Flexi staffing becoming popular in India

Flexi staffing offers quite a few benefits to organisations. First, there is an obvious cost saving and statutory compliance. Besides, flexi staffing also turns out to be a quick fix for short-term talent requirements. Flexibility to try out potential hires and backup for permanent employees on a break or sabbatical are some added benefits. On top of it, there is also the ease of hiring.

This is probably why the trend of flexi staffing seems to be catching up fast. Companies are slowly realising the advantages and even conventional sectors, such as manufacturing, are fast migrating to this new model.

According to a recent survey by Kelly Services and the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), 42 per cent of the organisations said that they were likely to hire temporary staff for a period of six months to one year on short-term projects in the next three to six months. Also the share of flexi staffing in the overall workforce is expected to rise to 10 per cent by 2025.

The number of organisations that were likely to hire contractual workers was even higher, with 68 per cent of them agreeing to it.

In the flexi staffing model, employees are recruited on a temporary or contract basis from staffing companies that facilitate hiring, on-boarding, documentation, payrolling, employee benefits and exit management.

The study discovered that healthcare, manufacturing, and FMCG sectors have the highest percentage of flexi workers. Therefore, their budget allocation is also higher than other industries.

Be it government rules or rigidness in policies, the private sector is more open to flexible staffing than the public-sector companies. While the private corporates dedicate 20 per cent of their budget on flexi staffing, the PSUs devote only 10 per cent.

“Flexi staffing bridges the divide between organised and unorganised sectors and plugs the resource gaps efficiently. The reason for its ascent is simple—it provides agility, which is what large organisations need the most in this age. From an employee’s perspective, flexible staffing provides easy access to their first job,” said Thammaiah BN, managing director, Kelly Services India.

However, there are a few concerns around flexi staffing as well. Around 31 per cent of the organisations surveyed felt the absence of proper background verification documents of candidates was the topmost concern. Besides, the companies were wary of the other challenges, such as quality of flexi staff, and their engagement and reliability levels as compared to permanent staff.

From the employees’ point of view, in the private sector, the main expectation is good working conditions, followed by other parameters, such as decent pay benefits and convertible skills.