Doing Business in China For Dummies®

Hiring, Training, and Keeping Your Workers

Hiring and retaining good unskilled labor isn’t quite as hard as getting good office workers. But despite China’s vast numbers of laborers, getting your factory workforce right may not be as easy as you think. You have to deal with a large difference in capabilities between Chinese factory workers and those in the West.

However, if you put the proper training and quality assurance systems in place, you can have a top-notch operation in China. This section discusses hiring and managing workers for a factory setting. For more general labor information, please see Chapter 9.

Encouraging teamwork

The blunt approach to finding factory workers is to go to job fairs or contact the local labor bureau. However, the smart approach is usually to hire shift and production managers first. Then have each manager hire his or her team. (When hiring production and shift managers, you should thoroughly test their mechanical abilities and reasoning. See Chapter 9 for tips on evaluating job applicants.)

Hiring managers who then hire their own teams means that the teams will likely work well together. The downside to teams is that if you lose or fire one team member, you’re likely to lose the entire team. Closely-knit teams of workers often stick together.

Chinese workers tend to have an us-versus-them mentality. Often, “them” is the foreign employer. You can redirect those attitudes, instead having teams who work the same shift compete against one another: ...