Coronavirus pandemic| Staff shortage leads grocery firms to seek talent elsewhere

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At a suburban Mumbai grocery chain, customers were finding it tough to buy essentials since almost 60 percent of the store staff was on leave due to the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, outbreak. Instead of shutting the store, this supermarket chain decided to involve locals from March 25 onwards.

“Neighbourhood residents, including retired bank officials and senior company executives working from home, said they were ready to volunteer at the store. Hence, we permitted this and allowed these volunteers to dedicate three-to-four hours a day at our store,” said the talent manager at the grocery chain.

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A 21-day lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to contain COVID-19 spread meant that public transport would also be suspended. Even essential services like grocery chains are operating with less than 50 percent staff and shorter opening hours leading to customers rushing to the stores.

If your company has idling semi-skilled work force that can do with more income + work in a safe environment, please reach out to @Grofers - we are hiring in our warehouses to increase throughout in all cities. Requirement- Smartphone savvy. Transport provided. For India!

— Albinder Dhindsa (@albinder) March 29, 2020

While local talent are being taken in on a temporary basis to handle the crowd and also help customers inside the store, companies are also open to hiring workers from other sectors.

Please email us at zerotouch@grofers.com - image below is first batch from textile industry being inducted. pic.twitter.com/0m3PwBKUBq

— Albinder Dhindsa (@albinder) March 29, 2020

Rohit Sharma, Head of Supply Chain, Grofers, told Moneycontrol that the grocery platform is working closely with our manufacturers to secure sufficient stock and deliver it to customers at the earliest.

“All our warehouses are currently operational, with 65 percent warehouse staff. In order to meet the massive surge in demand, we are hiring an additional 2,000 temporary warehouse and delivery staff across the country. We are also actively collaborating with other platforms to get their staff and delivery fleet on board,” he added.

On March 29, Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and CEO of Grofers, had tweeted that any company who has idling semi-skilled work force could get in touch with the grocery platform.

For both physical and digital grocery firms, the shortage of staff is due to suspension of public transport and staff rushing back to their native towns. Human resource executives said even though there was a clear loss of pay, workers chose to stay away.

“A few religious outlets have also come forward to help us in managing the crowd at stores and help customers in their purchases through their youth wings,” said the senior vice president of a West Bengal-based grocer that also sells meat products.

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In cases where transport is a concern, tie-ups with other companies are being forged. For instance, grocery platform BigBasket is partnering with cab ride aggregator Uber to provide essential supplies in India during the lockdown.

As part of this partnership, the cab aggregation company will deploy its vehicles across categories and also share its technology with BigBasket for delivering groceries to customer homes. Cities like Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Noida would be covered.

The entire retail industry (including grocery stores) is seeing a slowdown over the last two weeks. Talent shortage has amplified the problem.

“Modern retail has de-grown by 30-40 percent in the last 15 days due to supply chain problems, shortage of manpower with attendance below 30 percent and lower customer entry due to social distancing,” said Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India.

Industry sources told Moneycontrol that this hiring process of temporary staff and taking help of partnerships and volunteers would continue till May, by which time the situation is expected to stabilise.