The market experts are estimating that the virtual staffing industry in the country could stand at a whopping $500 million within two to three years.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought a paradigm shift in the office culture, recruitment methodologies, and workforce management. Although the work-from-home model was implemented worldwide as a desperate measure, multiple organisations have now adopted this model due to its multifarious benefits. Remote working has proven to be quite effective and it has played a significant role in curtailing infrastructural expenditure – which is vital at the moment, given how most SMEs are struggling with liquidity issues. Organisations worldwide are now relying on virtual staffing to sail through the present-day challenges and India has risen as an effective solution to the problem.
The Indian staffing industry currently stands at $6 billion and is the 13th largest staffing industry in the world. Moreover, it is consistently growing at a rapid pace of more than 15% annually. At this pace, the Indian staffing industry will become the sixth-largest in the world by 2025. When we consider that the global staffing industry has already developed completely, and the growth rate has flattened out at 1% to 2%, we can picture how the Indian staffing industry can capture the global market in the future.
Small and medium-sized enterprises from western countries are leveraging remote working solutions to hire virtual staff from India. This could very well be a new take on the old Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry that saw a boom in the country a couple of decades ago. This phenomenon would have occurred much earlier but there was a lack of remote working infrastructure in India. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the entire country has adapted itself to work remotely as much as possible. This has made it easier for foreign companies to approach Indian staffing agencies.
The companies look for individuals who are comfortable working according to the western timings, which usually means working night shifts. The virtual employees, or Flexi-staff as they’re often called, have the option to work without any geographical constraints.
Before the pandemic, the business executives were uncertain about virtual staffing. Employees who asked for work-from-home were often frowned upon, as it was believed to be an ineffective working model. However, the pandemic-enforced work-from-home situation has put all those doubts to rest. Businesses have realized that work-from-home not only is an efficient model but also has added benefits. For instance, it gives organisations to stay fully functional without investing in an expensive office premise.
