For APT – Work Service, being a company active in human resources and helping its business partners find the necessary workforce, 2018 was a year of increased efforts to attract and retain talent in the context of a market in which the demand exceeds the offer of candidates.
It was also a year of national expansion, with the opening of two new branches in Timisoara and Iasi, which complements the already existing coverage through the branch in Brasov and the Bucharest headquarter.
Clearly 2018 was the year of the candidates! Companies adapted salaries and benefits or the flexibility of the selection criteria according to the candidates’ expectations. Hot areas were for positions requiring IT, technical, linguistic skills, or the right combination of them.
The legislative changes for the payroll area led to a reassessment of the IT market. Some companies made a financial effort to fully or partially offset the negative impact of employer taxes transferred to the employee. For all companies, these changes led to a decline in the efficiency of HR departments that had to adapt and implement compensation solutions either directly by raising gross wages or temporarily by monthly compensation.
In 2019 we are targeting business development especially for temporary work and recruitment, business consolidation and increase the number of clients in the two areas we were expanding in 2018: the western and northern areas.
In 2019 we expect same challenges on the labor market and same difficulty in finding the right candidates, but we hope to see a more moderate evolution of wage growth related with the evolution of the past two years. We will certainly see more foreigners employed in Romania.
On the agenda we will all have the process efficiency gained through technology, modern technologies incorporated in the delivery of services (modern testing methodologies that do not involve moving to the company headquarters but offer the same quality of the selection of candidates), which are a key element in maintaining prices attractive on the background of rising labor cost.
I truly believe that we could promote our country and talents better than we do. We, Romanian people, tend to “complain” quite often but for the sake of future generations we need to make known our successful projects, the competencies, so that we keep the pace of investment growth in Romania and try to stop this exodus of young people abroad.
Sorina Donisa
CEO
APT – Work Service