BENGALURU: German tech major SAP’s research and development division, SAP Labs is onboarding hires remotely every week as the company looks to fill more than 1,500 roles in India by the year end. “We are hiring almost on weekly basis in India,” Sindhu Gangadharan, Senior Vice President, and Managing Director, SAP Labs India said recently at the Bengaluru Tech Summit.
Gangadharan also pointed out that the tech firm is planning to spend 400 million euros in employee bonus and benefit programmes over the next four years. While referring to the remote hiring process, Gangadaran said that HR departments have to show a digital-first approach and even if they are working from home, the company’s organisational structure and culture needs to be maintained.
She also noted that there was a need to hold employees accountable for their performance while they were working from home and keeping up communications with the workforce. “We have to ensure employee engagement from top-down and their involvement in the decision making under current times,” Gangadharan said. She also noted that pre-hire connections were important for new employees to adapt well within the organisation even if they are hired remotely.
The pandemic, she said, may lead to 44 per cent of the global workforce working remotely on average, which also necessitates the need to upskill employees. In India, top tier IT and ITeS firms had frozen hiring in the first two quarters of FY21 due to the disruption from the pandemic. However, analysts have projected that IT industry hiring will pick up during the current quarter and the next, since the tech industry is benefiting from the massive digitisation sparked by Covid-19.
A majority of top tech firms in India have said that they remain committed to onboarding freshers this year and that they will resume hiring for senior roles by the year-end or 2021. Experts also observe that demand for roles in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, machine learning, and cyber security is high even in sectors such as BSFI, retail, hospitality, education, and healthcare.