Mandarin to English direct translation of article from Modern Weekly Dated November 19, 2011 Written by Zhang Guyue, Edited by Chen Xiaorong
Are you bored with permanent job? Take a contract job. Professional contract employment is growing rapidly China.
If someone quit the “iron rice bowl” of a permanent job for a temporary one-year or less contract offer, in the past they are seen as "a fool". Now, because of these people, the U.S. human resource services company (The Judge Group’s business unit in China, Judge China) achieved more than 100% growth per year in China.
Judge China is a mobile pool of talents, holding a large number of high-end talents that are short-supplied productivity in China's current industrial restructuring to higher value-added industries. The difference from the traditional employment model is that these people do not work with a certain company for more than one year but work for a project for 3 to 6 to 9 months. When a project is finished, Judge China provides them with new projects. These people are "contract employees” and “consultants."
“According to the survey data, current contract employment uptake in Hong Kong is 15 percent against permanent employment, up from zero in 2008” said Gary Morris, the president of Judge Group and Judge China. He called the mainland China, "the last region to develop contract employment as a corporate strategy."
In a way, The Judge Group is entirely "invited" to China. The Chinese government is looking for high-end overseas talents to reduce the huge talent gap and expanding multinational companies are increasing the recruitment of high-end employees, then The Judge Group has started to bring IT staff abroad into China since 2008. Subsequently, it found that there is a huge opportunity in China: the financial crisis and the enacted "New Labor Law" made the short-term demand rise. More and more Chinese employers and job seekers welcome contract employment.
From the enterprise side, the "New Labor Law" has many restrictions in hiring and firing. Thus, they are more hesitant when signing a 3-year labor contract. They hope to cut costs and lower employment costs in the economic downturn, but at the same time leave room for the talents in the economic recovery.
Short-term employment can undoubtedly solve these problems. In this flexible approach, employers can save the cost of training and promotion and spend less in bonuses and incentive.
Moreover, once satisfied with each other, the contract employees can easily turn to permanent employment.
Every big company has up-and-downs in employment, so contract employees are useful for short-term projects.
For instance, in the United States when Citibank needed to deal with background IT matters, Judge Group sent hundreds of people to help; and when Wal-Mart was developing the website, they used professional services engineers provided by The Judge Group.
The China high-end talents’ thinking is changing. “For instance, some senior IT professionals have begun to pay more attention to where they are going to get their next good projects. They now have more options available to work with more outstanding, experienced people and to learn new techniques from them. “They think it is slow in their career development if they are working three years for the same company” noted Gary Morris, “Of course, these high-end people also prefer to take career planning in to their own hands.” In the United States, there is such a new trend: IT practitioners form small teams of themselves or several others to get projects from professional companies like The Judge Group, rather than work for a company for a long time. Then they will avoid the fate of being laid off in the financial crisis.”
Currently, local talents account for 99% of Judge China’s business, which reflects strong demand for contract employment in China. Gary Morris is busy with company expansion, "Our recent target is Chengdu, where some storage technology company is urging Judge China to set up a branch office."