Executive Summary: Countries that have managed to control the spread of COVID-19 are seeing a gradual movement back to normalcy. Within India, the major consumption centres are expected to recover faster. However, the larger question that the country is going to face in the coming days is – Will the industry be able to fulfil the demand? The Indian industry is staring at one of its biggest challenges – Labour availability. India has always been seen as a place with abundant supply of cheap labour and hence the industry has never experienced such a challenge in the past and is largely under prepared to handle the same. Possibility of losing sales, in these critical times, due to shortages in manpower in its supply chain at its factories and warehouse, which traditionally has been labour intensive, is something that is going to keep corporate India awake at nights in the days to come. COVID-19 has changed migrant workforce landscape in India: The nationwide lockdown in India, which started on March 24 to curb the spread of coronavirus, has impacted nearly 40 million internal migrants, according to World Bank. Lockdown, loss of employment, social distancing and fear of corona have forced majority of migrant workforce to reverse migrate to their natives. India has no central registry of migrant workers despite passing legislation 40 years ago to establish such a database, However estimates suggest that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar account for the origin of 25% and 14% cent of the total inter-state migrants, followed by Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, at 6% and 5%. This translates to around 4-6 million people would be wanting to return to Uttar Pradesh, and 1.8-2.8 million to Bihar. Another 700,000 to 1 million would be wanting to return to Rajasthan and 600,000-900,000 to Madhya Pradesh. On one hand we have the biggest humanitarian crisis looming on us and on other hand most of the Indian business sectors with high concentrations of migrant workers —construction, manufacturing, services and logistics have been seriously affected by this exodus of migrants. The normal migration corridors are likely to change. Long-distance migration will be affected. Somebody coming from the northeast to Kerala in the south may not come anymore. Communities where we operate are also reeling under fear of migrant labours adding to the COVID spread and hence not welcoming outside workforce to enter the locality. Migrant labour themselves are too scared of their own health and safety and are pivoting to stay closer to their natives rather than risking their lives. Depending upon how they were treated during the lockdown, chaos and pain of getting back home and emerging new opportunities in domicile states, many of these migrants may never return back. Reopening of the businesses would require the labour to be available and going by the current realities there may be a major supply crunch in the labour market for a stretched period. Early impact of this labour supply crunch has already started becoming visible. Many of the businesses which could open up their businesses during the period, have already been forced to pay extra salaries and incentives to get the required manpower. One may argue, that this may be a temporary phase driven by lockdowns and operating restrictions, let’s not forget the possibility of a second wave of infections and monsoons. For atleast next two quarters the situation is going to remain uncertain and hence the availability of labour. Oct-Dec 20 period becomes highly critical as the consumption may get a boost during the festival times and labour unavailability during this period will jeopardise the little opportunity to review the revenue growth. Labour unavailability directly impacts the throughput, risking the ability of business to fulfil the demand (and may be pent up demand). For every 100-basis points reduction in labour availability, throughput productivity will decrease by 125-150 basis points. In the above context, the pertinent question that arises is what can organisation do differently in order to have the workers back, offering a safer and healthier work environment and ensuring business continuity thereby creating a win-win scenario. We need a proactive approach to attract, retain and win the confidence back of these migrant workforce After taking into considerations the likely migrant workforce scenario, evolving govt. guidelines on COVID measures, social distancing norms, and possible uptick in demand, we have summarised a set of recommendation for workforce assurance while living with COVID. We have already mentioned the incremental salaries, many companies are paying currently. As per a recent report by Trading Economics, wages in the long-term, the India Average Daily Wage Rate is projected to trend around 372.33 INR/Day in 2021 and 397.00 INR/Day in 2022. Govt. has already made provisions in its latest stimulus package for migrants to increase the wages by 10-15% and its highly likely that the rates may be increased again by 15-20% in a couple of months. Organisations can consider this and also make relevant increase in the daily wages to its workers given the current crisis and ensuring that they are retained. We recommend a location specific increment wage structure with productivity linked incentives. 2. Hygiene Food, Transport & Accommodation The workers also need to be provided with hygienic and health food to ensure they don’t have to spend on food every day or go out of the work premises everyday looking for food. Right nutrition assurance will ensure their good health as well leave them with adequate money to take care of the families. Most of the migrants live in rented accommodations in closed and unhygienic conditions and usually in groups. Many organisations are arranging for accommodation of its workforce within the work premises or close by to ensure that they have safe environment and do not have to travel hence reducing the COVID risks. Given the local transportation may be restricted for some time and even after the risk of COVID spread is high, many companies have made arrangement for local transportation of the workers. We recommend provision of functional shared accommodation...