James Bond films fueled the brand of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), but it was double-edged: a recent financial Times The story suggests his portrayal of women as “conquests rather than fully drawn human beings” and staff as “upper-class white men in beige chinos and desert boots”, implying that they rarely Attracts women, ethnic minorities or applicants with regional accents. But it also suggested that SIS was changing for a new world of multipolarity, geopolitics and espionage; Three of its four directors general are currently women. Our software employers have always been more gender inclusive than the rest of corporate India, but this year market challenges forced a bold re-imagining of their people supply chains in five ways: geographic, cognitive, workplace, Gender and contract. This increased diversity will enhance their competitive advantage.
Mahatma Gandhi often talked about Antyodaya (Rise of the last man in line) and Sarvodaya (Rise of all). Jana Sangh co-founder Deen Dayal Upadhyay suggested, “The measure of economic plans and economic development cannot be with those who have risen up the economic ladder, but with those who are at the bottom.” Both suggest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. ) matters more than total GDP for collective prosperity. Our software industry was born as a meritocracy, and recent market challenges have strengthened this powerful initial balance by increasing the diversity of its people supply chain in five ways. Let’s check them out.
Geographical diversity: India’s tech job stock of 5 million is concentrated in eight big cities, but our tech talent flow is not. Our engineering education potential map shows three concentric circles spanning 28 cities (3,500 engineering colleges with 33% capacity), 500 cities (2,334 such colleges with 35% capacity) and the rest of India. As a result, less than 20% of the incremental annual workforce in India’s digital industry works in the place where they used to spend their lives. Furthermore, our research shows that software employment is growing from its current eight cities to 20 new locations: Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Indore, Mysore, Vadodara, Madurai, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Mangalore , Lucknow, Nagpur, Goa, Salem, Durgapur, Vijayawada and Trichy. These 20 also contribute most of the engineering-graduate supply outside the eight major cities. This expansion allows people unable or unwilling to relocate outside their home region or state to be employed.
Gender diversity: The country’s decline in women’s labor force participation is a shocking economic mystery. Explanations such as increased household affluence, women opting for leisure or different household activities, increased urban remittances, etc. are unsatisfactory as India’s GDP could increase significantly by equalizing China’s labor force participation. The Indian software industry fares better than others in employing women, who make up 34% of its employees and 25% of its managers. However, our research shows that women now make up about 50% of software entry-level recruiters. Given that women apparently do not make up 50% of engineering students, this flow gap indicates that the flexibility, security and work environment of the country’s software industry is a winning combination.
Cognitive diversity: Only 5% of the Indian software industry employs non-engineers, but our research shows that 15% of incremental recruits are non-engineering graduates. Industry is now hiring those with skills in management, design, languages, sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc. The industry’s talent shortage and high attrition initially drove this diversification, but now there are other factors such as ‘low-code/no-code’ platforms, consulting services that increase the pricing power of code writing, and every Covid acceleration of digitization to make the company more technology dependent. But the main driver is cognitive diversity; In The Imitation Game (a 2014 film), Alan Turing’s character says, “Sometimes it’s people we can’t imagine who do things we can’t imagine. “
Workplace diversity: Pre-Covid, only 5% of software employees did not do their daily work from a company office or client site. But our research shows that the rise of remote working means this will rise to 20% over the next decade. This ‘office’ flexibility would reduce attrition, enable them to rent ponds that were previously inaccessible, and reduce real wages (which employers care about) and marginal wages (which workers care about) due to poor urbanisation. Let’s blunt the middle deviation. Big Indian Cities.
Contract diversity: As employment shifts from a lifetime contract to a taxi-cab relationship, our research shows that software employers are moving into several concentric circles of employment contracts: full-time, permanent, part-time, consultant, gig, direct Fixed-term contracts, third-party contracts, etc. Of course, contract diversity varies among the six software employers: global service companies, Indian service companies, global captives, domestic market unicorns, Indian software as a service companies, and Indian non-tech companies. But all contract diversity creates a better match between employers and potential employees, in addition to increasing longevity, memory and productivity.
Great books, like S. Ramadurai’s The TCS Story, Harish Mehta’s The Maverick Effect and Engineered in People by BVR Mohan Reddy chronicle the supply chain innovation that helped India’s software exports grow five times more than our textile exports. The primary issue for people with supply chain diversity is always economic and social justice. But, as India’s software industry prepares to employ more people in the next 10 years than in the last 50, it has embarked on an incredible journey of Antyodaya, which will make its competitive advantage even stronger .
Manish Sabharwal and Sunil Chemmankotil are with TeamLease Services and TeamLease Digital respectively
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