Praful Yerwankar, (Director & CEO) Source it Group

Member , Indian Staffing Federation

Interview

First of all,let us accept that there is a genuine gap between demand and supply and it keeps on increasing every single day. To understand the above we have to look at two things; 1. The labour participation rate and 2. Participation of women labour workforce. If we look at the labour participation rate in other countries as compared to India we stand at only 48%. Which for all practical purposes means that more than 50% of the India’s workforce is either unemployed or is not employable. So according to me the key to bridge the demand-supply gap is increase the labour participation rate. In SourceiT there is a conscious effort to work towards bridging the gap. We have been working on various initiatives. One of the initiatives is “Gram Recruitment”. Our channel recruitment team has a mandate to comb all the gram panchayats across the country starting with states like Maharashtra and Karnataka and then spread across the entire country. This will not only help increase the labour participation but will also bridge the demand supply gap. Similarly, the sales team also has mandate to generate demand once the supply is ascertained and identified. So it is more about thinking out of box. Of course, these initiatives will take time to bear fruits and this is one of the many such initiatives which we are sure will help in the long run. Also, if there is no effort towards bridging the demand-supply gaps then the wonderful government initiatives like NAPS and NATS will not lead to desired results. Even today out of the total mandates received from clients only less than 70% are fulfilled. I am sure it is true for most of the staffing companies. The other thing that needs to be done and something which is part of a long term plan for our group is creating a consistent and reliable database of workforce which can be accessed as and when required. Of course, as I write there are many organisations which have tried this and failed and many others who continue to work towards this. However, the methodology for most of these organisations has not been right. I think most of them have tried to monetize this too early without the product getting matured. This now brings us to the second point which is “participation of women workforce”. This again is very low at around 25%. Ofcourse there is effort being made towards increasing the same, however, there is more desired to be done around that. I am sure working on these together as an industry will eventually help us bridge the ever widening demand-supply gap