TIRANA, Feb. 28 – 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, a study has shown.
Managers understand and are aware of the importance of having good workers in their company, but the ‘good’ ones often refers to diligent, hardworking and obedient not in terms of creative and entrepreneurial, shows the study conducted by Peter Nientied, a Dutch innovation professor at a private university in Tirana, and Dritan Shutina of the Tirana-based Co-Plan Institute for Habitat Development.
“Most managers are not familiar with topics such as engagement, corporate entrepreneurship and talent management,” shows the study published on the Journal of Human Resource Management of Slovakia’s Comenius University in Bratislava.
The authors say they came across very few managers who understand the concept of strategic human resources and concluded from their interviews with workers that raising awareness about human resource management in addition to the abilities, motivation and opportunities (AMO) model is a first requirement to improve the currently low HRM maturity in Albania.
The survey was conducted with some 77 Albanian and foreign-owned companies operating in the key Tirana and Durres regions, home to more than half of the country’s 2.8 million resident population and the key drivers of the country’s GDP growth.
Results showed companies operating in Albania, including foreign-owned ones, are poorly engaged in instruments like assessments or psychological tests for senior functions, providing training to new employees or applying performance-related salaries.
“Quite interestingly, the scores between national and international companies do not show much variation. The results suggest that the group of Albanian companies have adopted HRM practices that are present in foreign companies too. It should be noted that the responses of foreign companies were quite diverse. International banks for example score well above average, but on the other hand, a large foreign owned call center with 500+ employees, had a score that was among the lowest in the whole sample,” showed the study.
“We expected that large companies would do better than smaller companies. But, this is not the case. Differences between small, medium and larger companies are not very significant,” the authors add.
Finding the right qualified staff is one of the key barriers Albanian and foreign companies report when asked about the difficulties of doing business in Albania. The rising but still low enrolment levels in vocational education training schools is one of the main reasons.
The high level of brain drain, with Albania estimated to have one of the world’s highest per capita migration rates is another reason, in addition to poor compensation and being forced to work extra hours and even Saturdays often with no bonuses.
International reports rank Albania among Europe’s poorest for its ability to innovate and capacity to attract and retain talent.
The latest Global Human Capital Report shows Albania has been losing considerable ground in the past couple of years, with its ranking deteriorating by about 20 places and lagging behind regional competitors covered in the report.
Albania ranked 85th out of 130 countries in the 2017 Global Human Capital Index, compared to 70th in 2016 and 66th out of 124 countries in 2015.
The Global Human Capital Index 2017 ranks 130 countries on how well they are developing their human capital across four thematic dimensions—capacity, deployment, development and know-how—and five distinct age groups or generations.
Albania spends only 3.5 percent of its GDP on education while youth unemployment rates are at about 30 percent, leading to massive migration and brain drain.
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.
An EBRD-World Bank business environment and enterprise performance survey that was last carried out in 2013 showed Albania’s labor productivity, defined as total sales divided by full-time employment is the lowest in the Western Balkan region and about five times lower compared to the EU11 central and eastern European member states.
