#Flexibility is the key in crisis times#

The current COVID Pandemic will be going to impact nearly all industries around the world either positively or negatively. The impact may be seen immediately in some business, while in some during upcoming years. Any kind of impact on business naturally impacts the job market and either leave positive or negative sentiments in people’s life. In developed countries like the USA, U.K., Netherland, Norway, and Finland, etc, the jobless people enjoy a plethora of livelihood benefits, and also their mobility, as well as acceptability in jobs across the world, is higher than Indians. According to one study, over 130 million people are going to lose their jobs in the tsunami of corona and do not forget that over 60% of them are dependent on territorial jobs within India for various competency or financial reasons.

The most difficult challenge in this time before everyone is to sustain in their job. The difficulty level further extends in countries like ours because of the traditional specialized, bureaucratic, and hierarchy driven approach of employees and employers. Therefore, time is to change the mindset for both employees and employers to balance the curve between market gainers and losers. Unlike other countries, the Indian approach of selecting people is always driven by past experiences rather than their ability to perform the tasks or projects in hand. The need of the hour is to change this traditionally older approach and changing with the change. Following may be two changes in approaches to drive out of the current crisis:

while on the one hand, larger organizations may create a hybrid skills marketplace within the organizations, for better usability of resources in place of laying off, on the other hand, the mid and small players should think of sharing resources in collaboration with other similar organizations. This is possible only when hiring turns to task-oriented rather driven by past experiences. This will not only help organizations to optimize the resource cost but also increase the longevity of resources in an organization that will finally save thousands of jobs. The employees also must be open to getting cross-trained and be agile to accept new challenges beyond rigidity, outside their core working areas to make this change successful.

Institutionalizing such changes is possible only by conquering the old traditional Indian mindset of negativity towards hiring part-time workers, freelancers, and consultants in regular jobs. We in India, still hesitate to hire such people either due to stability reasons or due to mindset reasons which need to be set off and need to accept such mobility of resources due to change in the work environment in the post COVID era.