Recruitment

When you are recruiting in China make sure that you carry out all the normal steps that you would if recruiting in the UK.

Ensure that candidates’ technical and linguistic capabilities match their claims

It is essential to hire staff with the right language skills. Common mistakes include hiring Chinese staff from outside Mainland China who do not speak Mandarin to the level required, or alternatively hiring staff whose business English is not sufficiently fluent for their role.

Ensure that you hire staff at the right level for the role

A recent MBA graduate returning from overseas may not be have the experience to navigate the complexities of setting up a company in China without seeking professional advice, and they may not have the capabilities to develop business at a senior level.

Carry out Due Diligence

To ensure that the staff you are hiring are right for your company, it is essential to ensure thorough due diligence in recruitment, especially for senior managers, including conducting personal background checks and checking all references before offering them the position.

Offer Appropriate Compensation

Once you have found the right staff, you will need to give them good reason to stay with your company. You will need to provide sufficient compensation to ensure that you recruit and retain the best employees. Offering employees the opportunity to train overseas is also very attractive at all levels, although make sure that in return for providing such training they make a commitment to stay with your company. In addition, be sure to invest in the mentoring of Chinese management-level talent, this can be done by giving them experience of working around the organisation and grooming them for global corporate positions. A clearly defined career progression route is also attractive and will help to retain staff.

A lot of smaller companies setting up an office in China may well just employ one person to deal with all aspects of running the business. Although this may be convenient and cost effective, it might not be the best way to run your China operation. Staff selection will prove vital, although the individual may be very willing, honest and capable, they may not be competent or experienced in international business practices. Also foreign companies in China are at the top of official radar screens. If your employee is not familiar with the relevant Chinese rules and regulations pertaining to the running of an international office or business in China, then you may soon have to deal with issues of non compliance, which can be very costly. In addition having one person in control of all financial and legal aspects of the business is obviously risky. An attractive solution to this problem, would be to use a scheme such as CBBC’s Launchpad service where companies can have a representative located in one of CBBC’s China offices and benefit from the support of CBBC’s management and local team.

If you are employing staff in China you will need to make sure that you comply with China’s labour law, which came into effect on 1 January 2008. According to this law all employees must have a written contract. If this is not signed within one month, then you will have to pay the employee double their salary for every month they are without a contract. If they are still without a contract after a year then they are automatically deemed to be on an open-ended contract. It is important that the employee receives an original copy of the contract signed by the employer and that the employer gets the employee to sign that they have received the contract.

It is also very important in addition to the contract, that all employees are given (and sign to say they have received) a company rulebook detailing all aspects of your company policy and what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable. If there are any cases of misconduct, you will find it almost impossible to terminate staff without written evidence, so make sure that such evidence is documented.

Read further about how CBBC can help employing staff with our Employment Selcetion Services.