consumers will keep adding products and services to their digital carts. However, overall consumption demand has trailed behind the uptick in e-commerce sales, and that trend is unlikely to change this year.
Companies that have benefited from the pandemic-era consumer habits are recruiting heavily. According to industry estimates, 300,000 to 500,000 blue-collar workers will be hired in 2021. As many as 40 million new customers are expected to shop on e-commerce platforms this year, taking the overall user base to 190 million users, according
to staffing firm Teamlease Services.
Unlike in the first wave of the pandemic, companies and workers were better prepared during the second wave, with lower labour migration and timely lifting of lockdowns.
“The second Covid wave has not impacted the availability of migrant workers as much as last year. Many migrant workers returned once the lockdowns were lifted in their native districts, helping companies scale up faster this time around,” said Ajoy Thomas, business head (retail, e-commerce, logistics and transportation) at Teamlease
Services.
Suchita Dutta, executive director of the Indian Staffing Federation, said there is a shortage of manpower as migrant workers are still hesitant to return because of the fear of a potential third wave.
“However, the return is not the only reason for the demandsupply gap. The lack of skilled resources to meet the demands also contributes to the shortage,” Dutta said.
Salaries of workers have, however, not increased in line with the demand surge. In some cases, salaries have been restructured to offer a higher performance-based payout as compared to pre-covid times, reducing the take-home pay, said Kapoor of OLX People.
Some companies are, however, offering benefits such as joining bonuses, retention bonuses and attendance bonuses to recruit workers. Companies in the e-commerce and logistics industry are reducing their fixed costs by offering bigger performance-linked incentives to attract workers, said Thomas of Teamlease Services.