Temping goes blue-collar

TeamLease Services enters new HR domain

Temping is now no longer confined to white-collared workers, blue-collared workers, too, have made the grade. For the first time, human resources firm TeamLease Services Pvt has entered into temping of blue-collar workers. Although internationally the concept is common, in India, this is a new initiative.

Inability to deal with the umpteen number of statutory compliances was stated to be the reason for the sector to be left untouched by HR firms. TeamLease is, however, betting big on the huge potential that this sector has, in terms of the sheer number of people working under this category.

The firm, has already tied-up with companies such as Digital Juice and Reliance Infocomm from whom it has 'inherited the workers' and is in talks with a few more companies in various cities. The workers are usually bound by contracts that range between three and eight months.

"After that, we move them on to other jobs in the same sector," Ashok Reddy, managing director, TeamLease says.

At present, TeamLease has around 300 workers ranging from draftsmen and packers to shop-floor machine operators. Not only have they been given appointment letters for the first time in their professional life, but now they also know what their individual cost to the company is.

But by the end of this financial year, the company hopes to up this number to around 4,000 . "We will also get into actual recruitment in this domain in a year's time, but it will be difficult as the methods of recruiting will not be the same as in the case of white-collared workers," Reddy adds.

The company will have to start focussing on recruitment on-site, through references or via publishing advertisements in vernacular dailies.

"The profile of our team that works on it will also change as we will require people who are not only comfortable with the local language but also have no qualms working on-site for this purpose," Reddy says.

TeamLease is expecting to have 10 per cent of its associate numbers in this sector by the end of this financial year.