The Age of Agility: TEMPORARY staffing (temps), also called flexi staffing or contract staffing, is emerging as a major industry in the country. The workforce is over 400 million strong and the market potential for temps is estimated to be 10-12 million in the next five years. Currently, there are about 70,000 temps who are on the payrolls of recruitment firms, but work for different firms across multiple industries, including information technology, IT-enabled services, retail and telecom etc sectors. The employment under a temp mode is by choice and builds a 'transparent relationship' between the candidate/associate, the `temping company and the corporate. The salary (as in the cost to company) is in line with the market and gets structured to cover all benefits (PF, ESI and gratuity). The CTC (cost to company) gets determined based on the industry, function, experience and other criteria.

Inability to Hire: It is not an easy job for Companies to hire temporary skilled talent today when every job seeker look for established names and permanent positions. This despite the fact that nowadays flexible career is no longer an unattractive option for many professionals. Attrition remains a challenge for all organisations in the IT and BPO sector, and temporary staffing companies are no different. “Organised temporary job is a bridge to permanent employment. Out of our 70,000 temps on the rolls, more than 40 percent find permanent jobs within a year and 8-10 percent leave for higher studies,” says Rajesh A R, Vice-president, TeamLease Services, focussing on the severity of the problem. He further points out that several of the labour laws (like CLRA) inherited by India from the pre-independence times, are outdated and must be scrapped or rewritten. Most of the existing labour laws do not really suit the major knowledge-intensive industries that have risen in recent years.

The Opportunity for Organizations to focus on 'Core' areas: There is a clear move towards identifying `core' and `non-core' activities by each company and companies have realised that keeping large number of people who are `non-core' on the rolls takes up too much management bandwidth to make sure that these people are motivated and are delivering. Companies, therefore, are more comfortable with being able to keep these staff on someone else's rolls and get that company to spend the time on keeping these people productive. Finally, the stigma attached to being a `temp employee' will slowly come down and even employees will enjoy the flexibility that it offers in terms of being able to move into different companies. Therefore, getting manpower to work as a `temp' would become easier and feed into the demand.