Massages and free fish help east Europe tackle labour shortages
21/12/2018 07:54
* Eastern Europe has some of EU's lowest unemployment rates
* Companies come up with novel schemes to attract staff
* Labour shortages blamed for hampering economic growth
By Michael Kahn
PRAGUE, Dec 21 (Reuters) - What's does a company do when it
doesn't have enough workers and unemployment rates are at record
lows? In eastern Europe answers includes workplace massages,
free carp for Christmas and guaranteed jobs for spouses.
With some of the European Union's lowest unemployment rates,
companies in the region are increasingly being forced to adopt
novel measures to attract and retain workers so they can carry
on expanding.
Take Amazon AMZN.O , which employs 20,000 people in the
Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia and wanted to hire another
10,000 for the holiday season. To fully staff its centres, the
company has to bus in staff from cities up to 90 minutes away.
The U.S. giant also uses daily questionnaires to ensure
workers are happy, asking among other things whether restrooms
are clean as managers try to resolve immediately any issue that
might dissatisfy employees.
"The only way we can get these numbers is by spending lots
of time on the conditions and the work environment," said Steven
Harman, who oversees Amazon's logistics centres across a number
of European countries.
Filling positions is a struggle for companies such as Amazon
in the Czech Republic where the unemployment rate is the lowest
in European Union at well under 3 percent. The number of job
vacancies in the country of 10.6 million people is the highest
since records started in 1995.
"It is about where the people are applying from and we find
the most efficient way to get them to our fulfilment centres,"
Harman said.
Jaroslav Hanak, president of the Czech Confederation of
Industry, predicted the hunt for workers would get even more
difficult in the coming months, with employers sweetening offers
to prospective staff.
Hiring students and offering vocational training, providing
an extra week of holiday and offering day care to lure mothers
with young children back to work are examples, Hanak said.
KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY
In Slovakia, many companies are hiring workers from non-EU
countries without work permits to plug the gap, especially for
construction or seasonal jobs, said Julius Kostolny, deputy
chief of the country's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Companies are also offering to cover severance pay for
employees willing to quit a previous job at a day's notice,
rather than working out the traditional 60-day period, he said.
"There is also a new phenomenon," Kostolny said. "Businesses
are focusing on couples. If a man starts working at a company,
the company guarantees a job for the wife."
In Bulgaria, companies say labour shortages are one of the
main factors preventing faster economic growth.
According to the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association,
the nation of 7 million people needs at least half a million
workers in the next five years to grow.
Canada's Telus International, which provides business
outsourcing services and employs more than 3,000 people in
Bulgaria, has started offering air tickets and relocation
support to attract young Bulgarians living abroad, as well as
free German lessons and a 2,500 euro ($2,867) bonus.
It also throws in free fitness club memberships, massages
and yoga for its workers - benefits more common in places such
as Silicon Valley and London than Sofia.
"We have had to decline new business and projects due to
lack of workers," Telus spokeswoman Simona Stiliyanova said. "We
face challenges in finding people with proper language skills
and this is the reason to seek new ways to find them."
In Poland, at least one company uses prisoners to beef up
its workforce. Amica Wronki AMCP.WA , a household appliance
maker and wholesaler, has started cooperating with the country's
biggest prison and now has 50 inmates on its books.
Poland's unemployment rate is expected to remain lower than
6 percent through the end of 2018, hovering at levels unseen
since the early 1990s. Officials view the labour shortage in
some industries as a growing threat to the economy.
"The project helps local entrepreneurs to solve some of the
problems associated with the search for employees for production
positions, which result from the high density of plants in this
part of the country," Amica spokesman Tomasz Pietrzyk said.
CHRISTMAS CARP
Other companies in the region's biggest economy are simply
throwing cash at the problem. Budimex BDXP.WA , Poland's
largest construction company and subsidiary of Spain's Ferrovial
FER.MC , has launched a programme offering money to anyone who
helps find new workers. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N1X32R6
"We are aiming for a long-term duration of the programme,"
spokesman Michal Wrzosek said. "We are looking for more or less
50 different specialisations."
In Hungary, a Eurostat survey cited by economists at Erste
Group Bank ERST.VI showed a lack of workers limited production
at 83 percent of industrial companies in the third quarter, and
at half of Polish and 44 percent of Czech businesses.
Hungary's chronic labour shortage is now feeding into
corporate takeover activity with some companies making
acquisitions to find the workers or expertise needed to keep
their businesses humming. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N1WO29E
Companies across eastern Europe are also ramping up
investment in automation to cope with shortages that started
after the 2008 financial crisis and worsened in 2011 when final
curbs on workers moving to richer EU countries were lifted.
urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL8N1PO1LT
But sometimes a more human touch does the trick.
Czech bearing maker Koyo - part of Japan's Jtekt 6473.T -
offers a range of perks and has set up what it calls a Dojo
training centre in a nod to its Japanese owners to train local
unskilled workers quickly for manufacturing jobs.
And as an end-of-year gesture, Koyo sends every worker home
with a carp for their traditional Czech Christmas meal.
"On Friday, every employee will get a carp and they don't
have to worry about buying one themselves," said Petr Novak,
Koyo's managing director.
($1 = 0.8721 euros)
(Reporting by Michael Kahn in Prague; additional reporting by
Anna Koper in Warsaw, Tatiana Jancarikova in Bratislava and
Tsvetelia Tsolova in Sofia; editing by David Clarke)
((michael.kahn@thomsonreuters.com; +420 224 190 443; Reuters
Messaging: michael.kahn.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))