IT bellwether Infosys Technologies has set yet another trend in the sector?this time by recruiting part-time employees for its business process outsourcing (BPO) operations. With shrinking talent pool, rising business volumes and increasing costs and wages, Infosys BPO has introduced a new hiring policy and expects the part-time hires to constitute at least 1% to 2% of the new recruits in the next financial year.

Infosys VP and group HR head Nandita Gurjar said the new policy, currently being implemented, aimed at ?expanding the available talent pool, meeting client requirements for work bits that do not require full time employees and meeting work life aspirations of women employees who are not able to work full-time?.

She, however, said cost impact held no significant ground for introducing the new policy. ?Costs are not so much the consideration, as having access to a large homeowner and a retired workforce through this mode,? Gurjar said. Hiring was based on various client requirements, she said. Infosys BPO currently had 15,000 employees and the company said they would be able to give next fiscal?s hiring plans only in April.

This specific, ?part-time focused? policy from the IT major signaled a new hiring trend, according to IT staffing company TVA Infotech?s Gautam Sinha. ?Everyone in the industry especially IT and BPO, is looking at tapping the latent employment pool available. Part time employment could become a huge trend in future as it presents a win-win situation for the employee and the company,? he said. Industry wide, less than 1% of the talent pool comes from part time hires, at present.

Annually, temp staffing major Teamlease Services Private Limited placed an average 1,000 employees on part-time jobs. Demand primarily came from data processing jobs with BPOs during peak business periods and in retail companies. According to Teamlease?s VP Rajesh A R, part-time employment could also help in moderating wage hikes by expanding the manpower supply.

Indian IT majors, including Infosys, Wipro and Satyam, had recently said they would look at alternative hiring methods to meet rising costs as the available labour-supply shrunk in size and quality.