High-quality workforce development: much needs to be done

The human resource of high quality has been the top concern for Vietnam as it is in its deeper and wider international economic integration. To better understand about the current human resources, Vietnam Business Forum had an interview with Ms Dao Phuong Thuy, Director of Financial and Commercial Consultancy Company (PTI).

How do you assess the high-quality human resource in Vietnam and the importance of the need to train intellectual human resources to meet the demands of international economic integration of Vietnam?

The lack of high-quality human resources is an inevitable matter of a developing country like Vietnam. Labor market now lacks all kinds of directors and experts in all fields from finance, banking, engineering, IT, human resources to sales and marketing etc. Companies are willing to pay the salary US$5,000 – US$10,000 per month together with the many other benefits to recruit talent employees but have not really found suitable staff. From the current reality in many “private group” of Vietnam, we can see that that due to drastical lack of senior human resources, he has to assume the CEO position for dozens of his subsidiaries. “Good Human Resource” is always the decisive factor of success of all businesses.

However, most companies in Vietnam are not really aware of the importance of management and human resource development, and lacks clear financial mechanisms to attract and keep the talents. According to a survey by PTI, many big companies in Vietnam, by spending too much time on issues of service, the leaders sometimes forget their role as “guiding employees “and” training successors.” That leads to the fact that the Board of Directors does not have good staff to assign, and therefore increasingly be involved in the problems of the junior staff. The more they involve in the incident, the less time they have to train staff. Thus, the highest-level leaders should be aware that the development of human resources is of great importance.

Training centres in Vietnam are currently offering a variety of programmes for finance, banking managers and experts. How do you evaluate the quality of these programmes?

I myself used to take part in the MBA course of Henley College – UK and gain knowledge from the course. The high requirement of the program through the high applicable topics and tests of strategy development/change management for various types of companies has helped me a lot in managing PTI currently as well as consulting management solutions and financial management for clients. Some talented directors of successful companies in Vietnam also attended training courses of business administration given by some universities in Vietnam and has applied the knowledge learned from these universities to develop good personnel policy, build marketing programs, build information systems, and develop short, medium and long term business plan for their business as well as organize and manage the implementation of this plan. In my opinion, training programs all provide the necessary knowledge to students, but the success of the course depends heavily on “the spirit of learning” of the students. The success of the training program is the working result of the students. However, it is a fact that in many training institutions in Vietnam, the teachers may never do what students are doing – so it will be difficult to access actual quality of these courses.

As a senior in many large international corporations, what do you think of financial director career as well as the need to have a group of financial directors for Vietnam in the future?

The job of “financial director” requires you to have various abilities and experience: be good at accounting; have knowledge of information systems and IS; be capable of strategic planning, financial planning; master on principles of internal control; have knowledge of financial products, banks to offer solutions to reduce financing costs and increase profits for businesses; be able to structure asset-debt-optimal capital-to meet the expectations of investors, increase enterprise value; be capable of marketing to “sell shares of the business to investors with the highest value”, be capable of leading. These requirements are enough to make you imagine how hard it would be to become a real “financial director”. However, if you “stand on the shoulders of giants”, you can shorten the journey. PTI has been the experienced financial directors will contribute “technique of financial director” of those “giants” to enterprises in Vietnam. With the enthusiasm of the people doing this job, we hope that the program “financial director practices” will increase the resources of “financial directors” for businesses in Vietnam. – VCCI

Tags: Vietnam labor market