UWE HOELZER*
Managing Director
Metro Cash & Carry
Last year we were granted an award for the most beloved brand in our business sector. 30,000 to 40,000 business customers a day shopping in Metro! More than 1,000 direct suppliers and many thousands of sub-suppliers doing a very good business with Metro 8 Cash & Carry Centers and 3 logistic and processing platforms all over Vietnam achieving close to 400 million. USD turnover per year.
Why I tell you all this? Definitely not because I want to be arrogant or megalomaniac, but please tell me: Why it is so damned difficult to find people who want to work for such a sexy company?
They normally should line up to get a job in such a well-known, international, successful and well paying company! But they don’t!
And now I wish to explain you why. And what is the universal recipe to fix this challenge!
To make a long story short: 10 out of 10 CEO´s of bigger companies would tell you - without thinking one second about - that human resource (HR) policy in Vietnam is the biggest and most difficult challenge.
We talk about a lot but not about one of the most important challenges: How to find good people, how to keep them, how to motivate them!
And that’s only half of the story: We do not even talk in deep about, we do not tell us the truth either and I guess here is the root of the problem.
Each CEO would admit and confirm that finding good people is the biggest challenge but please ask them: what is about keeping good people, so staff retention? The answer is: No, not at all! This is not a problem for us. Our people do not leave the company.
Why do you get this answer? Because it could be a signal of mismanagement and failure. A good manager never looses his good people unintentionally.
So the first message is: How do we want to improve this difficult situation without the involvement of the top management? How do we want to improve it without an open and fully transparent discussion?
It is not necessary to share strategic secrets but why we should not think about common investments in educational institutions. Just one example: In Vietnam we have a lack of well educated marketing and sales people but a huge demand. Together we could achieve a lot in a much shorter time!
It is easy to point the finger at others so back to us, to Metro. What do we do to cope with the biggest challenge?
Each of the Board Members and Senior Managers in Metro was complaining and suffering about the difficult staff situation. But what did they do? They delegated this important topic to the HR Department.
HR is our service provider so they have to fix my problem; they have to provide me good people and they have to take care so that I do not loose my good staff anymore.
Five Board Members + 30 Senior Managers + new centre openings ++++ inundate the HR Department with requirements and demands and all this has to be managed and solved until yesterday.
What happened?
Overload and frustration on both sides.
To try to cope with all this demand the HR people also started to delegate their recruitment problems to service providers, employment agencies or better head-hunters. And not to one or two but at the end 15 agencies.
They tried to fix their problems by quantity instead of quality.
So what happened?
Frustration now on 3 sides: Management, HR and agencies.
For the success of a company we are talking about the most important factor: our employee.
But in Metro many of our managers spent more time in selecting the color of their company car instead of spending time in defining job description, job requirements and their needs and expectations with the HR Department. I know I am nasty and exaggerating now...
My second message: A manager has to be from the beginning deeply involved in the recruitment process. A close relationship and ongoing discussion is crucial between Manager, HR and the employment agency. And not 15 different ones; we have selected 2 and these 2 have very good understanding now about our business, our culture and our needs.
I could list up all the tools we are using to recruit good people; internship programs, recruitment fairs, etc., etc., but I guess you all know this and it would be boring.
So again: By changing the mindset of our managers, their understanding, their involvement and their responsibility for HR we have fundamentally improved our recruitment policy.
And not only our recruitments! The same results you will achieve to keep your good people. The HR Department should provide all necessary tools, for example: training programs: national and international; regular potential and job appraisals; individual development plans; salary surveys, and so on.
All this is useless unless good management is not deeply involved.
But anyway, I have to admit that staff retention in
The reasons for this are different and much more complex:
1. we are living in an incredible fast growing economy in a developing country
2. for us as a foreign company with an unfamiliar culture
3. wrong expectations of Vietnamese staff
4. very often over-estimation of own abilities
plus: We - Metro Cash & Carry Vietnam - are seen from other companies and competitors as a brilliant provider and source for well trained staff. It confirms our good HR work.
What do we do to cope with these problems?
Most important assumption: Your salary structure is fair, transparent (because no secret is more discussed than salaries) and comparable with the market!
Our first rule: We can leave our individual salary report open on the table and would not have the risk next day to have an outcry of indignation because of unfair payments or treatments.
Our second rule: We never try to keep people who want to leave Metro because of money! This is blackmailing and next day you would be confronted with many other requests.
Our third rule: We never take somebody back who left because of money. Our people should know that they cannot test somebody else for USD 100 higher salary and in case they notice that Metro is not that bad to come back.
What else do we do and because of the time I want to be focused on management level because this is the most sensitive and painful case if you loose your people.
We are investing a lot in these people: trainings in Germany, Italy or any other Metro countries; personal development programs (leadership, time management etc.), incentive and bonus schemes which give the opportunity to get up to one additional yearly salary; company cars, taxi cards and so on.
But we know, currently all this is not enough in Vietnam: Today there is a new company and offers twice higher salary.
And this will happen tomorrow much more often and much more aggressive! On a short run a new founded company doesn’t care if they have to pay twice or thrice times more. Speed is crucial for their success.
It is difficult to say how long we will be confronted with this situation because it depends on: the further economic growth and the speed to build up further educational institutions providing much more graduates.
To bridge the time gap we have to go for two solutions:
1. For very important positions, we have to go with we say “semi-expatriates” means people from neighbor countries, for example the
2. This is also a company rule already: Each manager is in the responsibility to build up a potential successor and young professionals. In Europe very normal, here in Vietnam very very difficult because it could be a competitor who wants my job and it weakens my negotiation basis for higher salary. It has to be part of the management appraisal otherwise it doesn’t work.
The coming years will not be easy and sometimes painful for us employers but we should be very happy to be confronted with this kind of challenges: How fantastic is it to work in a growing economy with growing markets instead of thinking about: unemployment, dismissals, reduction of working hours or pay cuts.-