TIRANA, May 30 – Finding qualified staff with the right skills and knowledge is becoming an ever increasing top issue for employers in Albania as the country has been facing a new migration wave in the past five years and the population gradually declines and grows older.
A 2017 ‘Skills needs in Albania’ survey with more than 2,500 businesses nationwide shows that unsuitable qualification and poor work culture are the most recurrent concerns for employers in the country.
Unsuitable workforce qualification was a top concern for almost half of employers in 2017, some 43.2 percent, compared to only 33 percent in the previous 2014 survey.
The situation is apparently related to the huge ungrounded asylum-seeking wave and ongoing legal migration and brain drain the country has faced in the past few years and poor compensation that the largest private sector employers, such as the key garment and footwear sector, offer workers.
More than 146,000 Albanians, about 5 percent of the country’s resident population, have sought international protection in EU member countries in the past five years with their number peaking at 66,000 in 2015 and dropping to 22,000 in 2017, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office.
Meanwhile, Albania’s minimum wage has only increased by 2,000 lek to 24,000 lek (€188) to remain the lowest in the Western Balkan region over the past four years, although average monthly wages stands at about €400.
Experts say the rising but still low enrolment levels in vocational education training schools is one of the main reasons behind difficulties in finding the right qualified staff in addition to often unrealistic worker expectations about wages in Albania’s emerging economy, where similarly to other EU aspirant Western Balkan economies, GDP per capita is at only a third of the EU average.
The Swiss government and UN supported ‘Skills needs’ study shows the unsuitable qualification of the labour force and poor work culture, as well as an education system that fails to meet the needs of the economy, is a greater concern for foreign-owned businesses rather than local Albanian-owned companies.
“An education system that fails to meet the needs of the economy is a genuine problem for mining and quarrying, and the electricity, gas and steam supply sectors. Non-preferred professions or jobs are a concern for mining, and gambling and betting shops, while work culture is particularly a strong concern for the information and communication, and financial and insurance sectors,” shows the survey conducted by the National Employment Service and their local employment offices.
Skills shortage is another major concern with about 40 percent of employers claiming their existing staff lacks skills, a figure which more than doubled compared to the previous 2014 survey.
The predominant reason reported for businesses facing skills shortages is the labour market unable to offer candidates with sufficient knowledge and skills. Professions with skills mismatch include waiters, shop salespersons and mechanics.
Employers in bars, restaurants and hotels in Albania seem to be mostly unhappy with the skills of their personnel, the waiters, bartenders and cooks, something that negatively affects Albania’s emerging and much-promising travel and tourism sector.
Insufficient knowledge at the time of recruitment is the main reason for skills shortages for most businesses, followed by lack of experience, inability to learn, and poor communication skills.
Staff replacement is the main action that Albanian enterprises take to address the lack of skills of their existing staff, followed by re-organisation within the business.
Businesses say on-the-job training provided by experienced company staff is a key means of training staff.
However, lack of training funds is considered the main barrier to staff training, followed by frequent mobility of the labour force, which itself is related to training funds, with businesses afraid to invest in training of unstable staff, because of the risk of having multiple spending for the same job position.
The survey’s results show only 17 percent of businesses placed low wages as a major employment- related concern but low wages were a major concern for about half of local government-run water, sewerage, waste and cleaning sectors facing tougher competition from similar private sector jobs.
“Harmonising the skills offered by the vocational education system and labour market needs, as well as motivating the private sector to become close partners, are considered the biggest and most difficult challenges,” says the study.
Long working hours, low wages
Beyond the employers’ perspective, Albanians work the longest hours and are among the poorest paid in Europe, according to a 2016 labor market study by INSTAT, the state-run statistical institute.
Albanians worked an average of 2,102 hours a year and cost employers only Euro 2.2 per hour in 2015, ranking Albania the cheapest country in Europe in terms of labour costs for employers, but the worst in terms of income for employees.
Shortage of workers in the garment and footwear sector, Albania’s top exporting sector employing about 100,000 people has been turned in the past few years as a key concern for the sector relying on cheap labour costs, but which mainly pays workers at minimum wages of 24,000 lek (€188),
Another study has shown companies operating in Albania pay little attention to human resource management, leading to unproductive workers who are always looking for new job opportunities rather than being loyal and efficiently contributing to the company they are working with.
Albania’s official jobless rate is at 13 percent and youth unemployment at about a quarter, but real figures are estimate much higher as people in rural areas possessing agricultural land are automatically counted as self-employed in the agriculture sector despite the modest income they manage to earn.
High unemployment rates, especially among newly graduates, reconfirm the mismatch between skills acquired at universities and labour market needs, with thousands of university graduates ending up doing call center jobs, where foreign language and negotiation skills are the key requirements.
International reports rank Albania among Europe’s poorest for its ability to innovate and capacity to attract and retain talent.
