As a large employer of professionals, EY Global Delivery Services (EY GDS) has also been engaging with the gig economy of an estimated 15 million freelancers in India, says Arun Batra, Client Service Leader.
“At EY GDS, we have created a platform GigNow, a talent market-place to engage gig professionals. While we are not dependent 100 per cent on them, gig is an important and growing component tool of our talent strategy,” Batra explained.
Maturing marketplace
It is still a maturing marketplace given that many people still enjoy the tag of a permanent job. But the gig economy is all about short-term contracts. “Still we have been proactive on this front and have a gig programme that helps with onboarding and onward deployment.”
In Kerala, EY GDS gets a part of its work done by the GigNow platform. When asked to put a number to those engaged by the platform, Batra said over 400 gig professionals have joined till date during the 2021-22 financial year that ends in June.
Advancements in workplace technology has enabled freelancers to access job opportunities that allow them to work remotely, giving them more flexibility and freedom in their professional careers even as they support on-demand work.
Employee retention trend
The launch of the GigNow platform is in line with the increasing global trend of organisations leveraging contingent workers, also known as freelancers, employed on short-term contracts, to respond to growing work demands during peak seasons.
While engaging with the gig economy, EY GDS is also mindful about retaining professionals on its rolls. “For us, talent engagement is the starting point. Retention is the outcome of great talent management that starts with employee onboarding experience to his/her learning experiences.
EY GDS is one of the few companies that measures candidate experience at onboarding. “We have elicited 95 per cent of overall satisfaction from a completely virtual onboarding process during the last two years. So, we’ve significantly improved, innovated and transformed the onboarding process.”
Career development framework
After onboarding, its’ all about engaging the person, starting right from what transformative project EY GDS puts him/her on and what training intervention is required to help he/she move to the next level of engagement which may be of a different level of complexity.
It has now developed 20 well-defined career frameworks through which an employee can progress either vertically or horizontally – from a coder to a developer, architect, solution-architect, and enterprise-architect to a managerial position. They decide what interventions are required, and what kind of a project gives the employee the best experiences.
Transformative projects
“At EY, we take pride in the variety of project profiles that we are able to engage them with – including transformative projects of cutting-edge technologies and transformative solutions across our wider management services, tax and assurance practices that help with enterprise transformation.”
This level of onboarding will ensure high employee retention and high employee experiences. This should be the reason why EY GDS has been able to control attrition in Kerala to around 16 per cent on a trailing 12-month basis when the overall attrition rate in the industry was comparably much higher. The attrition trend has been moderating in the last few months, Batra said.
Published on
March 28, 2022
