People Matters

Translating Flexibility to make Organisations more productive

By Mark Driscoll, Leader Human Capital, PwC India

Apr 9th 2013

No matter what size, shape or domain of the Organisation is, it is likely that a substantial percentage of the current workforce in every Organisation was not even born when smiley were first used in emails and ‘the computer’ was named Time Magazine Man of the year, both in 1982. This same percentage is much more upfront, demanding and the word ‘freedom’ has never gained so much prominence since the end of British rule in 1947. The younger generation has never been... Read more »

What Rahul Gandhi’s CII address teaches: Three leadership mistakes

By Vikram Choudhury

Apr 8th 2013

It is crucial to demonstrate awareness and empathy toward real issues for a leader to come across as credible and trustworthyRahul Gandhi recently addressed business leaders in the annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), his first interaction with the industry since becoming vice president of the Congress party. Rife with incomprehensible innuendos and arguably-naive observations, many expressed concerns that Gandhi’s address reflects a disengaged citizen ... Read more »

Jobless Growth

Apr 5th 2013

While the Indian economy is growing steadily, employment statistics reveal that job creation has not kept pace. This jobless growth could have serious consequences for India. People Matters spoke to policy experts, industry leaders and recruitment bodies to explore what lies beneath this problem and how we can collectively address it.It is time to face facts. The estimated number of entrants into the workforce in the period 2005-10 was an average of 12 million per annum. This was a period when... Read more »

A real chance of lowering unemployment

By Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission

Apr 5th 2013

In the Indian context the definition of who is employed or unemployed is rather loose compared to many other economies of the world. Even if a person has done a job for a few hours of the week, the individual may claim that he or she is employed. We do not have a minimum baseline definition of what employment is, for example working for 20 days of the month. We need some hard coded definition of the quality and quantity of employment. Questions are asked on how we gather data on the emplo... Read more »

Jobless growth may not persist

By S Mahalingam, Chairman, CII Council on Skill Development and Former CFO & Executive Director, Tata Consultancy Services

Apr 5th 2013

T o a large extent, I don’t think that the Indian economy will have a jobless growth in the longer term. In many places, a lag effect comes into play and this is what the economy is experiencing at this point. But this lag effect will go and the economy will start adding more jobs in the future. Jobless growth can also happen when the economy starts moving toward higher automation. This is exactly what is happening in the Indian economy where most of the large employers are investing in ... Read more »

Jobless Growth? Only in the formal sector

By Manish Sabharwal, CEO, TeamLease

Apr 5th 2013

Growth is a necessity but not sufficient enough for job creation. But I think the issues around growth and employment were different at various stages of economic development. In richer countries, the technology is rapidly reducing the employment elasticity of growth i.e the number of jobs created for the same amount of economic growth. Prior to 1991, India had growthless jobs i.e. employment which was irrational, excessive and involving low productivity. Since 1991, all our job creation took ... Read more »

Moving up the value chain

By Sher Verick, Senior Specialist on Employment, International Labour Organisation

Apr 5th 2013

While it is true that India was growing strongly in the 11th plan period with a growth average of 8%, data from the national sample survey indicates that in the period 2004-05 to 2009-10, total employment only increased from 457.7million to 460.2 million. While in some respects employment has grown, we need to be clear about what we mean by jobless growth. Here we are looking at the net effect of growth and the relationship, elasticity of employment and GDP stood at a very low figure of 0.01 (... Read more »

Training people is a strategy that works

By Piyush Mehta, Senior VP- HR Genpact

Apr 5th 2013

There is no stepping away from the fact that growth leads to employment. Given the nature of the business that we are in, we see growth in correlation with employment and revenues, and not just revenues. So, I won’t call it a jobless growth. We are hiring. Depending on attrition or similar factors, the volumes of hiring may vary over a period of time. Since we are a large organisation, it pretty much evens out over a larger period of time.I see a correlation between value-added work and ... Read more »

Employers are more cautious about hiring

By Ravi Dasgupta, VP-Group HR, Biocon

Apr 5th 2013

Traditionally, Indian companies were far less conservative than multi-national companies when it came to hiring. In good old days when the salaries were low, everyone was hiring continuously. Then, two things happened: One, the gap between salaries in India and developed countries reduced; two, people started looking at the global market place rather than the domestic market alone. So, many companies have become far more conservative than what they were like in the past. By and large, people a... Read more »

Connect skilling agenda to needs of industry

By Shelly Singh, Co-founder & EVP, PeopleStrong HR Services

Apr 5th 2013

There is always a lag between the economic direction and the impact on jobs in the industry. The country’s political landscape experienced some upheavals in the first half of last year, but its impact was felt on the jobs landscape only in the latter half.The phenomenon of jobless growth has hit the IT and IT-services sectors quite hard due to rising cost pressures and the threat of global competition from other economies including the Philippines. The sector is trying hard to rationalis... Read more »