Vietnam Should Improve Human Resource Quality to Attract Investment

The human resource quality is among the key concerns of foreign investors in Vietnam. Despite great efforts to improve the education and training quality, Vietnam has not yet met foreign investors’ high-quality demand.

 

According to Keun - Hyung Park, Deputy Director of the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra) said, Vietnam’s shortage of trained human resources is among the biggest barriers for foreign investors in the country. In reality, South Korean investors find it hard to recruit qualified engineers and even office staffs who are both good at South Korea and English. The country’s labour quality has been gradually improved; however, the local labour market has seen increasing imbalance between supply and demand. The human resource demand of both domestic and foreign firms is much higher than supply ability of colleges and universities. Therefore, foreign investors, including those from South Korea, complain much about Vietnam’s human resource quality.

 

“If Vietnam fails in improving labour quality, it will receive weaker FDI inflow in the future. Besides underdeveloped infrastructure and complicated administrative procedures, the labour quality is also a matter of concern in Vietnam”, Keun - Hyung Park added.

 

Furthermore, Satoru Kohiyama, Director of the Vietnam-Japan Human Resource Cooperative Centre (VJCC), said Vietnamese people are intelligent but still weak to work in groups. “Vietnamese business environment has been improved, but they need to change their working style”.

 

Satoru added, in Japan, tertiary education is very important as it is a key factor for finding jobs. Japanese universities provide update information for their students and the former students are always ready to share information with new ones. However, in Vietnam, this is very limited. Meanwhile, many Vietnamese students can’t answer the question, “why did you choose this jobs?” This shows a fact that they are very passive in selecting their majors. Universities need to try more to meet the labour market’s increasing demand. They have to act as a bridge between future employees and companies.” Satoru noted.

 

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Thien Nhan said, currently, a problem seen in Vietnam is that universities do not understand enterprises’ recruitment demand. For instance, the education sector witnesses a redundancy of teachers while many others are facing serious labour shortages. On the other hand, Nhan said, the state has not yet issued standards for training process. Universities do not have standard regulations for graduation and teaching; meanwhile, their infrastructure condition is still poor. The state offers financial support for schools, but does not manage training quality. “A mechanism is needed to manage the education and training system by administrative tools, not quality. This must be changed as soon as possible”, Nhan emphasized. 

 

In terms of enterprises, the deputy PM said companies do not really pay due attention to human resource training. “They often complain about low-quality staffs, but do nothing to help the state deal with the problem”.

 

Currently, only 30 % of local businesses inform colleges and universities of their demand. Therefore, companies have to participate in human resource training. Nhan said, companies should contribute 0.1 % of their investment value to training centres to serve their demand. Accordingly, the training centres will train labourers under companies’ orders. Meanwhile, companies will receive pupils and students for practice. “It is important for businesses to tell the centres of their labour demand”, the deputy PM said.