A quarter of IKEA employees in part-time roles

Nearly a quarter of the world's biggest furniture company IKEA's 3,000 employees in India are in part-time roles, and most of these roles are held by students and women to suit their personal needs, amid early signs of gig work taking shape in the country.

We have 25% part-time assignments based roles in stores today, with an ambition to be 30% and more of the IKEA India workforce. It varies based on units. For instance, Bangalore has 40% of part-timers, according to the Swedish furniture retailer Country People and Culture Manager Parineeta Cecil Lakra, who spoke to Business Today on the sidelines of the Manning Modern Retail'' event in Mumbai recently.

She said part-timers are not employed by IKEA India and are not on third-party payrolls. Their pay is proportionate to the contracted hours they wish to choose, but their other benefits, such as medical health insurance, are the same as a full-timer.

They hold positions in both store and office roles across functions, such as logistics, sales, customer interaction, people culture and food, etc. Some are doing 16 hours, 24 hours or 30 hours a week. Some prefer only weekends while others prefer only weekdays. Lakra said co-workers could choose between these options based on their personal life situation.

A majority of them are students. There are a lot of women returning from parental leave. There are retired people who want to be gainfully employed. Some of them have been in full-time positions, some in teaching or even retail, and others have been with IKEA earlier in life. Their reasons could be that they are studying, pursuing something else in the rest of the time, navigating a life situation, such as tending to parents, children or a health condition.

They are free to take up any other employment outside of their contractual assignments, as long as it doesn't clash with their commitments, Lakra said. We have seen that if our part-timers find it hard to find another job, they come back and ask us if they can do more hours with us instead of going somewhere else. She said flexibility is good for both co-workers as well as business, as well as the increased acceptance of gig and freelance work among the Indian workforce after the Pandemic. The generation entering the workforce is not defined by their work, but rather by how they are perceived.