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China – Rising costs push companies to hire temporary staff

04 February 2016

According to China Daily, Chinese firms have employed thousands of people during 2015 via flexible staffing, with new apps exploiting their demand.

The Shanghai-based human resources media group, HRoot, estimate that flexible staffing will see explosive growth between 2015 and 2019, with a compound average annual growth rate of 22%.

Hays Plc, a global recruitment specialist, polled 1,200 Chinese mainland employers in January 2016, and found that 60% of them adopted flexible staffing in 2015 and 19% of them plan to increase their use of temporary staff in 2016.

According to Simon Lance, Managing Director of Hays in China, the reasons for the growth in demand include increased business activity, quick expansion and soaring labour costs. Instead of three or five year tenures, employers are offering contracts for just three months and, sometimes, even a few hours, as per the time needed to finish the job.

Commenting on the new breed of temporary workers, Liu Jing, a former human resources director at a leading technology company said, “Most of them are for packers or sales promotion staff. But in developed markets, even engineers and financial services professionals get hired via flexible staffing as there is a system to measure these people's performance.”

Liu Jing quit her job last year, teamed up with two business partners and launched Yigongbao, an app for temporary wokers in August 2015.