Recruitment drive: Workers carrying plastic bottles at a factory in Hanoi. To attract new employees, a company has added salary support and a bonus policy for them. — AFP
HO CHI MINH CITY: Manufacturing companies in Ho Chi Minh City are finding it hard to hire employees for the end of the year, which is the peak season for production and business activities.
Song Ngoc Garment Co Ltd in Binh Tan District has received many export orders for Christmas and New Year. To meet production requirements, the factory needed at least 100 more workers.
However, the company had difficulties in finding workers.
Song Ngoc Garment human resources department head Tran Thanh Son said the company does not discriminate by age and is willing to accept workers aged 40 to 45 as long as they are healthy and meet the job requirements.
To attract new workers, the company has added salary support and a bonus policy for them. Employees who introduce new employees will receive cash rewards. But the company has received few applications.
This year, the company planned to expand four more production lines. At the beginning of the year, the factory successfully opened two production lines but the plan to open two more production lines in the second half of the year had to be postponed due to a lack of workers.
According to Son, the reason for the labour shortage is that most young workers do not want to enter the garment industry. Meanwhile, senior workers only want to work seasonally to receive unemployment benefits.
Having worked in recruitment for many years, Son pointed out that this was the first time he had failed to complete the task of recruiting enough staff for the production plan.
The company now has to restructure the production process and research other production options to ensure production progress and order completion.
Similarly, over the past several months, Pouyuen Viet Nam Co Ltd in Binh Tan District, which operates in the footwear sector has sought to recruit more than 2,000 workers to meet production plans especially at the end of the year when orders increase.
However, despite using multiple channels, the company has only recruited half of what it needs.
“The factory needs 1,000 workers,” said Pouyuen human resources head Dang Hong Lien, adding that compared with the scale of the enterprise that has nearly 40,000 employees, the need for more than a thousand workers is not much but in the current market context, this is a challenge.
To meet labour needs, the company has used many measures such as rewarding current workers who find new workers and contacting old workers who had agreed to terminate their contracts during previous labour reductions to invite them back to work.
“Not only do we have to find workers for new orders, we also have to recruit workers who will quit after Tet (Lunar New Year),” added Lien. According to Lien, for many years, after Tet, about 1,000 to 2,000 workers quit their jobs.
Not only Song Ngoc Garment and Pouyuen Factory, but many enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City have year-end orders but are having difficulty recruiting workers.
Ho Chi Minh City Employment Service Centre director Nguyen Van Hanh Thuc said that just through the centre’s information-receiving channel, enterprises in the city currently need more than 80,000 workers. However, finding workers is not easy.
To cope with sudden increases in orders, such as at the end of the year, many businesses proactively plan early and recruit new workers from the second quarter. — Viet Nam News/ANN
