Contingent Workforce as a Remedy to Overcome the Employee-Shortage Issues in Vodafone-Oman Company

Most of the companies in the recent days facing the issues of the shortage of the skilled workforce. Recruiting and the retaining the right kind and right type of personnel is a big challenge to the team of HR in the organizations. To overcome this shortage issues one of the strategy what the companies are following is contingent workforce. As per the recent studies it is observed that, the companies are gaining major advantages and minor drawbacks through contingent workforce. Contingent workforce is available in various forms like temporary workers, freelancers, casual earners and contractors. It is easy to hire and fire these employees as per the company workload requirements. Companies are preferring these contingent employees for more than one reason i.e: cost-saving benefit, seasonal fluctuations, no need to bother about extra incentives and training programs e.t.c. Vodafone-Oman is a couples of years old company started with the motto of to connect everybody in the country Oman for the sake of enhanced future and their solutions are aimed to impact the people positively. As a company with technology, it holds the Sultanate of Oman’s 2040 Vision and the goals about the Sustainable Development. It supports the Sultanate position at the head of creativity and innovation in both locally and globally. After the commencement of the company’s pilot operations on 30 th December 2021, the Vodafone company commemorated its operations launch officially on 6 th March, 2021 in the Sultanate of Oman. As a newly started company Vodafone-Oman is also facing an issues of skilled worker’s shortage. As a remedy to overcome this issue the company is started using contingent workforce to give the tough competition to its competitors and to reach the maximum number of customers at the earliest.


INTRODUCTION
The contingent workforce, also known as temporary or contract workers, has become an increasingly important part of many organizations, providing flexibility and cost savings in a rapidly changing business environment (ILO, 2019).Generally, it relates to the employees who is not having any kind of contract to continue his services in the organization for a certain time period.(Red path et al., 2007).Contingent workforce the wide term can be further classified into the categories of (1) leased employees and temporary staff (2) freelance workers and independent contractors (3) seasonal workers (4) inhouse arrangements and direct hires (Gallagher, and Connelly 2004).These workers are employed on a nonpermanent basis and may be hired for a specific project, to fill a short-term staffing need, or to provide expertise in a particular area.The contingent workforce slogan is gradually raising with a progressive association for the workforces who are holding the short-term jobs dues to their peculiar reasons and also due to the worker's high workload reasons.(Hipple 2001).Vodafone Oman, a leading telecommunications company in Oman, is also implemented the practice of contingent workforce as a remedy to overcome their staff shortage issues.In recent days this method is helpful to avail the staff as per the changing market conditions.To extend the company services and to compete in this dynamic industry, understanding the impact of skilled employee shortage issue and choosing the best remedy to overcome the employee shortage issue is crucial.In the year 2022 Vodafone-Oman company declared that, it achieved 450,000 customers and 7 percent of market share irrespective of their proposed target of 5 percent (Muscat Daily, Mar 2023).

II. AIM
To investigate the about the contingent workforce and their support to overcome the employee shortage issues in Vodafone-Oman company.

III. OBJECTIVES
1. To explore the issues which are raising through employee-shortage in the Vodafone-Oman company 2. To evaluate the employee views about the performance of contingent workforce in Vodafone-Oman company.

III. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
In most of the organizations the employers are expecting the maximum benefits with the minimum pay.Some of their expectations are hiring the new intake with cost-saving benefit, employee contributions from day 1 with no or less training, flexible workforce to accept all the types of work shifts and working conditions, employee services without any hidden-cost, hassle-free terminations as per the seasonal requirement etc.But the challenges are legal consequences, hidden costs, confidentiality and security issues, low employee commitment and difficulty to remove when there is a surplus employee situation.In the same way the employees who are working for the organizations are expecting the benefits of flexible workloads, competitive packages, financial rewards, work learning opportunities, career advancement possibilities etc.It is possible to balance between these employer and employee expectations by hiring the contingent workforce.As per one of the research the practices of performance management, onboarding, workplace training, holistic hiring, and developing the strong organizational culture, hiring, and removing as per situational demand is possible to manage effectively through contingent workforce.(Sayoni Santra 2021).

IV. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
On demand basis and to fulfill their short term requirements the employees will be hired as a contingent workforce in the organizations.(Luke Marson et al, 2016).A contingent workforce will not be in the direct company's payroll due to the reason that they are not the full time employees in the organization.To hire the contingent worker the organizations can use staffing agencies or sometimes they can hire directly.Such employees are usually added on temporary basis to a company's labor pool and they may work either remotely or in onsite (Mekhala Roy et al, 2016).Contingent workforce benefits are generally, comparatively less with the regular employee benefits and they are not safe guarded by the employment and labor laws.The referenced definition about the "contingent work" means, they are referred to the situations where the employees are not having any implicit or explicit contracts in their term of services (Nardone and Polivka 1989).(and few more literatures are reviewed….)

V. RESEARCH GAP
There are sufficient studies about the contingent workforce, their significance, issues and their expectations.But there is no study found about the contingent workforce as a remedy to overcome the employee shortage issues in telecom industry.Hence, the researchers are considered the same as the research gap and selected same gap as their current area of research work.The above mentioned conceptual framework exemplifies the association among the independent and dependent variables used in this study.Fulfilling the employee shortage issues are depending on hiring the independent variable of contingent workforce.As shown in the diagram above the freelancers, contractors, casual earners and temporary workers are the ways of forming the contingent workforce in Vodafone-Oman company.Employee shortage may lead to the issues of diverse and expert professional's shortage, skill gap, difficulty to raise the customer size and enhancing the market share.But through contingent workforce it is possible to overcome all these issues in Vodafone-Oman company.

VII. RESEARCH DESIGN
For the present work of the research, the researchers are selected descriptive research design and quantitative methods.Through a structured questionnaire, the data is collected numerically.With the help of Google forms the questionnaire was distributed to the participants.Researchers are used method of convenience sampling.Vodafone-Oman company employees are the participants of this study.The total population of this research study is 192 employees.But the size of this research sample is 123 employees who are working in different positions and departments in the company.non-probability convenience sampling technique is chosen by the researchers for the purpose of collecting the data. .

VIII. GATHERING OF DATA
For the current research study, the data is gathered through both the primary and secondary sources.Primary data is collected through a structured questionnaire which is used in the online survey.Secondary data is collected through, websites, newspapers, and the earlier publications.

IX. TREATMENT OF DATA
Percentage calculation method is chosen to analyze the collected information.The result is checked with the help of tables and graphical diagrams through MS Excel document.Researchers are further used the chisquare test and correlation test to conclude the relationship and association between the frequency of the data.

X. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
Based on the data collected through survey the result was summarized in the below mentioned table for the quick review.In the below given table number 5,4,3,2,1 are representing the details of the response towards the choices of strongly-agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly-disagree.N represents total sample size.

Conclusion
For the above calculation, the value of Chi Square test is 28.6185, which is > to table value 26.296 at 0.05 significance level.Hence the null hypothesis in this case is rejected.So, it can be concluded that there is an association among the employee views about the statements of "Vodafone-Oman company hires different types of As per the above data calculation the correlation r value is 0.7663, that means there is a strong positive correlation between the taken two statements.As per the employee opinions contingent employee performance and their contribution towards the organizational growth is par with the full time employee's performance and contributions in the Vodafone-Oman company.

XI. FINDINGS
1. Vodafone-Oman company is also facing employee's shortage issues.

XII. RECOMMENDATIONS
 Contingent employees should not be treated as a second-class citizen in the organization.The company management should implement a proper policy to protect the rights of the contingent employees. It is also recommended to provide the activities of training and development to the contingent workforce, to further improve their skills and capabilities. Extending the medical claims to the contingent workforce will be helpful to improve contingent worker's morale levels. Contingent employees should be given priority in case of the company is in a plan to recruit new employees in a full-time mode. As the business grows, it is suggested to improve the welfare facilities to the contingent employees too. Due to seasonal fluctuations when the time comes to remove the contingent workforce, it is better to remove them with prior notice of as early as they can, in example at least one month to three months of prior notice.

XIII. CONCLUSION
Contingent worker's appointments have raised as a reaction to the employers' inabilities to terminate the employees legally and to minimize the cost which is linked with the employee terminations (Gallagher and Sverke, 2005).These days, the contingent workers are raising in different sectors like, engineering, IT, medical, production, agricultural, educational, technological, financial, technical etc.The contingent workforce slogan is progressively used with an optimistic association for the labors due to their individual voluntary choice as per the situational requirement (Hipple 2001).Contingent employees are really playing a crucial role in the overall performance of the organization and its growth.Contingent employee's efforts and contributions have to be recognized in a proper manner just like regular employees.With their contribution the companies may earn more than what they are spending on employees.Due to the seasonal fluctuation some companies hire and maintaining them seasonally.This practice is troubling them financially and forcing them to shift to other careers.In most of the cases they are choosing other professions and shifting to their new job roles irrespective of payments offered.But, if the person is deserved, there is nothing wrong to convert him as a full time employee.When there is a job opening's in the organization instead of planning for new intake the organization must give the priority to convert this contingent workforce as full-time employees.

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contingent workforce and Contingent workforce in Vodafone-Oman are working at different levels."Correlation Coefficient Statement Contingent workers can perform as like as full time workers.Statement Contingent worker's contribution is same as like as full time workers in Vodafone-Oman company.https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/pearson/default2.aspx) In the current study Chi-Square test is used to authorize the association among the employee views towards the statements of; Agree, 4-Agree, 3-Neutral, 2-Disagree, 1-Strongly Disagree 100 This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.CHI-SQUARE TEST-1 Source: (https://www.mathsisfun.com/data//chi-square-calculator.html)101 This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.