How To Overcome Staff Shortage

The era of cheap labor as the sole competitive power is in the past. A small town under the jurisdiction of Zengcheng, Guangzhou, was once a well-known clothing production base at home and abroad. A large number of local small processing factories have provided cheap Chinese made garments for the whole world.

The influx of cheap foreign labor force has enabled the town to compete with the world's garment processing industry.

The competitiveness is slowly changing.

A factory owner in this small town is worried about the difficulty of finding workers.

This factory is one of the few lucky people who survive in the fierce competition. Many factories that started with him at the same time fail to compete in China's inland market because of their choice of domestic trade.

"The domestic trade here has moved to the north."

The little boss said that what he called "the north" probably means China in the north of Guangdong.

Inland provinces and cities are crazy about learning from the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta's manufacturing experience. In this town, some garment enterprises which mainly engaged in domestic trade have gradually lost their original advantages, and some factory with foresight has moved from this small town to the mainland.

"We even have factories moved to Jiangxi."

Similar problems exist in the Yangtze River Delta.

In Wenzhou, a city that controls the output of spectacles in the world, a large number of eyewear factories are worried because they can not find the right workers. The shortage of workers has become the most troublesome problem for these enterprises.

Oxford management review [oxford.icxo.com] news: staff shortage is no longer news, but the most feared thing for business owners.

According to statistics, there are only 2 million employees in the Pearl River Delta every year, most of whom are low skilled workers.

The huge market gap has little chance of increasing income for these labor force: it is reported that although the PRD lacks a large number of labor force, their income has not increased significantly in ten years.

Obviously, those factories that lack workers know a lot: cheap labor is the biggest magic weapon for their survival. Once the labor force is raised because of the lack of workers, the competitive advantage will be lost and the competitive advantage will be lost, and it will be difficult to survive.

The low skilled labor force is often not valued by enterprises because of its strong substitutability.

When the annual salary of senior skilled workers has exceeded that of white-collar workers in large cities, the income of low skilled labor has not changed significantly.

In the cost accounting of enterprises, the cost of these labor force is almost negligible.

In order to retain these employees, many enterprises have adopted different methods.

Quite a lot of enterprises carry out the method of arrears of wages, especially during holidays, and detain some of their employees' wages. When employees return to the factory after their holidays, they will be paid the wages to prevent them from running away.

However, this way often leads to tension between workers and factories, and staff loyalty is too low to prevent staff turnover.

China's inland provinces and cities catch up with the developed coastal areas, the main source of labor force and the increasing number of employment opportunities for farmers.

So what is the way to solve this problem?

In Wenzhou, there is no human rights.

A migrant worker working in Wenzhou told reporters that what he called "no human rights" means that the factory did not consider giving employees time to rest and entertainment. "I don't think I'm paid well, but I simply can't afford to go out because I don't have time to go shopping."

A garment processing enterprise in the Yangtze River Delta has its own unique way to overcome the shortage of employees. Huang, the director of the factory, employs the strategy of "integrating with employees" to attract employees to stay.

Migrant workers usually come from the same province or even the same village. They often have group effects. If a worker feels that the factory's environment is good, he will bring a large number of fellow countrymen into the factory.

Mr. Huang, who knows that he is hard to provide his employees with higher wages by relying on the strength of the factory and the pressure of competition, so as to keep close to the staff and care for the employees' lives.

"Once, an employee asked me to ask for leave and said that something had happened to her family. She wanted to go back to deal with it. I did not simply let her go, but I asked her what had happened.

Mr. Huang said, "the young brother who was in high school was running away from her family because she had a quarrel with her parents.

Her brother likes to surf the Internet. I advise her to go back for a trip. It costs a lot and doesn't necessarily solve the problem.

She went to the net, and her brother's QQ really ran online.

Chatting for a long time, I knew that my brother felt too much pressure on the college entrance examination and wanted to escape.

After a lot of persuasion, she persuaded her brother to return home and admit her mistake to her parents.

Another time, a worker in the factory bought a second-hand mobile phone. The result was not long after the signal was bad, and the phone could not fight.

The man who sold the cell phone could not find it. The employee had to admit his bad luck.

Mr. Huang knew, and thought, that his factory machines often had problems. They were usually cleaned up and cleaned up.

So he came to his cell phone and opened the cell phone to see that there was a lot of dust in it.

After careful cleaning, it was then installed and the cell phone returned to normal.

Through these "little tricks" which are close to employees, Mr Huang successfully drew the distance from his employees. After the Spring Festival every year, employees will introduce him to the factory.

Businesses are expanding and there is an urgent need for new labour, but Mr. Huang's factory has never seen a shortage of employees.

In the small and medium-sized enterprises in China, most of them are managed by family businesses. "As long as they can use family members, they will not use foreign staff."

PRD boss said, "the biggest advantage of family workers is the lowest cost of honesty."

The boss's idea is the common thinking of most small and medium-sized enterprises.

But it also makes it difficult for foreign employees to generate loyalty to enterprises.

A shoemaking enterprise in Wenzhou is different. Enterprises are jointly invested by several local partners in Wenzhou, and are managed by large shareholders. However, the factory has been in a state of loss.

Several shareholders sat together to argue that the introduction of new managers might bring vitality, so they tried to change their ownership, and promoted a foreign employee from the bottom of the factory to a general manager who was responsible for managing the production and sale of the factory, and at the same time gave the employee some equity.

The factory has been in an unstable state for a long time, because the sales situation is not open, the core staff is unstable, and 2 experienced teachers are invited, but they haven't stayed there for long.

When the new manager took office, he brought a different style to the factory. The large shareholders of the factory believed that the core staff had changed too much and the loss was much higher than that of ordinary employees.

Every time the old technicians change their jobs, they take away ordinary workers. This is the "tradition" of the flow of workers in the processing and manufacturing industry.

If he can retain core staff, he can attract more ordinary workers to join.

After a pformation, the factory has gained new vitality since 2007.

With many orders and stable workforce, the core staff saw a bright future in the factory, so they had the motivation.

And the ordinary employees around the core staff will also settle down because of the stable mentality of the core employees.

Now, inland provinces and cities are investing in large scale. These provinces and cities are gradually forming supporting competitive advantages and attracting the entry of coastal capital.

In the past, these provinces and cities are more concerned about sending migrant workers to work in the coastal areas to solve the employment problem.

The change of competition pattern has even caused some shortage of employees in some fast developed inland provinces.

"I don't go out to work. I don't think those places earn a lot, but I can't save money."

A farmer in a county in Xingtai, Hebei said that he worked odd jobs in the local town, earning 300 yuan a month, though only about 1/3 of the coastal workers' income, but all the money could be saved.

There are plenty of workers like him.

As a matter of fact, the rural labor force only accounts for nearly 1/3 of the current rural surplus labor force.

Because the living standard of inland provinces is low, labor costs are also lower, and quite a few factories have seen this opportunity and are considering relocation to the mainland.

A company that moved the factory to Wenzhou in Jilin has enjoyed preferential policies for Jilin Province, which is hungry for investment.

Like this company, more and more bosses have moved their factories to the mainland, which is like the scene when Hongkong people opened factories in Guangdong.

To continue to maintain the advantage of cheap labor, the "made in China" movement from south to North has become a trend.

Even Wenzhou enterprises began to think about moving farther overseas. "The wages of North Korean workers are almost 1/10 of that of Chinese workers, and this is already a high local wage."

A Wenzhou boss said.

After analyzing the new risks that may be faced by factory migration, pferring factories may not be a good solution.