Permanent employees: What's that?

NEW DELHI: India Inc is on a hiring spree, and now it’s also seriously looking at hiring temporary employees or temps, as they are now popularly known.

There are 120,000 to 130,000 temps working with over 500 companies, including ICICI Lombard, Bharti, Reliance Infocomm, HP, Wipro BPO, Transworks and so on.

Just a year ago, there were about 50,000 temps, branded more as the leftover guys in the job market, who could not find permanent assignments.

That’s now in the past. With the temps and perms (the permanent staffers) salaries now almost at par, more companies are recruiting temps.

In another year, the top temp companies in India, including Adecco PeopleOne, TeamLease, Ma Foi, Manpower, TalentPro and Kelly will together have about 250,000 to 300,000 staff on their rolls, contracted to work for India Inc.

While the banking, financial services and insurance and telecom companies have traditionally looked at temp staffers to fill up vacancies, it is now the retail and consumer durables companies who are adding temp staffers to their resource pool.

According to a TeamLease study, HR and administration are the emerging temp job functions across all verticals and locations.

The soon-to-be-released study also notes that temp compensation has increased by an average of 15per cent across all experience levels. The number of temp jobs offered in verticals like BFSI, manufacturing and consumer durables has risen by over 20per cent since last year. Ashok Reddy, managing director, TeamLease India, which has about 35,000 temps on its rolls says, “we are seeing a growth of 2,500 to 3,000 temps a month.”

When asked about whether the temporary recruitment concept has found more traction among companies Soumen Basu, executive chairman, Manpower India told ET: “MNCs still remain a step ahead of the rest in employing temporary staff. The market is now expanding and companies are looking at value additions.”

Adds Ajit Isaac, country manager, Adecco PeopleOne for India, the Middle East and Africa, “companies are looking at fully-trained temps. They want staff that can hit the ground running. We are moving towards a train-and-deploy model for temp staff.”

Though companies are finding temp staffing an attractive option to fill up short-term vacancies or to try out employees before they hire them permanently, the regulatory framework remains unchanged.

The labour laws, formulated much before temping started, are a reason why many companies do not want to reveal the number of temps they have on the rolls. Often temps are passed off as consultants to avoid any legal wrangling.

For instance, Section 25B of the Industrial Disputes Act states that if a person is employed for 240 days, he is entitled to permanent employment. Says an HR consultant, “this makes it difficult for companies to hire temporary staff.”

To circumvent this, companies terminate services before 240 days. However, the labour laws need to be revamped if temping has to grow significantly.