Wage increase helps workers cope with inflation

Many businesses in Vietnam have increased salaries and added allowances for employees to cope with rising prices and see this as a solution to human resources in the difficult context of inflation.

This is the main information of the 2011 salary survey results recently announced by Mercer (USA) - one of the world's leading companies specializing in providing human resource consulting services and its representative in Vietnam, TalentNet Corporation.

Ms. Hoa Nguyen - Senior Manager of Mercer salary survey department of Talentnet company said that the results of salary survey conducted at 329 domestic and foreign enterprises in Vietnam showed that the average salary increase at multinational corporations and 100% foreign-owned companies was 13.3%.

In previous years, foreign enterprises, due to competition and attracting talent, always increased salaries corresponding to the inflation rate. This year, the average salary increase rate is only 0.8% compared to 2010, 6.7% lower than the expected inflation rate.

The reason is that businesses are suffering direct impacts from the Vietnamese economic situation and the unstable world economy, especially for foreign businesses, leading to salary increases lower than the inflation rate.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese companies have a much higher salary increase than foreign-invested companies, an average of 19%. This shows that because salaries in Vietnamese companies are not yet competitive, they focus on high salary increases to reduce the gap with foreign-invested companies, as well as to encourage and retain employees. In addition, due to high inflation, Vietnamese companies also propose high salary increases to support part of their employees' lives.

According to the survey, inflation affects the salary policy of 75% of participating companies. More than 33% of participating companies have positive responses to deal with inflation. In addition to annual salary increases, companies support some additional allowances or adjust the salary increase rate or add a percentage of salary increase.

Specifically, the average lunch subsidy currently applied is about 500,000 VND/month. Travel expense subsidies or gas coupons are also of interest to businesses. In addition, some businesses offer one-time subsidy programs, supporting from 1.5 million VND to 2 million VND/year for all employees of the unit. Position allowance, parking allowance, and uniform allowance are also options of many businesses.

The survey results also show that this year, pharmaceuticals is the industry with the highest salary increase rate, up to 14.1%. The average salary increase in other industries such as banking, oil and gas, high technology... ranges from 12.5% ​​to nearly 14%. The group of unskilled workers has the highest average salary increase rate at 14.1%. This is also inevitable because this labor force is most affected and most heavily affected by inflation.

According to Vietnam+