From industry to region, the “grand” story of China’s Internet going overseas has never stopped being written, but there are only a few stories about the “employees” behind the “grand” narrative. These local employees are the key players in helping Chinese companies successfully go overseas and localize their operations.
Chinese enterprises become more attractive
Chinese enterprises to go overseas localization is inseparable from the local staff, and for these employees, Chinese enterprises are the most attractive is the salary. According to the research of Chinese enterprises in Egypt, Chinese enterprises for Egyptian young people have a “foreign enterprise” filter, many local employees working for Chinese enterprises and local banks and white-collar income level is comparable. Similarly, in Latin America, Chinese companies offer higher salaries than many Western companies in Latin America. For Velazquez Traut in particular, working in Kwai allows her to be more creative than in Meta, and most importantly, the higher salary insulates her from the inflation that has been going on in Argentina for more than a decade.
Attracting more and better local employees with higher salaries is an important step towards localization. However, in addition to providing higher salaries for local employees, even for Southeast Asia, where geographic proximity, cultural similarities, low political resistance and the willingness to seek employment in Chinese enterprises are not diminished, Chinese enterprises going abroad are still faced with the difficult problem of how to balance the work habits of local employees and the development needs of the enterprise.
Chinese companies and Southeast Asian employees are difficult to integrate
Uncle Le in the documentary Chasing the Tide has been working in a large factory for many years, and has long been accustomed to the “rat race”, but the company’s Vietnamese employees and China’s “rat race” culture not match: according to the “rat race” culture, there are almost no employees who arrive at work time, not even at the end of the day, employees have already begun to loiter. The staff who arrive at work time is almost none, not yet to the end of the day, the staff has begun to leisurely, not to mention after work, but also count on the local staff to continue to deal with the work of the news. As an MCN agency, the company gives detailed content guidance to Vietnamese netizens in the agency, which not only fails to ease the so-called “traffic anxiety”, but also puts more pressure on them and makes them leave the company.
The “incompatibility” between Chinese enterprises and local employees is reflected in every aspect. In addition to the difficulties in adjusting to the labor habits of local employees and Chinese companies, the safety of employees and a series of welfare protection measures are also issues that Chinese companies need to urgently resolve.
PayInOne mentioned in its previous article, ” From ‘No More Bets’ to reality,how companies can legally hire global employees？ “. As mentioned in the article, many Chinese lithium industries have set sail to Indonesia because the country is home to nearly 20% of the world’s nickel reserves. In the Chinese-funded nickel smelting company (Gunbuster Nickel Industry) work, only 20-year-old Nirwana Selle, because often in tiktok on the sharing of their own work routine and in Indonesia to harvest a lot of local fans. But last December, while Nirwana was working the night shift, leaking coal dust caught fire at the plant, trapping and burning Nirwana and her assistant, with reports suggesting the accident was caused by an unsealed valve. As a result of the incident, hundreds of Indonesian workers and factory unions organized a strike to demand justice for the two workers and better labor protections for more workers.
How to solve the Southeast Asian hiring dilemma?
- 1.Respect local culture
Chinese enterprises to go overseas, we must learn to adapt to the work habits of local employees. For example, the above mentioned Vietnam and even the whole of Southeast Asia, the pace of life is generally slow, not willing to “roll”, because they pay more attention to the balance between work and life. Even though many companies will pay overtime in strict accordance with local laws, a significant portion of local employees still want to have more personal time. It is often counterproductive to bring the domestic “roll culture” to Southeast Asian employees.
In addition to respecting the work culture of Southeast Asian employees, it is also important to emphasize the religious culture of each country. For example, in Thailand, where Buddhism is practiced, strict laws restrict Thais from “criticizing or insulting” the royal family/monarch and Buddhism. In the Philippines, about 85% of the population is Catholic and 60% Christian. Meanwhile, due to US colonial influences and language differences (the official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and English), Filipino employees are closer to the US in some of their work habits, in addition to customs shared with some Southeast Asian countries. In Indonesia, on the other hand, the cultural practices faced by Chinese companies going overseas seem to be even more problematic: 360 ethnic groups, 719 languages, and the world’s most populous Muslim country. As a clan-based country, Indonesians hate corruption and have a strong hatred of the rich, which requires Chinese companies to be compliant and effective in hiring and managing payroll when employing local staff.
- 2.Ensure legal compliance in employment
The Nirwana accident turned into a strike, which, in addition to some historical reasons, is also a wake-up call for more Chinese companies to provide better labor protection for local employees.
However, as regulations and customs vary from country to country and change over time, it can take a lot of time for a company to do everything right. PayInOne, as a one-stop SaaS platform for global employment and payroll management, can replace the original large human resources team of an organization and save the cost of hiring and management.
As for compliance, PayInOne’s system covers employment guidelines of various countries, including laws and regulations, policy changes, labor protection, investment policies, entry thresholds, etc. It ensures that enterprises’ employment complies with the employment standards and legal processes, and assists enterprises in maintaining control of data management, mitigating the impact of accidents, and circumventing fines for non-compliance and lawsuits.
- 3.The former lesson, the master of the latter
The road of China’s overseas is still not stopped, the hiring experience of those “early crabs” overseas enterprises has been transformed into a more intuitive and accurate “methodology”. What are the most common potholes that Chinese overseas enterprises step on when they go to Southeast Asia to recruit and hire? What are the difficulties in recruiting in Southeast Asia? How to manage employees in the face of different religions and cultures in Southeast Asia? If you want to know more about the pain points and solutions of recruiting and hiring in Southeast Asia, you can check out the replay of Capstone×PayInOne’s live on PayInOne WeChatVideo.
