IKEA India has 3,000 part-time staff working as few as 2 days per week; this is the way it manages

A few quarter of the world’s greatest furnishings firm IKEA’s 3,000 staff in India are on part-time roles, working as few as two days per week, and most of those roles are held by college students and ladies to swimsuit their private necessities, amid early indicators of gig work taking form within the nation.  

“We have now roughly 25% part-time assignments-based roles in shops in the present day with an ambition to be 30% and extra of IKEA India workforce. It varies relying on items. For example, Bangalore has 40% part-timers,” the Swedish furnishings retailer’s Nation Folks and Tradition Supervisor Parineeta Cecil Lakra instructed Enterprise Right now on the sidelines of the ‘Manning Fashionable Retail’ occasion in Mumbai not too long ago. 

She stated the part-timers are employed by IKEA India and usually are not on third-party payrolls. Whereas their pay is proportionate to the contracted hours they want to select, their different advantages comparable to medical/medical health insurance are the identical as a full-timer.  

They maintain positions in each retailer and workplace roles throughout capabilities comparable to logistics, gross sales, buyer interplay, folks & tradition and meals, and so forth. Some are possibly doing 16 hours, 24 hours or 30 hours per week. Some choose solely weekends, whereas others choose solely weekdays. Lakra stated co-workers select between these choices primarily based on their private life state of affairs.  

“A majority of them are college students. There are a number of girls, particularly these getting back from parental go away. There are retired individuals who need to be gainfully employed. Some have been in full-time roles; some have been in educating and even in retail and others have been with IKEA additionally earlier.” 

Their causes may very well be that they’re finding out, pursuing one thing else in the remainder of the time, navigating a life state of affairs comparable to tending to oldsters, kids or a well being situation.  

Exterior of their contractual assignments, they’re free to take up some other employment so long as it doesn’t conflict with their dedication right here, Lakra stated. “We’ve seen that if our part-timers discover the necessity to discover one other employment, they arrive again and ask us if they’ll do extra hours with us as a substitute of going some other place.” 

On the sluggish however elevated acceptance of gig and freelance work among the many Indian workforce, particularly after the pandemic, she stated that flexibility is sweet for each the co-workers in addition to enterprise. “I’m more and more seeing that the era coming into the workforce now or shall be coming into in future, their life shouldn’t be outlined solely by their work. They’re discovering extra which means to life.”

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