WAR FOR TALENT! HAVE YOU SECURED YOUR LEGAL EAGLES?
Corporate lawyers with overseas law degrees and bar admission with strong language skills are currently in exceptionally high demand both from law firms and multinational corporations. China’s traditional manufacturing base requires the services of many commercial/corporate lawyers to facilitate business transactions among many other areas. Moreover, other sectors of growth include compliance, project finance and (due to sophistication of new financial products) financial markets.
What does this all mean and what problems does that create?
The problem resides fundamentally in the lack of quality legal talent in the local market place. Those lawyers that do have foreign law qualifications tend to remain at one company for a period of 1 or 2 years before jumping ship to obtain a higher compensation package. What that does is increase attrition rate as well as costs for hiring the wrong individual. Lawyers with only PRC qualifications tend to have poor language skills and, therefore, aren’t suitable to work at foreign corporations (there are exceptions). This is a candidate driven market meaning that those few exceptional individuals who are suitable can more or less dictate their own terms of employment.
Is there a solution to this?
Throwing money at lawyers is not the answer to all your problems. The key to ensuring low staff turnover resides in your relationship with your employee. The first reason why an individual will leave a company will be the relationship with his boss and the first reason why he will join your company again will be the interaction you will have with him/her. This is only one among many other solutions that can be implemented in a strategy to reduce attrition rate and enhance the reputation of your company as a worthwhile place to work.