Flexible Employment: Gains vs Losses

According to ISF, flexi staffing as an employment strategy is known to contribute to the formalisation of jobs by reducing the burden on the unorganised sector. Although the industry by nature is organised temporary staffing, it acts as a force multiplier for formal jobs by creating a platform for recognised employment, work choice, compensation, annual benefits, and health benefits for the temporary workforce. Flexi staffing offers employees the option to take upskilling opportunities and learn on the job by working on a variety of projects without the need to tag themselves to one company. The industry, especially the IT segment, is known to help upskill freshers and dropouts, enabling them to become employable and industry-ready.
A shift in the nature of employment in the last few years has also given rise to gig economy workers, most of whom lie outside of the social security net of formal employment. According to the ISF report, flexi staffing mitigates this risk to some extent by providing several benefits to gig economy workers such as flexibility in allowing them to choose when, where, and how much they want to work, including access to a range of job opportunities across sectors. On the industry side, flexi staffing opens up avenues to onboard project-based highly-skilled workers, a fast and efficient job placement process which reduces the time and effort for both workers and employers. Out of the 40 crore employable strength of India, a mere ten per cent or four crore are employed in the organised sector whereas nearly 25 crore remain self-employed. This creates a pool of nearly 11 crore people who are either employed or have the potential to be engaged in the flexi-staffing sector and the unorganised sector.
India has emerged as one of the largest countries for flexi staffing in the world. Companies like Flipkart, Amazon, Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, Urban Company, and other e-commerce businesses are leading the trend in hiring people for shorter periods. However, increasing employment opportunities have not automatically converted into benefits for employees. For a large share of these workers, employment is restricted by tripartite contracts where the onus of the employer-employee relationship is often juggled between the contractor and the employer, leaving little leverage in the hands of the workers. The nature of employment as a whole and lack of unionisation is known to create avenues for exploitation in the form of overtime work, odd working hours, underpay, and no occupational security. A closer look at the nature of flexi employment indicates that it might not help in offering valuable long-term employment opportunities.