The Elusive 'employee'

In search of the elusive Employee

Every article on manpower – be it in the newspapers or interviews with HR executives talks of only one thing- shortage. Different shades of shortage are often emphasized. Shortage of skills, talent, sheer numbers and so on.. Till a few years ago, such a notion would have been un thinkable in this country of a billion people. Remember the films of the 70s and 80s with the chief protagonist being the angry young man? And travails of educated unemployed youth the mainstay of story lines?

So what has changed now? Obviously the growth of the IT industry, followed by the outsourcing phenomenon created a new genre of very desirable jobs that attracted the youngsters ready to join the work force. Following this came the fruits of economic growth creating demand all around, especially in the service sector. All these are good things to happen. The problem is how can we continue to make the good things happen if the shortages are not alleviated?

Policy makers obviously need to think of long term, permanent solutions. This involves investment in education, skill development and so on. By nature, these are long term activities and assuming our economic growth story continues, will be just about sufficient to partly feed the incremental demand. Meanwhile, the phenomenon of shortage continues and is likely to continue for some time.

The shortage manifests itself in several ways. Lets look at what the IT industry has done to the job market:

1) The IT / BPO industry whose non manpower costs are low, can attract available talent by paying attractive salaries. Besides, there is the glamour related to working in the industry. This has created a flow of manpower out of other industries leading to shortages there

2) The benchmark for salaries is so high that several industries are unable to meet expectations of employees leading to frequent churn.

3) The desire to land IT job is driving students away from certain kinds of courses. This will obviously reduce availability of those skills in future.

4) The large scale recruitment of IT companies has led to situation where most youngsters have several friends or relatives working in one of these ‘glamour’ companies. Now that he sees such a job as within his reach, joining a ‘lesser’ company is never satisfactory.

Having said so much, it would seem as if I am pointing a finger at the IT / ITES industry for all the shortages and problems of the other industries. To clarify, that is not what is implied. I merely quote the above trends as pointers to the changing structure of the job market and how it has become necessary for people to start looking at newer ways of filling their human resource requirements.

Also, it is not implied that the IT industry is having it cool on the manpower front. The smaller companies there are under similar pressure in terms of attracting talent as their paying ability is obviously limited. Billing rates that a small company can command is significantly lower than what the larger ones can get. This will reflect as a differential in the salaries paid. The smaller companies also have the problem of losing manpower to bigger companies once the employee has acquired some experience.

And what about the large IT companies? Like they say, the bigger you are, the bigger your problems. Neither are the large IT companies immune to the manpower shortage. While they can afford to pay more to attract talent, there are obviously some limitations. Rising competition form other countries and companies will put pressure on their billing rates and place a strain on manpower costs.

So regardless of which industry you are or your current size, if manpower and human resources is necessary for your growth, you need to think of newer ways of filling the gaps. What are the possibilities on this front? Without including the long term large scale programs of the government and policy makers, to my mind there are a few options that can be pursued by companies big and small right away.

1) Upskilling: Companies need to consider whether their current employees are placed in optimum positions. Is it possible for a graduate to do what is currently being done by an engineer? Is it possible to use a 12th class person with experience to replace a graduate? Do we need to look at the job specs once more? As an example, the minimum qualifications required to join a PSU bank in the clerical cadre is only class X. But historically, the labour surplus has ensured that these jobs were taken by graduates. So we start getting used to the idea of a graduate doing clerical work. Is it necessary? Is it sustainable? Take a relook at the job spec.

Another possibility is to change job divisions. As every employee would agree, there are a lot of activities that a person does which really does not require his level of skill. So a Brand Manager spends a lot of time making unimportant phone calls or generating reports which can possible be done by someone less qualified and less paid- even by an outsourced or par time person. After all even a 12th class person today is computer literate and possibly speaks good English. By farming off these ‘time killers’, is it possible to reduce the requirement of Brand Managers? Same thought could be applied to Java Programmers or College Professors.


2) Technology: With the large scale reach of the Internet, telephones and mobile phones, location is fast becoming an irrelevant consideration. Hence it is possible to have people working from homes or even in a different city. At least in theory. In practice, companies still find sufficient reasons not to embrace the possibility. Again, isn’t it necessary to take a relook at such aspects as control, supervision, confidentiality, quality etc.. the reasons most quoted for restricting employees to within the walls of an office. Is it not possible for a programmer to write code sitting in Bhilai for a company in Bangalore? Is it not possible for a copy writer to be based in Trivandrum and write copy for an ad agency in Mumbai? Does this person necessarily have to be en ‘employee’ or can he be a part time jobber? If the ‘office’ constraint is removed, a larger talent pool is available to companies. Technology makes this possible.

The same technology can be used to improve efficiency and effectiveness. E learning can be used effectively for up skilling discussed in the earlier point. This is just one example. A conscientious effort by companies can unearth numerous ways of using technology to augment manpower.

3) Talent Pool Redefinition – Part time Job possibilities: While talking of non availability of manpower, have we considered all options? Think of the modern housewife. The tribe these days contains women with post graduate qualification and even engineers and management graduates. Possibly forced to remain at home due to family constraints or locational constraints, she is now not part of the talent pool. Are nt there plenty of jobs critical to companies which she can execute as a part time job sitting at home? Some innovation in job definitions, flexibility in beliefs in confidentiality, control etc.. will make it possible for companies to access this talent pool.

Now this is not restricted to housewives alone. Think of the large number of retirees every year. 30 odd years of experience which can be used atleast in a part time job. Or the large number of students who at 18 know more technology than a 35 year old manager. A part time job for them not only puts pocket money into their pockets but also gives them a valuable experience for a future career. Harnessing such talent - lets call it ‘informal employment’ could make a huge difference to finding resources and managing manpower costs. Of course, provided companies can change their thinking on work flow and management processes. We also need to keep in mind that abroad, this is a very common phenomenon – called “temping”. Part time jobs or temporary jobs is a phenomenon whose time has come in India too.

From an employee perspective, part time jobs are attractive today. If one member of the family is earning a substantial salary, why should the other spouse also work full time making it necessary to compromise on family life? If jobs are easily available, why not take a break once in a way? Thoughts and concepts that were not practical in our parents generation but very much possible today.

At the end of the day, it is the conviction that manpower shortages are impossible in a country of a billion people, (with most of them below respectable income levels), that is going to be the key. While short term mismatches in demand and supply are inevitable, if companies are responsive enough, solutions can be found at least with a short lag. Part time jobbers or ‘temps’ seems to offer a ready solution. At the moment, we still seem to be guided by management policies, beliefs, fears and value systems created during the era of the angry young man – a time when a post graduate was happy to land a bus conductors job.

One common misconception is that even if part time jobbers can be employed, it can be done only for very mundane tasks like data entry or word processing. To my mind, this is not true. There are thousands of SMEs which possibly cannot afford expert skills on a full time basis. However, to execute a specific project, hiring an ‘expert’ on a part time basis is very much possible. Or think of the instances where a project delivery was delayed because of inadequate resources – avoidable by adding extra manpower on a part time basis.

On the practical side, it is currently difficult for a part time job seeker to find a suitable part time job and vice versa for an employer looking for a part time employee. Hopefully, this will be overcome using the reach of the internet and other means.

I am not professing that part time jobs is the cure for all manpower problems. The only point of this article being that we already have a large pool of unutilized resources and with a change in the policies and beliefs, it is possible to tap into this pool. Will we see a part time CXO? Possibly. Lets see who will make the first significant move.. Await updates right here..


Satyanarayanan A K
CEO, minds@work Marketing Services
satya@mindsatwork.in
http://www.mindsatwork.in/