?Randstad India, a division of the Dutch multinational human resource firm Randstad is seeing a sustained hiring even amidst the COVID-19 second wave, led by factors like temporary staffing in technology companies and adoption of digital tools.
The HR firm is undergoing organisational changes in India. Paul Dupuis, the current MD and CEO, Randstad India will take over as the MD of Randstad Japan while Viswanath PS, the current CFO of Randstad India will become MD & CEO with effect from July 1, 2021.
In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Dupuis and Viswanath said that there is no major impact on hiring as of now.
Hiring across sectors
Dupuis said that there is stark contrast between 2020 and 2021. He said that while in April 2020 there was a complete hiring freeze, hiring continued at a regular pace in April 2021. At Randstad too, he said nobody lost their jobs including the 65,000 temporary contractual workers.
“It is business as usual now. We are busy with hiring across sectors, in both temporary and permanent employment,” he added.
Randstad had an average of 58,300 candidates in India at the end of December 2020 as against 56,00 employees a year ago. It had 1,360 corporate employees at the end of 2020.
Among sectoral trends while sectors like travel and hospitality stay cautious, Viswanath said that traditional sectors are hiring, as also the gig economy.
“Companies are recognizing the need to be digitally present so investments in these areas and allied jobs are high. Technology companies are adding temporary staff and that is leading to hiring growth. Among the large sectors, edtech, pharma, healthcare and insurance are hiring,” he said.
Business growth
?Viswanath said that despite 2020 being an unprecedented year, the revenue in India grew 7 percent. According to their 2020 annual report, the third party revenue for India stood at Euro 293 million. He added that Randstad India is confident of maintaining its??ur track record.
Randstad is among the top five staffing firms in India competing with TeamLease Services, Quess, Adecco and ManpowerGroup. The industry has close to 25,000 companies servicing clients across India.
“We are in aggressive growth mode. Yes, there is competition but every company has their own strategy. A lot of them are focussed on size and number of contracts. Our focus isn’t that. For us, the core is white collar and grey collar jobs, not blue-collar roles. Quality of business is important for us and we want to ensure that our people work in safe environments, get access to basics like PF and get paid on time,” said Dupuis.
Future growth areas
Moneycontrol had reported earlier how the gig economy jobs saw a spike due to the COVID-19 lockdown. In 2021 amidst fears of another lockdown, this segment is likely to get a further boost.
The Economic Survey 2020-21 said the gig economy saw a big boost led by online retail. Gig economy refers to employment of workers on a temporary basis for fixed income. The job positions would be dependent on the seasonality of the business.
“Hiring traction will depend on how long the second wave lasts. There could be a slower movement in the hiring process. But new modes of working like gigs and freelancing will pick up,” said Dupuis.
An added area of interest is the new Labour Code and allied services like compliance. The labour reforms amalgamation of 44 labour laws into four codes.
“The new Labour Code that prevents employers from exploiting innocent workers. We are looking forward to being a part of this by helping companies navigate these changes,” said Viswanath.
