IndiaCSR News Network
NEW DELHI: Employers are optimistic on the economy with a stable government in New Delhi. And, they are back in the hiring mode.
“Indian employers across major sectors forecast an overall increase of 23% when it comes to the hiring outlook for the next year, compared with last year’s report where the change in hiring numbers was less than 2%,” said AG Rao, group MD at ManpowerGroup India, which puts out a quarterly hiring outlook survey. “It seems the political and economic stability have had a positive impact.”
The IT, hospitality and travel sectors are set to lead the way with more than 50% growth in hiring. Banks, financial services and insurance, or the BFSI sector follows with an expected 25% increase.
Sectors such as IT, BFSI, retail and ecommerce, construction and real estate, telecom, auto, FMCG, power and energy, media and entertainment will be extremely upbeat on hiring, said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and senior vicepresident at TeamLease Services.
There would be an evolution of many newer roles and JOB profiles based on the changing needs in these sectors. All this, however, will depend on policy action from the government to clear bottlenecks affecting investment in sectors like power, infrastructure, real estate, mining and metals. While leading compensation trackers expect an average 11% salary increase across sectors, top performers can expect twice that. Attrition is likely to escalate as the job market opens up further.
“Scarce supply coupled with high demand for skilled and experienced resources shall lead to spiralling wages and hence those whose skills are in line with the hot JOBS can expect a significant premium in their compensation,” said Chakraborty.
“There is no question that companies will be under pressure to hire and retain talent at all levels,” said K Sudarshan, regional managing partner at EMA Partners India. “But, we also expect that organisations will continue to right-size as the pressure of the broad base of the pyramid catches up in people intensive businesses like technology and IT services.” — Sreeradha Basu
More Muscle to Minority Shareholders
Expect shareholder meetings to be noisier and minority investors to influence more corporate decisions than ever before in 2015.
Empowered by new regulations, minority shareholders, who have often been shortchanged by promoter-owners, are set to have a bigger impact on decision-making. Emergence of proxy firms that simplify jargon-filled corporate-speak and disseminate the information, is making small investors informed and act in unison. The newly introduced electronic voting makes their votes count more. In 2014, Indian industry saw some glimpses of what to expect. Maruti Suzuki had to postpone its shareholder meeting on a proposal to transfer a planned plant in Gujarat to parent Suzuki Motor as disgruntled minority shareholders opposed it. A motion to raise the executive director’s salary at Tata Motors was defeated, while at Panacea Biotec, plans for issuance of fresh equity, creation of mortgage of assets and transaction with related parties were scotched.
If 2014 has seen isolated movements, 2015 could become a watershed year for shareholder activism.
Under new Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) rules, institutions like mutual funds have to vote at shareholder meetings and disclose how and why they voted in a particular fashion. This is expected to foster an environment of competitive behaviour in 2015 for funds, and improve corporate governance.
E-voting, introduced in October, is set to be a game changer. E-voting counts one vote per share held, as against the show-of-hands method where one raised hand means one vote. The effect would be dramatically different results as the number of votes will depend on the quantity of shares held by those voted and not the number of people present. The new Companies Act provides further muscle to minority shareholders. It, for instance, bars promoters from voting on transactions with related entities.
“Going forward, promoters will find that they cannot have a free run on abusive related-party transactions,” said Amit Tandon, founder and MD of Institutional Investors Advisory Services. “They will also need to disclose far more than they have done so till now.” — Arun Kumar
Startups will Outsmart Larger Cos
A big shift is underway in the Indian technology space where emerging ventures are winning business from large clients in the face of competition from established players. Several of these startups, which offer more nimble solutions in areas like data analytics, mobility, security, cloud and mobile applications, are often being chosen ahead of the big boys like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-12-31/news/57558121_1_bfsi-sector-shareholder-meeting-job-market
