Talent bottleneck has become biggest

　　Today the author saw a piece of news that the headquarters of Volvo is expected to settle in Shanghai Jiading for internal staff of SAIC confirmed to reporters that Geely started their recruitment in Jiading and has been contacting with some technical staff within several automobile enterprises and departments. What this information reminds the author is how to retain talented staff for our independent brand auto companies rather that the location of Volvo’s China headquarters.

　　What made Geely held their recruitment by the side of SAIC is perhaps not because they were preparing for the location of Volvo’s headquarters but related to the job-hopping of Geely’s employees not long ago. According to insiders of Geely, a dozen engineers of Geely Engine R & D Institute with extensive experience together went to SAIC in April and May, which of course made the leader of the institute leaders very angry.

　　In fact, the author believes presently most domestic automotive engineers with experience of more than three years may have received phone calls from other companies. Moreover, it has been commonplace for automotive engineers some rival enterprises even invite applications openly and brazenly. The author had witnessed Great Wall, Dongfeng, Geely and Guangzhou Automobile undermined the foundation once worked in Chery. Some friends have also said such phenomenon is very common.

　　There the author will give some major reasons:

　　First, as our independent brands are expansion strongly and increasingly stressing on the R & D, the lack of talents in the auto industry has gradually revealed. Although each year there has been many university graduates, they are not strong enough to support the development of independent brands. Besides, since the demand has been really heavy, it is not surprising that there has always been short of supplies. What’s more, independent brands in the JVs like SAIC and Guangzhou can offer better benefits to attract more talents for their high accumulative profits recent years. The Research Institute of Guangzhou Automotive set up last yea now has more than 500 talents with different levels of experience.

　　Second, the human resources department of independent brand companies is not competent. In our self-owned brand companies (not just auto companies), the Human Resources Department is only a sector responsible for recruitment who seldom pay research and efforts on how to retain the talents they have trained by themselves. Leaders in this independent business seem still hold the misconception that “China will be never lack of talents since the population is so large”. Their cares about talents are only stay on the surface. Although the companies are constantly in a loss of talents, the leaders only pay attention to new recruitment rather than care about their employees and retain them. They seem more willing to spend large money to hunt for new talents from their competitors than raising salary for their own employees. Since salaries are rising slowly while housing and commodity prices are rocketing increasingly, job-hopping becomes the only choice of these employees.

　　Third, the Chinese traditional values are also a reason for the loss of talents in the auto industry. The splendid Chinese culture for thousands of years has left us much valuable wealth, but also created a lot of misconceptions. In modern enterprises, the first is to take the promotion as the main criteria to evaluate success. Senior research engineer with extensive experience can not receive timely attention and appropriate pay has caused this concept to spread. In addition, corruption also makes many engineers consider promotion a shortcut to wealth. This consequence of this misconception is promotion has become the most useful means to retain talents. In order to provide positions for them, auto companies have to constantly expanse the organization, which not only subsequently leads organization bloated but also cause another problem: once the engineers become leaders, their technical advantages can not be fully exploited since management has become their main daily, which also results in the loss of research and development personnel.

　　Independent companies can solve such problem only through the following ways:

　　First, the companies themselves should establish a good reputation and demeanor. Through credibility and loyalty have been emphasized from the since ancient times, the enterprises can never obey. For example, the salaries are always delayed for several days for no reasons. And the agreed wages and treatment usually can not be honored. Such things will make the employees feel upset. Such companies can never make personnel keep a high degree of credibility and loyalty.

　　There is another lamentable phenomenon that former employees are often seen as traitors to the enterprise that their wages and benefits will always be deducted when leaving. Such treatment will make them feel it is a right choice for them to leave. Once this kind of thinking spread among the friends and classmates of these employees, it will definitely hurt the reputation of the corporations. In fact, think it over, what can these deducted money be used for? Referring to this point, the author we should learn from IBM who never despise left staff but also create files for them, who care about the development of staff no matter they are in or out. The employees left from IBM take the corporation their home and many with a further excellent development become partners with IBM. This is a kind of demeanor that big business should have.

　　Second, we must create the best possible daily working environment and benefits for the staff. Now the management of many self-owned brands makes the R & D staff really depressed. The author has learnt the most serious is the so called “militarized management” of the Great Wall Motor. According to the reporter, the most famous phrase in the corporation is “two make a line and three a row”, which is a rule for walking. The employees can never be allowed to walking too slowly. When taking elevator, one must to the exactly floor his office locates. Once found offend the rules, his wages will be cut down. What the author wants to say is the talents are not soldiers, let alone even in the army, the discipline for personnel in R & D departments will be relatively loose. General military does not need the kind of creativity of R & D departments. How can rigid management cultivate a lively talent? How can these employees do not want to leave if working in such an environment? The author believes there is no need to talk about the benefits. Certainly, only the spirit can not guarantee the loyalty of employees.

　　Third, the career planning for the staff should be put into practice. Presently many independent companies are publicizing they have been doing detailed career planning for their staff when conducting campus recruitment. However, college students will find the reality not the case after taking office. Although these college students may stay the moment for a living, they will never be hesitating to leave once there is another opportunity.

　　To summary, the famous phrase from a film “What is most important in the 21st century? Talents!” has impressed everyone deeply. But it is not easy to really understand how important these words are to the development of one company. The companies can not just talk but should carry out some actual actions. In fact to do this is not difficult, although so much has been talking about, just one word can simply conclude, that is “respect”. To let employees respect the corporations, they must first respect their staff. To respect employees, and develop together with staff is the only way for our independent companies to break through the bottleneck.

　　(Translator: Yalong/Jessie)

　　See original Chinese report Please click: http://wjttts.blog.sohu.com/154307904.html