With a promising festive season around the corner, e-commerce companies in India are increasing their number of temporary workers to meet the demand of the consumers. As they are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are cautious and thus filling only temporary positions.
Experts said the e-commerce companies are choosing variable pay models to cut down on liabilities, including lowering fixed costs per executive, moving staff to daily wages, and negotiating harder on the cost of hiring.
Suraj Moraje, CEO and executive director of Quess Corp, told a media outlet that there is stronger focus on variable-isation and flexibility. He said companies don’t want on-roll executives, and they rather pay per job on outsourcing to keep the risk down. And Pravin Agarwala, co-founder of Betterplace, pointed out that the cost per executive hired has come down by 10 to 20 per cent depending on the company. His estimates show that overall hiring has gone up by 50 to 60 per cent in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. Agarwala explained that businesses hire a quarter in advance to bulk up on trained staff for the festive sales season. Companies are looking at more flexibility, such as minimum fixed costs with a bonus model, he said.
Earlier in the week, Flipkart in an official statement had said direct job roles will be accomodated across their supply chain that includes delivery executives, pickers, packers and sorters. This will be further supplemented by job creation in ancillary industries including vendor locations and freight partners, as the entire ecosystem scales up for the festive season, the online retailer said.
And as such, reports have highlighted that Flipkart has partnered with more than 50,000 kiranas to help deliver packages in far-flung villages and remote areas. Amazon has also been expanding and recruiting workers as orders increase. Navratri and Diwali, that drive the bulk of the domestic festive spends are estimated to lead an uptick in online customer orders. Moreover, the festive season sale, beginning October from Dussehra and going on till Christmas and New Year, is the peak consumer purchase period.
