The changing staffing landscape

Sangeeta Lala

It’s never been so critical for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as today to focus on attracting and retaining sound talent to cope with the ever changing market conditions and technological upheavals. The economic slowdown this year has prompted SMEs to be judicious in their approach to business growth and people investment. Rather than scaling up operations, the sector is now looking to focus on operational excellence, and this has reflected in their manpower needs as well.

For instance, employment for the year was rather stagnant in most sectors. Net employment in the current year grew only by 8%. Manufacturing, the mainstay of 67% SMEs, saw a decline in job levels in the second quarter and overall stagnation in 2012. The good news is that the sector can keep up its growth momentum through innovative HR practices that minimise employee spend.

Social media: SMEs have to enter the space of social media to attract the right people at the right cost and quality; entering the new age media to bring a brand positioning and recall value would go a long way in letting the pool of future employees know about the enterprise’s values, ethics and goals. The effect of social media branding would be not just working in the mind space to attract people but also leaving a technological lead for creating ‘an alumni effect.’ This is linked to the next option— crowd sourcing.

Crowd sourcing: Another novel way adopted by tech-savvy

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