Solving The Problem Of Recruiting After Covid-19: 2 Scenarios For Businesses

Struggling to attract and retain the workforce

The digital transformation along with the urgency for economic development after the 4th pandemic wave has increased the need for workforce expansion. According to “Digital Vietnam: The Path to Tomorrow” released by World Bank in 2020, Vietnam is now the most explosive e-commerce industry market in Southeast Asia. Moreover, this report also shows the number of online public services increased tenfold, from February to April 2021. 

However, in order to be ready for the digital transformation as well as the coming wave of international investment, Vietnam also needs the be prepared with well-trained and skillful labor forces. Not only the information technology industry, but other industry groups are facing labor shortage problems as well. Specifically, the recruitment demand of the trade service group is up to 62% of the whole market and is expected to continue to increase soon. Meanwhile, the skillful employees in this field only meet about 35% of recruitment demand. In addition, Vietnam’s tourism industry is also facing a workforce crisis because of job-hopping since the Covid-19 outbreak.

Facing this issue, Ms. Ly Ngoc Tran – Director of Talentnet’s Human Resources Outsourcing Department commented: “The labor shortage in Vietnam during the post-pandemic recovery period has pushed the HR department into a complicated position. At the same time, many HR are struggling with employee management strategy, how to balance the resources as well as optimize the costing problem for leaders.”

Be ready with 2 HR scenarios for businesses

According to Ms. Ly Ngoc Tran, the cost of recruitment is increasing due to the competitiveness of the limited labor workforce. Therefore, in order to help businesses solve both short-term and long-term problems, our expert has drawn two strategic moves:

Cultivate talent from the existing team: Leaders and HR departments need to embark on training and professional guidance for the existing employees. This job not only helps employees improve their skills but also allows businesses easily to find the ‘experts’ within their team. At the same time, the HR department needs to design an attractive welfare policy to retain talents for the business operations.

The outsourcing strategy: For the short term, the HR department may consider using HRO (HR outsourcing) services as a third party for risk management as well as getting rid of employee shortages. Especially for businesses that need a large number of workers, outsourcing human resources is a solution to the business recruitment process, reducing recruitment pressure for the HR department. While solving the recruitment problem, HR can focus on building and implementing long-term strategic policies to help businesses grow.

“There is a shortage of labor resources in Vietnam. Human resources outsourcing is the solution that businesses should consider to reduce the workload on the HR department, which has been affected badly by Covid-19. With a large supply of candidates and moderate costs, businesses will be able to quickly solve the severe shortage of employees. In addition, businesses can consider choosing temporary or long-term contracts for several departments with functions relating to human resources such as recruitment, tax, administration, etc. to take the stress off their mind and invest more in other HR strategic solutions”, affirmed Ms. Tran.

Facing the rapid development of digital transformation towards business operations cultivating talent from the existing team and outsourcing strategy services are the 2 strategic suggestions to help solve the problems of workforce shortage while optimizing implementation costs.