Song Ngọc Garment Factory workers during production hours. VNA Photo

HCM CITY – Manufacturing companies in HCM 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 Ngọc Garment Company Limited in Bình Tân 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 many difficulties in finding workers.

Trần Thanh Sơn, head of the company's human resources department, said the company does not discriminate by age and is willing to accept workers aged 40-45 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 new workers. 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 lack of workers.

Sơn said the reason for the labor 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, Sơn said 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 Việt Nam Co., Ltd. in Bình Tân 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 Đặng Hồng Liên, Head of Human Resources at Pouyuen Company, adding that compared to 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 Tết (Lunar New Year)," said Liên. According to Liên, for many years, after Tết, about 1,000-2,000 workers quit their jobs.

A notice recruiting garment workers in HCM City. VNS Photo Văn Châu

Not only Song Ngọc Garment and Pouyuen Factory, but many enterprises in HCM City have year-end orders but are having difficulty recruiting workers.

Nguyễn Văn Hạnh Thục, director of the HCM City Employment Service Centre, 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.

Nguyễn Thị Liên, deputy general director of PPJ Group, said that the company's year-end garment orders were stable and grew better than the same period last year. However, the factory was not passive about workers. Knowing that it would be difficult to find workers at the end of the year due to low job turnover, the company proactively recruited from early in the year, even when orders were low.

"The garment industry's human resources are increasingly scarce, young workers do not want to enter the garment industry, so businesses that want to be stable must have a long-term retention plan," Liên said. – VNS