Lately I’ve read two pieces that approach talent and training in China from completely opposite perspectives.
The first is Yanmei Xie’s recent piece for Asia Calling, “The ‘Ants” of China Struggle for Small Rewards”.
The second is China CEO: Voices of Experience from 20 International Business Leaders, by Juan Antonio Fernandez and Laurie Underwood.
Together, they tell me that China has thousands and thousands of college graduates. They compete for low-paying jobs in China’s cities, and lack the skills to be top-flight candidates for multinational companies. Thus, recruiting, developing, and retaining talent continues to be one of the biggest challenges for companies operating here.
Xie’s “Ants” piece describes this dynamic from the bottom. It begins:
There’s a group of people in China who are called the tribe of ants .
Like ants, they are of humble roots. Like ants, they work diligently for small rewards like bread crumbs.
Like ants, they live in big clusters in crammed spaces.
They are recent college graduates who flock to big cities seeking to improve their lives their families’ but find themselves in uphill battles. [more]
I find the following lines poignant, especially since I used to teach at a Chinese university that’s partly privately-run. 22-year-old Zhang Pei
worked in sales for an advertising company. He quit yesterday after a fight with his manager. …
Pei went to a private college in Beijing. Since China relaxed regulations on higher-institutions ten years ago, privately-run schools sprouted up.
They let many more people get college degrees, but their graduates are often valued less than those from better-known state-run universities.
“We are different from those who graduate from brand-name colleges. There are too many college graduates. I feel I am not capable enough and don’t have much skill, so I do feel somewhat helpless.” [more]
I thought about Pei’s expression of helplessness and desire for skills training as I re-read a book focused on the opposite side of the business spectrum: China CEO. It came out in 2006 (which happens to be the year I arrived in China) but I think its lessons are still relevant today.
Eli Lilly’s Christopher Shaw, who says the language classes he offers on company premises are well worth the investment, “This is something our employees value and something we value. We want to keep people and we want to promote people. It is very important. When they join my company, they say: ‘Eli Lilly is looking out for my future’”
The authors also point out an important caveat: the risk of “train and run.” This is something we’ve often heard in our meetings with human resources managers in China. Companies invest in training and struggle to communicate to employees that they expect something in return for this investment. One executive complains that staff members return from a training session and immediately start asking about the next, more advanced training.
The interviewees agreed that building employer-employee guanxi is the best defense against high staff turnover. Over and over, the authors heard that a workplace should be “like a family.”
I agree. I also believe that the best training is tailored to meet the companies’ needs as well as the individuals’ interests. Ideally, a training program can make the most of a tight budget, build ‘ants’ skills, make them feel like part of a family, and serve the company’s broader goals.
Yes, I know this sounds a bit utopian. What do you think?
I think it’s both clever and relevant to our work; A commenter reacting to a post on ChinaGeeks has called Rein a tool. I like @JeffreyJDavis‘ Twitter response: “Tools get things done. Be proud.”
He spends most of his article describing “macro” China, particularly its recent ascendancy to superpower status:
It has just gotten its seat at the adults’ table and is trying to learn how to deal with other nations as not just a fellow G20 member but as a superpower.
I think this paragraph connects most closely with our work:
Like many teenage boys, China still has a few pimples. It needs a few more years in college to fully emerge as an adult. It has new muscles, but it also has much to learn from the U.S. and the rest of the world. It needs to vastly improve an outdated education system that doesn’t properly train its best and brightest for a globalized world. It needs a system more like the American liberal arts one, which focuses on analysis rather than rote memory and test-taking. It needs to learn to be less fearful. After all, its citizens are happy and support it.
[Nope, our clients don't have pimples 
That's not what I'm talking about.]
In my experience, Chinese professionals in many sectors may lack the appropriate training and experience to serve their clients to an international standard. Interacting with foreigners every day can be a new challenge. Entirely new industries have emerged, such as renewable energy and mobile gaming. Of course these new industries have also sprouted up in other countries too but here it might require a larger leap in terms of skills, for employees educated in China’s strict school system.
I also think that this strict school system means that Chinese employees respond particularly well to training. The Chinese people that I know value education so much and respect teachers. A large percentage of the individuals we’ve trained have spent their own money on English (or Spanish or Japanese) lessons.
In my experience, English training in corporate settings is a great point of alignment between the employees’ personal interests and the company’s specific needs. My colleague Drew Ross wrote here about how to use training as a staff retention tool. Along with industry-specific lessons like email writing, presentation skills, grammar, and vocabulary, I tailor my classes to individual requests. These have included topics as varied as Michelle Obama, cross-cultural anthropology, and tea parties in American history.
These conversations have been so helpful to my development as a teacher of skills and a student of China.
-Leslie
China as a Teenage Boy: How this Affects Corporate Training Shaun Rein of the China Market Research Group wrote a provocative post for Forbes comparing China to a teenage boy. I personally think it's clever; ChinaGeeks has called Rein a tool. I liked @____'s Twitter reponse to this: "Tools get things done. Be proud." I think Rein's analogy is a useful one for our field. Chinese professionals in many sectors may lack the appropriate training and experience to serve their clients to an international standard. Interacting with foreigners every day can be a new challenge. Entirely new industries have emerged, such as renewable energy and mobile gaming. Of course these new industries have also sprouted up in other countries too but here it might require a larger leap in terms of skills, for employees educated in China's strict school system. I also think that this strict school system means that Chinese employees respond particularly well to training. The Chinese people that I know value education so much and respect teachers. A large percentage of my clients have spent their own money on English (or Spanish or Japanese) lessons. In my experience, English training in corporate settings is a great point of alignment between the employees' personal interests and the company's specific needs. My colleague Drew Ross wrote here about how to use training as a staff retention tool. Along with industry-specific lessons like email writing, presentation skills, grammar, and vocabulary, I tailor my classes to individual requests. These have included topics as varied as Michelle Obama, cross-cultural psychology, and tea parties in American history. These conversations have been so helpful to my development as a teacher of skills and a student of China. -Leslie
This article originally appeared on China Success Stories on September 17, 2008. Be sure to check out the comments on the original post.
In western countries, many companies already see that offering comprehensive training programmes to their staff is an effective way of retaining their employees. In China, however, where staff retention is such a major issue, many companies attempt to keep staff by throwing more money at them when, in many cases, competitors match these packages, thereby creating only a short-term solution.
The added value in using training and development is proven and clear. Training creates an increase in attendance, company loyalty, innovation, skills, and productivity. Ongoing training as part of a general, employee-focused culture – one that values and responds to the needs of the employee – will help to create a strong, loyal workforce, that has no desire to move onto ‘greener pastures’ or the next big thing.
The Issues
Research undertaken in 2007 by Development Dimensions International (DDI) showed that Chinese companies saw a considerable increase in professional and support staff turnover in the years 2006 and 2007.
The employees surveyed cited two main reasons for changing jobs: lack of growth and development opportunities with their current employer and the perception of having better career opportunities elsewhere.
Here are some of the best links I’ve found today, related to the business of education in China.
(1) Why Chinese Study Abroad, an Independent Counselor’s Take:
Interview with a China-based, US-focused college counselor Joe Fuqua, from Enovate’s excellent blog. Fuqua explains the top three reasons why Chinese students go abroad. I think this quote, referring to why Chinese students prefer to study in the US, is particularly telling:
It’s impossible to explain the concept of “good fit” or “educational culture” to Chinese parents. They are paying top dollar for tuition, they want something to brag about.
(2) This article from China International Business profiles the cutthroat English training market in Beijing’s Haidian district:
It only makes sense that schools in a place like Haidian need to use every tool at their disposal to bring in the students. At times these may include trying to shut down the competition through legal injunction, imitating a competitor’s winning strategy, or simply undercutting a competitor’s price. But, as the old adage goes, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
(3) This is an older, but a longer and better article from the same magazine, about the market for overseas education consulting
Note: China International Business magazine appears to have added the login request today, since it was not there this morning when I first read these articles.
(4) I like this funny article from ChinaSolved, The US is from Mars, China is from Venus because it illustrates how these two countries have completely different worldviews. It gives some concrete advice about cross-cultural negotiation too.
[Personal Sidenote / Tangent] It also mimics my thoughts about China in 2007, after I’d spent 1.5 years in and around Shanghai. I was debating whether to stay or return to the US. I found myself saying, “China and I, we met online. We quickly decided to move in together. It’s been fun. We switched things up after a year and it’s still fun. Now, should we break up or get married.” At the time, I was also thinking of my first geographic love, Latin America. (I was a Latin American Studies major in college, worked in Costa Rica, studied abroad in Chile, and never thought much about China until deciding to come here. It is true that China and I met online, through the website of the program that originally brought me to China in 2006.) Oh, and for the record, China and I went on a break for a year, then got back together. No wedding planned. [End of Tangent]
It really is a good article.
–Leslie