Manufacturing companies are increasingly looking specifically for female employees to run their shop floors as millions of vacancies appear due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced reverse migration of outstation workers, with some companies wanting women to comprise over two-thirds of their workforce.
Staffing companies say that as their clients start the second and third shifts at their manufacturing plants, they are requesting to fill the empty positions specifically true for mobile and other electronics manufacturing units and women could easily represents two-thirds of the workforce in these organisations in the coming days, according to Lohit Bhatia, president for workforce management at the country’s largest staffing company Quess Corp.
Approximately 20-25 million individuals have reverse-migrated from their places of work since the coronavirus pandemic hit the country, according to Bhatia.
As companies look to fill these vacancies with local talent, it could generate about 5 million incremental jobs for women, estimates Navneet Singh, chief executive, Avsar HR Services.
Several apparel makers in Tiruppur, Baddi and Una are looking for only female workers, Singh said. A large Tiruppur-based apparel manufacturer wants at least 80% women in its workforce. Earlier, the number stood at 30-40%, as majority of the workforce was comprised of male migrant workers.
In Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, companies manufacturing electronics could hire up to 5,000 women in the coming three months, said Sudeep Sen, business head for industrial, manufacturing and engineering segments at TeamLease. At least two companies have approached the staffing company requesting a 70% female workforce, he said.
While the trend has been kicked-off due to a shortage of workers in several industrial belts across the country, employers say that it is not the only factor pushing them to include more women in their staff.
Employers feel women are generally more loyal, focussed, better at following complex instructions, take fewer breaks, register higher attendance, and are more dexterous and thus more apt at jobs like electronics assembly.
“We much prefer to employ women,” says Gautam Nair, managing director of Gurugram-based Matrix Clothing. One of the company’s plants in Ranchi has over 90% female employees which it now looks to stretch to a full 100%, “including the supervisors and the security personnel.”
Some even say that in current times, they have found female employees have a sincerer attitude towards following safety and precautionary instructions.
According to Singh, women comprise between 3% and 12% of the manufacturing workforce presently and this could increase by up to 3 percentage points.
The pandemic has also opened opportunities to increase women participation in white-collar jobs. As companies now warm up to the idea of work-from-home, many qualified and experienced women, who had to quit the workforce due to family obligations, may find it easier to get back to work as they can work from their homes, Sanjeev Sharma, managing director of ABB India told ET in a recent interview.
Participation of women in the white-collar workforce could increase by 0.5-1 percentage point, estimated Suchita Dutta, executive director of Indian Staffing Federation.
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