BusinessMagazin

Tag: Human resourcs

  • The New HR

    The new HR strategies no longer have anything in common with what has been happening until now: no one is hiring, but instead making people redundant, salaries are no longer going up, but down, and skills for which training is held have changed. ”I think that now, more than ever, the general manager needs the human resources manager for strategy and involvement. It is crucial that they should work together,” says Calin Tatomir, general manager of Microsoft Romania, a company that recently came out fourth in the Best Employers ranking compiled by human resources consultancy firm Hewitt Associates and Monday Insight Romania.

    After a long time during which human resources managers had been complaining that they were not regarded as strategic partners in companies, but rather as mere performers of administrative tasks, the top management is now giving them their rightful place back. The main reason is that the recent restructuring cannot be done without the help of the human resources department. Similarly important is stimulating those that stay and have to work harder than before, but are paid the same or even lower salaries. At any rate, the role of the human resources manager at this time is more important and more novel than ever. ”The crisis has made us creative and stimulated us to move faster than the workforce market. A context was created for us to carry out activities we would have done at a different scale if circumstances had been different: interdepartmental trainings, internships for students, outsourcing of certain operations,” says Anca Iancu, human resources manager of ING Asigurari de Viata.

    This is not a first, though. Human resources departments have always seen hectic activity. Until last year, that meant hiring people en-masse, fierce negotiations, the rush for the best contracts with various suppliers of products or providers of services that could be included in the perks package of the employees, training programmes as sophisticated as possible. Now it is all about the exact opposite. Amid constant cost cutting steps, the priorities and goals of the human resources managers have radically changed.

  • Who Is Hiring

    ”To us the high number of unemployed in the economy is an opportunity because now we have plenty to hire from,” Theodor Alexandrescu, chief executive of insurance company AIG Life, told BUSINESS Magazin. To insurers, personnel recruitment had been a very complicated matter until recently, because of the tight competition in the financial sector and the small numbers of specialists available. This year AIG wants to hire new sales agents and now Alexandrescu has plenty to pick from, because there are enough people who have or will lose their jobs. To companies that are not forced by the crisis to operate personnel cutbacks, the high number of unemployed is an opportunity, because it is easier to find the right people at lower costs than before. To others, the fact they have plenty to choose from is a good opportunity to cut their salary budgets, replacing high-salary employees with lower-paid ones.

    Besides professional reorientation or development of a small business – the solutions proposed by the authorities, or the possibility to seek a job on a foreign market, the private sector offers a natural way to address the unemployment issue, or at least part of it. Despite the wave of redundancies over the last few months, there are also companies that are hiring especially on the retail market, in the consumer goods industry, outsourcing or financial services. Some are hiring because they are expanding, some are both firing and hiring, and some are consolidating their business and hiring only for certain key positions. The Real hypermarket network set out to hire about 2,000 people, both for the 20 strong- store chain that it operates in the country and for the stores to be opened.

    The company is mainly looking for bakers, pastry chefs, confectioners, meat, fish and fresh product specialists and will mostly recruit from among the ranks of the unemployed, says Ramona Toma, manager for recruitment, training and development. She, too, notes the high interest in the job ads, which was not so common back when the economy was doing fine and companies were fighting over employees. ”There is an avalanche of job seekers on the market and we expect it to maintain until the end of the year.” In addition, she says, ”we are seeing a shift from very high paid offers to those that provide security.” In the same business, hypermarket chain Carrefour is hiring 1,200 people this year and the Germans at Rewe approximately 1,800, according to the officials of the two companies quoted by Ziarul Financiar.

    Bricostore, one of the biggest players on the DIY market has 250 jobs available in three counties this year where it will open stores (Calarasi, Deva and Drobeta- Turnu-Severin). The service outsourcing market has high hopes for the crisis period: to cut costs, more and more companies are choosing to outsource an entire series of related activities. To outsourcing companies, this is new business and as a result, a need to hire. Easy Call, Accenture, Linea Directa Communication, Wipro and Genpact are but some of them. ”We are interested to integrate candidates that were affected by mass layoff policies, from fields such as banking or financial services. We have already hired a few people in this situation,” Genpact Romania officials told BUSINESS Magazin. As far as Easy Call, a call-centre operator is concerned, the number of employees should go up by 1,000 this year, while Linea Directa Communication will hire, chief executive Dejan Grbic says, about 250 new people.