Who participated in this survey?

This survey was conducted by Navigos Search on mid-level personnel, including positions from Team Leader to Director, accounting for 70%. Senior personnel accounts for 2%, including positions from Deputy CEO to CEO. These personnel have from 5 to more than 20 years of work experience. Meanwhile, 51% of the survey respondents have worked at their existing companies for 3 to 10 years.

The survey respondents are not satisfied with their existing companies’ personnel policy

A large part of the report mentions about companies’ personnel policies, including salary, promotion, training and employee engagement programs. However, there were not many positive feedbacks in this area collected from the survey respondents. For example, in terms of promotion, 59% of the survey respondents said that their companies did not have a feasible promotion scheme, while 23% disclosed their companies even had no internal promotion scheme.

For salary, 76% of the survey respondents have a monthly salary ranging from VND10 to 50 million. Approximately 10% enjoy a monthly salary from VND50 to 100 million up. 25% said they were not satisfied with their current salary, while 15% of the survey respondents felt satisfied with their salary.

Many survey respondents also gave feedbacks on training. 33% of the survey respondents said they were not offered internal training; meanwhile, up to 53% of the survey respondents reported they were not allowed to participate in any external training program.

When asked about employee engagement programs, through which they were encouraged to raise new ideas, new working approaches, provided with working tools and resources, recognised and rewarded for good work achievements, the survey respondents gave two different kinds of feedbacks. Nearly half of the survey respondents said they were encouraged to apply new work approaches, while half of the survey respondents affirmed they were not clear whether or not they were encouraged and even not encouraged to do so. However, noticeably, only 17% of the survey respondents were frequently rewarded for their work achievement; meanwhile, 25% reported they have never received this kind of encouragement; also, up to 58% said that they were sometimes recognised by the companies for their work achievements.

Health at work is now at an alarming level

This report made by Navigos Search can be considered one of the first reports in Vietnam that learns about stress’ impact on mid-level personnel’s health. Nearly 90% of the survey respondents said they were affected by work stress at different levels from sometimes, frequently to very frequently.

Lack of interest in work may result in poor work quality?

One of the most important findings in this report is the absence of interest in work among mid-level personnel. Up to 58% of the survey respondents said they had no or very little interest in work.

Besides, the survey respondents mentioned their feelings of pride in the companies where they are working. Only 22% of them felt proud of their company brand, meanwhile 35% of the survey respondents said they were not proud or they had no feeling of their company brand.

Whether or not the lack of interest, love and pride in their current companies’ brand may result in poor work quality provided by Vietnamese mid-level personnel?

“Employer brand” means high salary

When asked about how the “employer brand” attracted them the most, 14% of the survey respondents said it means the company offers high salary and they accept to compete fiercely. 23% said it must be a company with a clear promotion roadmap which, however, may be extremely challenging. Most noticeably, 11% of the survey respondents disclosed the “employer brand” attracts them the most when working at start-up companies.

Ms. Nguyen Phuong Mai, Regional Director of Navigos Search South shared: “For us who assist to recruit talents for enterprises, we feel there are many things worth pondering over in this report. Mid-level personnel, who play a very important role in managing and operating an enterprise, are now facing difficulties in internal personnel policies to help them best perform their jobs; they also encounter some problems related to health, love and interest in work, and pride in the brand of company where they are a representative. This requires enterprises’ leaders and HR practitioners to take into account and develop proper policies to improve these “head-aching” problems. It is because negative factors which an employee feels about a company may result in a brain drain when talents are not treasured and leave the company. Subsequently, the company will actually face challenges related to productivity, performance, brand reputation, and competitiveness on the market in the current highly changing and challenging business context”.