Tracking Employment 2010 trends in India

Picked this up from the XL Alumni watch blog:

The current issue of Business India (July 19 - Aug 1, 2004) carries a 2-page coverage of an interesting future survey of the Employment Trends in India.The survey, based on Future-Search Conference methodology, was conducted by Chennai-based, Totus Consulting, and identifies 3 influencing factors and seven trends which will change the nature of employment in the country.Ganesh Chella (84PMIR batch), the Founder & CEO of Chennai-based Totus Consulting, says, "We wanted to take a hard look at future macro-trends, not at current best practices. The whole exercise was to seek, not critique..."

Read on more here( I've highlighted the main points in bold):

The seven macro-trends thrown up by the study are a "reflection of what
will be," says Mr Ganesh Chella, CEO, Totus Consulting. Some of these trends -
the increasing work-life imbalance for instance - are already evident, but
others are not so visible, he adds.
Employee rights, for instance, are a great source of concern, he says. The issue here is not just who will take care of employee rights in the future, but also what the consequences of not taking care of employee rights are, he explains. "Will this neglect result in white collar activism?" he asks.
Similarly, career longevity is likely to emerge as a major source of concern for those over 45. But the people who cope with this anxiety will be those who embark on a second or even third career in their middle years, he says. Thus, retirement in the traditional sense will soon disappear making it necessary for society to have appropriate coping mechanisms, he points out.
The study also found that women would continue to be under pressure, trying to balance their own needs and expectations with those of society. Women themselves will, however, be responsible for finding solutions to these problems with options such as `free-agency' flourishing because of this, the study adds. The growth in concepts such as `temping' and `free-agency' will also be driven by the increasing work-life imbalance, explains Mr Chella.
With organisations increasingly being driven only by performance, a `no-frills' employee value proposition will emerge, the study states. Most businesses will not invest in developing talent and will instead look at `buying' it. In many cases, organisations will increasingly turn to intermediaries such as professional employer organisations, Mr Chella says.
These intermediaries will gain in influence, he adds. The HR function too will be influenced by the persistent focus on the bottomline and on ensuring performance, he says. Traditional HR skills such as managing `employee relations' will no longer be a part of the HR vocabulary (who will do that, I wonder, the line manager? - Gautam), he adds. Similarly, the study found that education would increasingly become a prerogative of the private sector, with porous boundaries between industry and education. As part of this process, many young people will join the workforce after completing high school (10+2) and will work for a while before returning to college for a graduate degree.