Gig work a sign of healthy, progressive and growing economies: Rituparna Chakraborty, Teamlease

“There is a positive drift in the same direction from both enterprises as well as individuals towards the success of or the emerging success of the gig landscape,” says Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-founder & Executive Director, TeamLease.

Why is there a spurt in terms of temporary job profiles? Contractual work seems to be on the rise and is projected to grow even further. Why is that?
I am going to start with certain clarifying statements. Gig work is not temporary work. Gig work also does not mean there is an employer and employee relationship and hence they should not be deemed employees. These are two forms of livelihood options which currently exist besides the traditional forms of employment. Temporary work, of course, is a growing business in India and a growing opportunity and so is gig work.

One of the signs of healthy progressive and growing economies is the amount of innovation that comes especially in terms of livelihood opportunities and gig work is a classic example. As a matter of fact, gig work worldwide has been a mascot of good economies and hence we have seen how a healthy economy like the United States has optimised the usage of gig economy quite effectively.

I feel extremely encouraged and motivated to see that it is also happening in India. It is true that the opportunity is going to be vast but it is going to complement earnings opportunities and it will coexist with all the existing forms of employment that you see. It is not here to erode the opportunities that exist in terms of permanent employment or temporary work or any other form of project or contingency work. This is another new option that has been made available and honestly the beauty of it is it is trying to optimise the gains of both the persons who is providing and offering his or her services in the form of certain skill sets as well as optimising exactly what an organisation, enterprise and sometimes even retail customers are looking for.

Of course, there are various shades of it, some of it is being expanded by way of aggregators. However, there are also different platforms emerging where gig work is being used at different skill sets even at a higher level and not just the bottom of the pillar. So it is actually….

Does it also mean that more companies may want to kind of work on contracts with certain individuals who bring very specific skill sets?
Absolutely. Somehow I feel pandemic fast tracked that entire transition in terms of adoption of gig work. Many employees or many professionals in India today are making gig work a lifestyle choice while for others it might be just another way of earning or maximising income. But yes, there is a positive drift in the same direction from both enterprises as well as individuals towards the success of or the emerging success of the gig landscape.

Do you imagine that a lot of people would look at being part of a gig economy apart from regular traditional jobs where they are on the payroll? Are these different companies that work only on the kind of merits that a gig economy presents or are you seeing these same companies offering as many contracts to get certain skills on board?
That is why I established the point that the gig economy is the ultimate mascot of good economics of demand and supply without any interventions coming together and converging. What essentially is going to happen is that organisations will move towards a smart solution model where there would be a blend and where they feel the future of enterprises are going to be morphing in a manner which constitute the permanent, critical workforce side by side with optionalities of temporary work and they would have freelancers and gig workers as also apprentices.

It is a blend that we should be expecting right now. There would be task based contracts. It could be time bound contracts and of course everything is success led and based on certain outcomes.

And what about the compensation packages? Is the growth of the gig economy getting spurred by the extra compensation if it means over and above the traditional job? Is that what is being brought on the table? But going ahead there needs to be a stronger structure in terms of social security?
I am going to answer your question in three parts. One, I will try and give you an example at the bottom of the pillar and one which is at a very niche senior or highly skilled level. At the bottom of the pillar we all saw what happened when a lot of funding came into the startup ecosystem. A lot of delivery models were emerging, the 10-minute delivery and so on and so forth. There was a fight for talent and a fight for gig workforce.

Again the demand and supply economics pretty much determines how much these resources could make for delivery. So the greater the demand in certain cities and some of these organisations were willing to pay a very high amount for delivery just because of the demand that got created, which essentially ends up benefiting these individuals. It could go the other way also, of course. It is a high risk and high return kind of a model and people should get into it knowing about the consequences.

At the top end of the pillar are people with extremely specialised skill sets. For example – somebody who is a superdude in cyber security, somebody who is an exceptional data scientist. The skill set is so scare that that individual can maximise his or her gains by saying that look I am not going to work full time with any organisation, I am going to charge hourly rates and whoever is the highest bidder essentially gets a share of nine hours or ten hours or maybe five hours.

Both these models are what you should anticipate. It is already happening. Now the question on social security is often discussed. That is why I started the conversation saying the gig economy is a livelihood option, where there is no employee-employer relationship which means the labour laws do not apply. Having said that, yes there are some challenges.

The moment you try to make gig economy equal to regular traditional formal employment, this economy will vanish because you will take away the incentive from the entire premise on which this model is thriving. So we should not wish for it. However, there has to be a certain threshold, certain safety net and I think the government is working on those lines.