Showrooms often advertise blue-collar job vacancies with prominently-hung boards. “Staff needed, full-time or part-time”. Blue-collar vacancies generally get filled quickly. And the positions are also deserted with equal speed.
Smitha Nair, a human-resource professional turned entrepreneur, notes on the scale of difficulty levels in personnel management, retaining blue-collar workers tends towards “very difficult”.
A report by The Udaiti Foundation and Quess Corp Limited found that initial three months of employment is critical to retention, as a substantial number of new associates “jump ship” in that period. The dropout rate among female associates is higher.
The report is based on an analysis of monthly Quess payroll data of over 15 lakh employees from 2020 to 2023.
Associates who stick to the job during the first three months tend to persist in the job for much longer — for a minimum of one year.
The percentage of those dropping out in the first month is higher in the low-earning category as compared to high-earning associates, signalling salary to be a significant factor contributing to dropout rates.
“Unlike white collar jobs, where attrition usually strikes after one year of employment, the ‘turnover rate’ for blue and grey collar staff is high during the first 90 days and we need to address it,” says M.P. Karthick, assistant vice president, Data and Applied Research, The Udaiti Foundation.
Reasons for leaving
The staffing industry struggles with high attrition rates, with factors such as temporary nature of work, lack of job security and limited avenues for professional development. For women, these challenges are exacerbated by care-giving responsibility and discrimination at work.
Addressing attrition
As reported by Quess, access to benefits significantly improved retention among female associates. This includes benefits such as provident fund, ESIC and performance incentives. The data revealed that married women with PF benefits are three times more likely to stay with the company than those without those privileges.
Similarly, single women with ESIC benefits are 48% more likely to retain their jobs than their counterparts without such benefits.
In addition, performance incentives make single women three times more likely to remain employed, and married women receiving quarterly incentives are seven times more likely to stay.
Better career opportunities also emerge as a dominant driver to leave an organisation.
A prominent MNC specialising in home appliances had a high attrition rate, partly due to low compensation packages within the industry.
Realising this, the company restructured the salary framework by introducing a festive season driven retention bonus and customised training programmes to enhance employee engagement and skill development.
These initiatives resulted in substantial cost savings, totalling ₹ 5 crore annually, and a significant reduction in attrition from 56% to 44%, says a case study presented by TeamLease Services, a HR consultancy for contract staffing services.
Digital feedback
Shahi Exports, in association with Good Business Lab, a labour research organisation, launched a digital tool that allows workers to share feedback anonymously and directly with HR or supervisors.
‘Inache’, as it is called, accommodates multiple regional languages, simplifying the feedback process and eliminating barriers to expression and fear of reprisal.
Quess has a ‘SARA’ chatbot that picks up human behavioural moods encountered by the associates, especially in the first 90 days of their employment.
