Temp staff hiring to rise as consumers return to stores in festive season

With consumers returning to in-store shopping during the festival season and demand picking up, the hiring of temp staff is also expected to rise. Certain sectors like FMCG, electronic goods retail stores, entertainment and hospitality, etc see a sharp uptick in demand during the festive season, hence hiring is bound to go up.

During the festive season, more than 500,000 short-term jobs are expected to be created, TeamLease Services Vice President Balasubramanian A told BusinessLine. 

“A lot of these would be for store promoters or feet on street salespersons in consumer durables and electronics as well as some jobs for service engineers and in call centres,” he told BusinessLine.

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A lot of temp staff hirings have already started as the festival season is typically from August 15 to mid-January. According to BusinessLine, the demand for temp staff will not just be limited to metro cities, but tier-II cities are also supposed to see an uptick. 

The hospitality sector will also witness large seasonal hiring, while recruitment for e-commerce, logistics, and delivery during this time is expected as normal each year, Indian Staffing Federation's President, Lohit Bhatia told the business daily. 

“E-commerce hiring peaks with approximately 20-25 per cent additional hires during this period and similar numbers are expected, whereas retail and consumer hiring might touch 30 per cent higher than non-seasonal peaks,” Bhatia told BusinessLine.

The retail sector lost more than five million employees during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in India. But the industry has recouped and hired almost an equal number to date. 

However, retailers are worried about the high attrition rate in the sector. Retail employees, like in the IT industry, leave if a competitor offers more money, an official of a leading recruiting firm told BusinessLine.