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The Indian economy has witnessed steady growth over the last few years with the services sector being the largest creator of employment opportunities, after agriculture. The global staffing market was estimated at Rs 20,530 billion in 2012 with the USA being the world’s largest staffing market by accounting for 28 per cent – and Japan and UK being ranked second and third respectively with a combined share of 27.1 per cent – of this global market. 

However, India is among the least penetrated flexi-staffing markets in the world. Despite constraints in the form of regulatory regime that is struggling to keep pace with the seismic shifts in the economic make-up of the nation, the size of the Indian economy along with the demographic profile of its workforce makes India an attractive flexi-staffing market with long-term growth potential.

India is expected to overtake China in terms of the working age group (15-59 years of age) population by year 2050, and is expected to have a working age population of 1,098 million that would account for 19 per cent of the world’s working age population.

 With increasing competition, margin pressures and shortage of skilled manpower, more temporary jobs are expected to be created. The need to build in the workforce flexibility as part of the business model and ready availability of a large employable workforce are expected to be key drivers for the temporary staffing market in India.

 As Industry becomes familiar with the benefits associated with temporary staffing and regulatory regime is rationalised, more experienced staff may join the temporary staffing segment.

Temporary general staffing in India is a fairly nascent industry. However, in the last five years, the industry has evolved into a strong contributor to the country’s economy. After recovering from the economic meltdown in 2008-2009, the market has bounced back with more and more companies looking for organised staffing and workforce solutions. 

The temporary general staffing market in India was estimated at Rs 385 billion (Rs 38,500 crores) in 2014. In India, there are 1.3 million (13 lakhs) temporary workers presently in the organised sector and demand for temporary workers is estimated to swell to nine million (90 lakhs) in the next 10 years. 

Growth of the temporary staffing segment will be spurred by growth in retail, telecom, BFSI, healthcare and BPO industries. 

Organisations and companies may not always have the resources or the ability to manage issues related to labour, operational and compliance issues that may require liaising with local authorities. The need to have flexibility in hiring while managing operational and compliance issues is driving clients to increasingly adopt temporary staffing.

Permanent recruitment companies comprise of two segments: search and recruitment. Search is a niche category focused on hiring of CXO and board-level positions in an organisation. Recruitment is mainly attributed to mid-and junior/entry-level hiring.

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is a service where the provider/agency acts as a company’s internal recruitment function for all or part of its recruitment activities. Growing investments in sectors such as IT, Travel and tourism, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Pharmaceuticals, Oil and Gas and Power segments have increased the hiring activity across all levels in the last two years.

The market for outsourced payroll processing and compliance has gained ground in the past decade. Indian organisations have historically been reluctant to outsource these functions due to sensitivities involved in terms of confidentiality. Businesses have now started focusing on their core businesses with an increasing realisation on the part of company managements that payroll and compliance – while being critical – are better outsourced to specialists who provides benefits of lower cost and expertise. 

 The increased outsourcing of these key functions has enabled third party service providers to develop scale and offer services linked to SLA and key performance indicators. Strategic focus on core business, expanding manpower and geographical presence, cost pressures, and the quality of outsourced services are the driving factors for the growth of payroll and compliance outsourcing market in India. The market was estimated at Rs 10.00 billion in 2014 and has grown at a CAGR of 18.1 per cent between 2009 and 2014.

The wide disconnect between the Indian education system and the needs of the existing and emerging industries results in a large pool of unemployable workers. Vocation education, skilling of school-dropouts and re-skilling of existing labour are some ways of addressing this gap. 

To this end, the Ministry of Skill development and Entrepreneurship was created for coordination of all skill development efforts across the country, removal of disconnect between demand and supply of skilled manpower, building the vocational and technical training framework, skill upgradation, building of news skills, and innovative thinking not only for existing jobs but also jobs that are to be created.

The Government of India has set an ambitious target of skilling 500 million people by 2022. However, the results so far are not encouraging. As per data by the National Skill development agency (NSDA) – part of the newly-created Ministry of Skill development and entrepreneurship – 21 departments and ministries trained 7.6 million people, as against a target of 10.5 million people.

Information Technology (IT), IT-enabled services (ITeS) and IT-related services have contributed majorly to the growth of Indian service sector in fiscal 2015. As per the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) estimate, the revenue of the IT-Business Process Management (BPM)  Industry (including e-commerce) is $146 billion and grew by 13 per cent in fiscal 2015. As per the Central Statistics Office (CSO), computer and related services contributed to 3.3 per cent to the overall GDP. 

Information  Technology Staffing, alongside office/clerical and industrial staffing is amongst the biggest sub-segments of the temporary staffing industry in Canada. With a market size of $24.2 billion and CAD 2.1 billion, it forms 23.4 per cent and 25 per cent of the overall staffing industry in the USA and Canada respectively.  

IT staffing in North America is characterised  by significant shortage of skilled workers as reflected in the low fill rates (24 per cent compared to 70 per cent for the overall staffing industry in the USA) and high time-to-fill metrics for the industry (10 days compared to 5 days for the overall staffing industry in the USA). This skill shortage translates into high gross margins for the IT staffing business of approximately 24.10 per cent.

It is expected that US temporary staffing market will grow 6 per cent in 2016, to reach a record industry size of $123.0 billion in 2016. High demand for skilled IT labour backed by trends of cloud computing, big data, mobile connectivity, social media and data security are the key drivers of this growth.

The Property and Casualty (P and C) Insurance Industry is focused on providing coverage against risk of loss/damage of assets other than life and health. The industry is characterised by a distinct set of business functions, comprising of policy administration, claims processing, re-insurance, underwriting and product development.

 These functions require customised IT solutions, thereby creating a niche sub-segment in the broader Information technology Industry, catering to the specific technology needs of P and C insurers.

Insurer investments in technology have become increasingly strategic. 

In earlier phases, the focus of IT was on automation and improving efficiencies. The justification for investment was usually based on headcount reductions or reduced costs for physical supplies and facilities. While these elements are still important, today investments have become more strategic and are centered on driving growth and creating market advantages.

Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) refers to the providing of integral delivery and management of end-to-end facility services for maintenance of buildings and properties across residential, commercial and industrial sectors.

IFM services are broadly classifies as hard services, which includes HVAC (Heating ventilation and Air Conditioning) maintenance, fire safety systems, and plumbing maintenance and soft services which includes cleaning, housekeeping, catering, landscaping, pest control, and other services such as security services, guesthouse/service apartment management.

Industrial Asset Management refers to Operation & Maintenance (O and M) services that ensure efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of the industrial assets across end-user segments. Industrial asset management services include – but is not limited to – operation and  maintenance (supply of consumables, spares and provision of requisite manpower), consultancy services, training and advisory services, plant services (includes diagnostic study and testing, performance testing and pre-commissioning services), repair and overhaul, renovation and modernisation, retrofits/up gradation, shutdown maintenance, condition monitoring and quality audits.

 Supply of products, engineering services, installation  per cent commissioning, production support services and civil works are the other type of services in the value chain that a turnkey contractor/service providers offer.

The key end-users for O and M services include; Power (thermal, hydro, renewables and captive); oil and gas (exploration, pipelines, refineries and chemical and petrochemical); steel, cement (large and small plants) and others (fertilisers, engineering – heavy industries and machinery, automobile, sugar, electronics, paper, textile and garments, leather, food processing and pharmaceuticals.