Need for flexibility in labour market: FM

Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said there was a need to bring in flexibility in the labour market.

"We must introduce some flexibility in the labour market. However, the key to any temporary recruitment is information regarding employers and employees," he said.

"No employer could ensure life-time employment to employees and similarly no employee would like to stay in one company or industry. This is the reason why there was a need to have flexibility for both employers and employees," Chidambaram said. He was speaking at the launch of TeamLease's online temporary staffing network TLNet.

He said during a business upturn, companies would like to employ more people and during a downturn, they might like to lay off some of workers.

"Employees too are looking for newer opportunities and would like to do multiple things to gain wider experience and temping is the perfect platform as well as a solution to varied needs of industries," he said.

Meanwhile, TeamLease aims to capture a bigger pie of the $140 billion temporary staffing market through TLNet.

"The network will offer real time matching of temporary jobseekers with employers across a cross-section of functions, industries and locations. And will provide liquidity infrastructure that enables better matching of temp demand and supply," Ashok Reddy, managing director of TeamLease, said.

The network will also allow a workflow engine that automates temp lifecycles for employers and has elements like client requisition, candidate sourcing, screening, tracking and selection, he added.

Started in 2002, Teamlease has 9,000 associates in 200 locations across the country. With TLNet, Reddy expects to touch a mark of 40,000 associates by 2007.

He added that according to available estimates, temporary employment could rise from 50,000 to 14 million in three years, provided the regulatory environment was conducive.

The service of the company would cover 25 industry sectors including infotech, business process outsourcing, manufacturing and finance and 20 functional areas like administration, sales and marketing.