Raising Business Productivity with Focus on Training

This is the main topic discussed at the Corporate Social Responsibility Forum themed “How to organise internal training to increase business productivity?” held on April 7 in Hanoi. This was one of the main events within the framework of the project “Improve Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Consumption and Production in Vietnam”, an initiative of the Office for Business Sustainable Development (SDforB) under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), financed by the UN’s One Plan Fund (OPF).

 

Speaking at the forum, Mr Nguyen Quang Vinh, Director of SDforB and Representative of the Global Compact Network in Vietnam said: A recent report by the Asian Productivity Organisation rated Vietnam as one of the nations having the lowest labour productivity in the Asia - Pacific. Accordingly, the labour productivity of Vietnam was 15 times lower than that of Singapore, 5 times lower than Malaysia and 2.5 times lower than Thailand. According to the report Global Competitiveness 2014 - 2015 of the World Economic Forum, in terms of labour productivity, Vietnam ranked 65th out of 144 economies.

 

Mr Vinh stressed that increasing labour productivity was a strategic issue, of which practising CSR had a significant role. To provide information for businesses at the forum, Mr Vinh said that businesses joining the Vietnam Global Compact Network, a member of the largest CSR Network in the world of the UN, would receive guidance in performing ten principles of Global Compact in four areas including Environment, Labour, Anti-Corruption and Human Rights to improve the quality of human resources and attracting high-skilled labour. Thereby creating an image, a brand, enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises in both domestic and international markets.

 

Mr Florian Beranek, Chief Technical Advisor for CSR of UNIDO reaffirmed that human resources was the key to development of all enterprises. Therefore, companies usually spared no effort to invest in the recruitment and training of manpower, but sometimes results coming out were not as expected. Businesses still faced the problem of inability to find suitable personnel, and leaderships were troubled with employees “job jumping”, or the quality of labour yet to achieve desired result even though company’s salary and income were better than those of its competitors. According to Mr Florian Beranek, organising internal training to help employees develop skills and enhance knowledge was helping companies themselves improve productivity, build up confidence with employees and reputation with customers. “A company or organisation operates not only by technology, machinery or facilities, but also depends on the human factor. And because of the human element, creating favourable conditions for personal development will help motivate them to work, love their work and commit to the organisation,” said Mr Florian Beranek.

 

Approving this viewpoint, Ms Dao Thuy Van, Deputy Director in charge of Human Resources, the National Citizen Bank, said that in fact, all businesses had their training strategy for each position and segment, and they evaluate post-training results trained through actual revenue, profit and growth of companies. If the training strategy and the resources were right, both profit and image and reputation of the company would rise significantly.

 

Besides the Forum with various themes discussed, the project also organised seminars and technical training courses for local businesses in Ha Tinh and Nghe An provinces. In the upcoming time, small and medium enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi participating in the Global Compact Network will have the opportunity to receive a free one-day CSR consulting session as well as information support in long-term. The CSR Forum on how to organise internal training to increase business productivity was held on April 08, 2015 in Ho Chi Minh City.