Critical success factors for firms managing contract labour services

Abstract

Temping industry in India is new and yet to reach maturity. Developed countries like US, Canada, European countries have mature temping industry, in India; it is still in its infancy and growing very fast. Even though there are developed markets elsewhere in the world for taking best practices and using the same in local conditions, the Indian market poses certain challenges which are very different from the mature markets. First and the most important is the perception of temping as a career option and consideration as an organized industry for temp employees. Even today most of the employees in this industry consider it to be a stepping stone to a permanent job. As such factors such as attrition and sourcing capability become very important in the Indian context. Another observation is the existence of low to medium skill employees in the temp jobs. Thus as of now it has been a purely volume game with jobs requiring high skills only providing business support. We believe the current market has reached a point where certain fundamental developments are inevitable. As of now, not much literature is available on the Indian temping industry. iii Our research is based on the inputs from various firms operating in the temping industry, their clients from businesses ranging from manufacturing to software, and our own understanding of the temping industry. The report tries to highlight the important issues in the temping industry today, the changes expected in the near future and the critical success factors for a firm to be successful.