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With increased investments in the sector and rapid adoption of technology by enterprises in the country, the IT BPM industry is on a positive hiring trajectory and is expected to add 3.75 lakh new jobs to reach a head count of 48.5 lakh in 2021-22, according to a report.
India Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) will grow from 44.7 lakh to 48.5 lakh by March 2022, according to the TeamLease Digital Employment Outlook Report by TeamLease Digital, the specialised staffing division of TeamLease Services.
The Digital Employment Outlook Report is qualitative research, which has surveyed and interviewed more than 100 employers and leaders consisting of contract staffing heads, subject matter experts.
Meanwhile, the report noted that the optimism is not just restricted to overall hiring, it is also impacting the model of employee-employer contract as well.
While full-time employment commands the volume, with 17 per cent growth it is contract staffing that will gain significantly from the positivity in the market, it said.
IT contract staffing is expected to reach a headcount of 1.48 lakh employees by March 2022, the report stated.
The acceptance of contract staffing is not restricted to corporates even candidates are opening up to the concept of contract staffing, it said adding that nearly 10-15 per cent of contractual IT-BPM joiners in FY22 are from full-time employment.
The report further revealed that digital skills is what the industry has set its eyes on this fiscal.
Amongst digital skills, 13 skill sets are going to largely in demand and are in fact expected to record a 7.5 per cent growth in this fiscal over FY21 and the trend is similar in the contract staffing space too.
The report estimates that the demand for contract staffing for Digital Skills will grow by 50 per cent, which is an increase of 19 per cent when compared to last year.
While there is exponential demand for digital skills and so is the supply gap, the report found that the demand-supply gap is widening for data engineering, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence skills.
The majority of the companies are opting for upskilling with or without certification (70-75 per cent), create a talent pipeline from graduate population (10-15 per cent), embrace contractual hiring (5-10 per cent) and cross train from other industries or domains (5 per cent), it added.
The Indian IT-BPM sector is at the cusp of unprecedented growth. Apart from being the largest private sector employer (employees around 4.47 million people), the IT-BPM industry is transforming India into a hub for Digital Skills.
“About 43 per cent of our customers are expecting to increase Digital Skills hiring by at least 30 per cent or more this year, however, what is concerning is the demand-supply gap,” TeamLease Digital Head – Specialized Staffing – Sunil C said.
Addressing the talent deficit will require organizations to re-look at their HR strategies and the organization can solve the talent deficit by ensuring upskilling, re-skilling, and near-skilling culture and training in the organization will lead to great results.
The IT BPM industry is poised to touch 10M employee base in next 5 years and the contract staffing is expected to move up from 3 percent to 6 percent of this base, Sunil added.
