India Inc during COVID-19: Has 93% of employers implementing flexible working affected productivity?

India’s economy has been heavily disrupted by COVID-19, with many industries affected as business owners and employees flee infected areas. This mass exodus of people from many cities is likely to result in an ongoing labour shortage across the country.

However, despite the hardships, employers across India are in tune to employee needs, as a majority of employers surveyed (93%) have introduced flexible working where possible, and 61% intend to continue this even beyond COVID-19. Further, with two-thirds (66%) of talent expressing that flexible working hours and remote working (65%) are what they are looking out for from employers, this is a positive step in the right direction for employers to attract and retain talent.

These results are derived from RGF’s Talent in Asia report, which gathered responses from more than 4,600 employers and candidates across 10 industry sectors.

At the time of the survey, more than half the employers (55%) have all employees working from home, while 32% have implemented partial work-from-home policies. 

On the positive side, many employers have not seen a huge decrease in productivity, despite 35% saying they have been impacted by the pandemic, and 33% have been “severely impacted”. As such, about one-third (30%) of employers say staff are working at 50-75% of normal productivity. To keep their staff motivated, 63% of employers are making the conscious decision of doing more frequent video calls with their teams.

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Meanwhile, nearly half of employers in India have shifted all recruitment efforts online, and 28% are developing ongoing business continuity plans.

From the perspective of the candidates, talent across India is hugely invested in their personal growth, with career advancement (50%) trumping most other motivating factors when looking for a new job. Per the data, they are also determined to improve key hard and soft skills, such as problem solving and decision making, to ensure they have an acceptable level of industry knowledge employers are looking for.

Employers are focusing on better aligning their offerings to talent with market expectations, as well as how they can boost their employer branding.

Photo / 123RF

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