Though paying high salaries to retain key personnel and pay high service fees to job centers to hunt for talented persons, a lot of companies are still witnessing key staff members leaving.

L.T.H, who was the managing director in charge of the northern region of a foreign bank, recently decided to leave the foreign bank for a domestic bank, just because she wanted to experience a new working environment and seek opportunities to challenge herself.

Though H declined to reveal the exact salary she got from the foreign bank, H simply said the salary was relatively high at between $7000 and $10,000.

H decided to leave the bank just after a short time of working there . “I decided to leave just after one month of working because I realized that the new position did not fit me. The employer also thought that I was not the right person they wanted. Therefore, we decided to terminate the labor contract sooner than planned,” she said.

N.T.T, who previously worked as a public relation manager for a big real estate group, has also decided to quit the job, despite the attractive pay. T said she does not like the staff management method applied by the group. “My time is strictly controlled by the boss, and I cannot take initiative in arranging my time. I have to report to the boss every time when I leave the office, or the boss will call immediately and ask where I am,” she said.

Tonkin, the investor of the 80 hectare clean vegetable farm Loc Xuan in Hanoi has changed marketing directors three times. The salary the farm offers to marketing directors is not low, but it still has difficultly in finding the persons who can undertake the job well. The regular change of marketing directors has caused a lot of difficulties for a production and service company like Tonkin.

A recent survey conducted by Navigos Search shows that salary is a very important factor which can help enterprises to employ talented persons, but it is not the decisive factor.

Nguyen Thi Van Anh, Managing Director of Navigos Search, stressed that salary, bonus and allowances are very important, but not all, and that there are four different factors which can attract talented persons and retain them.

Navigos Search conducted a survey from January to March to find out the answer to the question: “What makes an attractive employer?”. The answers were surprising.

The survey found that the three most attractive factors of an attractive employer , are 1/ having good leadership (76 percent) 2/ having good working environment, both physically and spiritually (75.2 percent) and 3/ having staff training/support/development programs (76 percent). Meanwhile, it is quite a surprise that the high pay just ranked the fourth in the priority factors (66.4 percent)

Anh from Navigos said that many enterprises believe that they just need to pay high to attract qualified workers. However, the survey will force enterprises to rethink their recruitment and labor force strategies.

“The thing that qualified workers most expect is having good leadership. Besides, they expect to have opportunities that help them improve themselves, and have a good working environment,” Anh said.

The survey has also pointed out that previously, Vietnamese workers tend to choose to work at multinational groups, but this is no longer the priority for them. Only 14.3 percent of polled people choose multinational groups as an important factor an attractive employer brand needs to have.

This can explain the stable growth of domestic enterprises, even in the context of the economic uncertainties. Domestic enterprises now offer many good job prospects to their staffs, while they have paid more attention to develop their prestige and employment brand.

A report released in October 2010 showed that the average wage of employees at state-owned enterprises in 2009 was 3.35 million dong a month, while the figures were 2.65 million dong at foreign-invested enterprises and 2.05 million dong at private-run enterprises. Meanwhile, special general corporations and holding companies belonging to state-owned economic groups had a very high average wage of 5.9 million dong a month.

C. V