Pay-As-You-Wish: A Silver Lining In Employment Sector
As the deadly coronavirus hits planet earth, most spheres of our life, be it lives, health, jobs, and businesses have been severely impacted. When it comes to the employment sector, Covid-19 caused freezing hirings, delayed joining, or clear rejections. This global pandemic has hit employment and hiring across the industries.
People around the world are increasingly worried about how they are going to pay their bills as Coronavirus forces businesses to close and costs millions of jobs. Amid this crisis, there is a silver lining in the grey clouds. TalentOnLease is extending support to the people who have lost their jobs or are about to lose their jobs amid this crisis.
Daya Prakash, Founder at TalentOnLease has his own unconventional definition to social responsibly during these turbulent times. He explained it by saying, “We at TalentOnLease strongly feel that it's our social responsibility to do our bit in helping the Indian economy stand back on its feet. So we were thinking of ways to do our bit of contribution beyond those I mentioned above like donation and other charity work. As we said that those should definitely be done in an individual capacity.”
Daya Prakash, Founder, TalentOnLease elaborated the Idea of "Pay-As-You-Wish"
We realized that we had enough resources with us to support especially those people who have lost their job due to Covid-19. We initially thought to extend our recruitment services absolutely free of cost for our customers. We thought about how to create a fine balance where the objective is not to earn profits but we make sure that we do it in a self-sustainable manner, resulting in the "Pay-As-You-Wish" model. This gives flexibility to customers in deciding if they wish to ask us for a 100% discount. Eventually, we want to measure the impact of our contribution by the number of people we could help through this initiative and not by any other means. It would also be an important benchmark for us to be able to retain our current team through this tough time.
When asked about what made him take this daring step where it poses a question to self-survival, Prakash answered, “My friends and people around me are doing charity in their own ways, by giving food to the needy, by donating funds to PM Cares and many more ways. I thought why don’t I extend support in this manner where people can be helped with respect to their jobs?”
While people are making donations and doing charity, Prakash called it his social responsibility, explaining, “I always wonder about this question, as to ‘How could you help poor?’ And the answer is that by making sure that you don't become poor in the first place, hence "Pay-As-You-Wish".” Prakash further answered some pertinent questions about this groundbreaking initiative.
Q. At TalentOnLease, you introduced a new initiative called "Pay-As-You-Wish". What are your strategies and plans to go ahead with this?
We have already launched this concept a couple of days back and it is getting really good traction from the industry. We have on board with us about 10-12 new clients in just a few days. Some of our new clients have appreciated this concept, saying that this initiative of ours will go a long way. Our strategy is very simple. Through this initiative, we wish to achieve the following -
1) Be of Use - Being instrumental in helping impacted people especially those who have lost a job
2) Love What We Do - Uplifting the morale of the team
3) Create Impact - Not saying that we are doing complete charity but certainly not running after profits.
Q. Assurance itself can relieve people. In these pandemic hit times, what is that one idea/ thought that made you take this daring step?
Few weeks into the lockdown made me realize that Covid-19 is a life-changing event and its impact on the global economy would be long term. We had already started to see layoffs across industries and across geographies. Many clients with whom we were engaged had also put the positions on hold and in one or two cases, even revoked the offers given despite the candidates putting papers in the serving companies. The situation suddenly became very bad with the unemployment rate rising on an everyday basis.
While a lot of friends and industry leaders that I spoke to were doing something or the other on the individual front to perform their duty towards humanity, I thought of how to take this sense of social responsibility a notch up where an individual's collective power as an organization could perform at a level that is impossible through individualistic efforts. That's when we assessed all available resources and how to work towards executing the idea of having got the direction from God through inspiration.
Q. Layoffs itself seems scary/ frightening in nature. How can we help others to cope with this feeling of instability?
The situation is tough as far as the job market is concerned and my sincere advice to all would be to stay firm. The first most thing is to assess your own skills and expertise with respect to the role and responsibility being carried out by you. Then do an assessment of how critical this job role is for the organization i.e. is it must have type or nice to have type role? If the answer is favourable then the next question is how likely it is to stay as relevant as it is in the new normal post Covid-19 and if the answer is not a straight as it should be, waste no time in rolling your sleeves to dive deep into skills which would stay or become relevant in future. Don't spend too much time analyzing the situation and worrying about it a lot. Rather get up and get going. Remember Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do!
Q. A survey report says that the IT and finance sectors are on a hiring spree. Do you think it would relax the situation a bit?
I don't have the exact details of the survey with me but, I could speak from my experience. The jobs are on hold at the moment. IT and Finance sectors would surely see growth post-Covid-19 but it would be prudent to follow my previous advice where a critical self-assessment must be done by each and every person. IT and Finance, both the fields are vast and would see job growth in some areas v/s job loss in other areas. In the case of IT Cloud, Security and Digital Transformation would gain ground.
Q. How has the response to this been? How are companies and candidates reacting to it?
We have already got good traction with a few companies as they have reached out to us. The best part is that these are real requirements as these companies are serious about hiring even in this situation. Just to share with you, we have already started seeing shortlisting and even offer rollouts. So the response really has been encouraging, I would say.
Q. Have you seen any quantifiable traction after announcing this? Kindly share an experience as an example with us.
The response so far has been great and we are already working with 10-12 new clients. I would like to highlight two instances here. First where this person reached out to me said that we as an organization have never worked with the third party but due to your initiative and intent, we would like to work with you. The second instance was where the person told me that they called me up to congratulate me on this wonderful initiative and while they don't have any open position, they have still started checking with their network about open positions as their small contribution.
