Some 85 per cent of organisations in India were looking to expand their workforce – that’s a higher figure than other countries in APAC, at an average 77%.
The results are a part of the India Employment Screening Benchmark Report by background verification firm HireRight. Nearly 6,000 human resource professionals were surveyed globally this year.
Almost 50% of the companies are expecting their workforce to grow by 6% or more this year. Despite the buzz around flexi-staffing, companies are reducing their dependence on contingent workers compared to last year’s findings – almost half (43%) of companies had less than 10% of their workforce made up of non-employees. This suggests that planned recruitment drives in 2018 may focus on permanent positions.
Also, even though companies plan to step up hiring, they are also working on several strategies to reduce employee attrition. Almost 47% of businesses surveyed confirmed they were investing in strategies to improve staff retention. This is more than double (22%) over 2017.
There is also an increase in HR initiatives across all areas. Developing effective employee training programs is a major focus area for 53% of organisations – up from 24% in 2017. Overall, raising the efficiency of HR processes topped the list of most important initiatives (57%), followed by creating a positive corporate culture (54%) and maximising employee engagement (53%).
However, with aggressive growth comes with its own set of challenges. According to the 2018 Report, 80% of India employers have uncovered instances of false information being given out by a few job candidates through background screening that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. This represents an increase of 3 percentage points over last year. The three most common discrepancies were in previous employment records, educational credentials and criminal histories.
