Kolkata, Dec 1: The Aditya Birla Group, which has recently ventured into the organised retail turf, intends to recruit nearly 55,000 people for its retail operations by 2010-11. The group already operates 300 supermarkets and hypermarkets under the ‘more’ brand with 8,000 employees on the rolls.

“As per our retail rollout plan, the total number of employees will reach 55,000 people by 2010-11 across all functions, including the back-end. We are drawing a systematic plan to ensure smooth availability of talent for our manpower requirement,” Aditya Birla group director (HR) Santrupt B Misra said. He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the 11th National HRD Network conference here .

The group is also planning to outsource some of the non-core HR functions for its retail operations. “We have plans to outsource the non-core functions such as payroll processing, employee training and employee grievances to specialised HR firms and consultancies,” Mr Misra said.

AVB group is also betting on expatriate talent from foreign retail majors for certain retail functions such as merchandising, store management, supply chain, procurement of agri-products and development of private labels. “These are areas with huge skill shortage. We have already recruited some executives from Carrefour,” said Mr Misra.

This apart, the group is also drawing up strategies to tackle the huge problem of attrition that has hit the domestic retail sector. “We have developed a framework to tackle attrition. We have also recently given employee stock option to around 400 executives who are working in retail,” Mr Misra said.

After rolling out formats in the north and south, the group is now busy expanding into Maharashtra and Gujarat. “Once we set up a certain number of stores in these markets, we will foray into the east as well,” Mr Misra added.