After the Spring Festival, the "labor shortage" phenomenon in enterprises is spreading throughout the rosewood industry. As a rosewood furniture manufacturing enterprise, the difficulty in recruitment is not solely due to a shortage of workers, but is greatly related to the company's own competitive model, employment model, and management model.
Competitive Model: High Salaries "Snatching Workers" Causing Peer Panic
According to journalists' investigations, in recent years, with the development of the rosewood industry and social progress, workers' wages have been rising annually, but they have remained relatively stable, with enterprises maintaining a consistent pace in terms of employee compensation. However, some companies have disrupted this balance by offering exorbitant salaries to attract workers, posting advertisements such as: "Roughing laborers 540 yuan/day, frontline ordinary employees with monthly salaries ranging from 9000-16000 yuan, senior skilled technicians earning over 30,000 yuan/month, highly paid technical talents." These advertisements have been warmly welcomed by workers, drawing many who come for the high salaries. This irregular competitive model has caused considerable panic among peers.
High salaries to "snatch workers" has undoubtedly added insult to injury for rosewood enterprises experiencing post-festival labor shortages. How to retain their own workers has left small-scale rosewood furniture factories feeling powerless. Due to limited brand recognition, restricted profits, and relatively difficult financing, many labor-short enterprises cannot compete with well-capitalized companies in terms of strength and salary. The inability to recruit enough workers forces them to cease operations or change industries. Moreover, during this competitive process, it cannot be ruled out that some large enterprises may take the opportunity to crush smaller ones, aiming for capital concentration and monopolizing the market, thereby disrupting the original industrial balance.
Employment Model: Year-end Settlements Clearing, Short-term Labor Trend
The long-standing practice in the rosewood furniture industry of "settling all worker wages before the Lunar New Year" has become an unwritten rule between enterprises and workers. The more accustomed enterprises and workers are to this model, the weaker the carriers that sustain long-term cooperation between enterprises and workers become. Consequently, the "short-term labor" trend has become quite prevalent among rosewood workers.
To a large extent, the reason for "short-term labor" lies in the lack of contract implementation. Some rosewood furniture enterprises reduce employment risks and costs by not signing term agreements with workers, which is also one of the factors causing employee instability. From the workers' perspective, due to their living background or educational level, they are unwilling to sign contracts with enterprises and are easily influenced by various external factors, making them highly variable. Furthermore, after the year-end settlement, both workers and enterprises psychologically feel that "a work cycle has ended," temporarily terminating their cooperative relationship. Workers lose a sense of belonging to the enterprise due to high mobility. Enterprises are thus unwilling to invest heavily in general worker training and prefer to hire familiar skilled workers at high salaries, leading to rising labor costs and malicious competition among enterprises. Workers continuously choose and observe while resisting enterprises, turning the labor market into a seller's market where hired workers become the power holders, further exacerbating the "recruitment difficulty" phenomenon faced by enterprises.
Management Model: Frequent Personnel Losses Highlight System Shortcomings
The reasons behind the tight labor situation in the rosewood industry also include factors such as inadequate corporate management systems and incentive mechanisms. It is understood that in some small rosewood factories, management is handled by only one or two master technicians, overseeing ten to twenty ordinary workers and apprentices. Once these masters "jump ship," problems may arise in worker management and product quality checks, affecting the normal operation of the enterprise. Similarly, the organizational structure and management models of many medium-sized enterprises are also less than optimal, long-term constraining their growth and expansion.
For enterprises to develop healthily, they must strengthen management measures and strictly enforce recruitment systems. Solving the "labor shortage" problem requires not only retaining people with salaries but also using "heart" to retain people. Increasing various wages, benefits, social security, etc., is one aspect; more importantly, rosewood furniture production enterprises need to instill their corporate culture into workers, cultivating an owner consciousness among employees. Enterprises should consistently treat employees well, starting from ensuring all reasonable and legal demands of employees, solving issues related to workers' social security. On one hand, strict management systems should be enforced, while on the other hand, humanistic care should be strengthened. "Two-pronged approach" can tie the hearts of workers.
In summary, for rosewood furniture production enterprises to effectively address the difficulties of "recruitment difficulties," they need to start from aspects such as fair competition, changing employment concepts, and improving corporate management systems. Only by doing so can enterprises truly attract and retain talent, allowing the enterprise to steadily develop. (Source: China Classical Furniture Network, our reporter nana)