Research team @Assert

 

Competitiveness in the labor market in Serbia, until the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, achieves continuous and progressive growth. The key factor standing out is the arrival of new investors, and thus the growing shortage of qualified staff in almost all business areas.

As an imperative for successful positioning on the market, employers are required to create successful strategies for attraction and retention of deficit profiles, while the basis of successful planning presents – continuous monitoring of labor market trends.

Which profiles are deficient in Serbia?

In almost every sector, the market constantly faces the challenge of acquiring the right staff. The need is present in various fields – especially specific engineering profiles, as well as technical and craft professions.

When it comes to the manufacturing industry, especially the automotive industry, there is a growing tendency to open local departments for testing and development of new products (Research and Development). The main challenge is the lack of experienced staff in this area, given that in the previous period there were no industrial or educational opportunities for their development. Product Development Managers are considered to be the most sought after and most deficient position. Also, the demand for Product Development Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Mechanical and Test Engineers is extremely high. Positions related to the automation of production processes, such as PLC Programmers, Automation Engineers and MES Experts are equally deficient.

When it comes to representatives of craft professions, there is an extremely high demand for Carpenters, Welders and Locksmiths within all industries, especially Construction. When it comes to hospitality area, there is a need for talents with advanced knowledge of foreign languages, especially German and French.

The business that faces the biggest challenges in attraction and retention is the IT industry. Employers are predominantly oriented towards experienced Software Developers engaged in the development of server (Back-end) and client-oriented (Front-end) phases of applications, as well as Full-Stack Engineers which combine the previous two positions. There is a high demand for talents that speak specific programming languages – Java, C #, PHP and JavaScript, which are then followed by C, C ++ and Python, as well as Objective-C, Swift and Kotlin used in the development of mobile applications.

Although the availability of the mentioned talents is the highest in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the competitiveness of the market is also the highest here, so the challenges for attracting talents are also increased.

 

 

How to motivate deficient staff?

In order to attract deficit profiles, it is necessary to create a competitive Compensation and Benefit system, as well as other working conditions – based on the realistic needs and expectations of deficit talents.

The basis for their construction presents the market insights based on the experience of consulting companies – especially related to the financial expectations of deficit talents, as well as trends in the development of company benefits.

More information on these market trends can be found in the article “How to manage the compensation and benefits system?”.

Where to go further?

As already mentioned, one of the reasons which contribute the most to the deficiency of certain profiles is market conditions. Accordingly, it is necessary to focus on improvement. Although this process of increasing competitiveness requires a high degree of investment and financial and time resources, the effects achieved represent a long-term benefit for the employer.

What are the first steps towards improvement?

Prior to the implementation of actions to be proposed, it is necessary to gain insight into the market in order to maximize the effectiveness of all future steps.

Some of the primary actions are:

  • Examining the profile of deficient positions – What do they really need and what do they expect? How much is their work worth in the market? What is the cost of recruiting and training new employees if an employee leaves the company? What is their true value to the company measured through the company’s profit?
  • Creating attractive working conditions based on extensive market research
  • Adjusting working conditions to the needs of deficient staff – especially their key motivating factors, as well as the real situation on the labor market. Avoid some pre-created universal recommendations.

These actions result in the following effects:

  • Greater interest of talents for cooperation
  • Increased engagement and loyalty of employees
  • Optimization of costs and efficiency of recruitment and employment processes
  • Increasing the trend of company profit growth.

Although the attraction and retention of top talents presents a challenge, the possibilities for overcoming them are multiple. An efficient and effective way is to create a strategy based on market insights. Listen to the needs of stakeholders, revise the compensation and benefits system, and thus improve your business!

The task of the Research Team @Assert is to provide clients with a detailed and realistic overview of working conditions in the market, as well as to successfully map all profiles and staff of employed and unemployed, within various industries. We strive to develop the market in the direction of fair and transparent conditions for all employees. We are focused on creating a plan and methodology, as well as efficiently conducting internal and external research following high standards of quality and efficiency, as well as the specific needs of our clients. We propose and implement action measures that lead to the company’s competitive position in the labor market.