China suffers a big loss in human resource utilization

China suffers a big loss in human resource utilization

Chinanews.cn)
Updated: 2006-07-26 16:33

The Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently published the Chinese Human Resources Development Report in 2006. The report points out that due to some traditional concepts and institutional defects, human resources in China have not been fully utilized and it is alarming that a great part human resources are wasted.

Regarding the human resources waste, researchers define the following four circumstances: firstly, some people are allocated to the right position, but their capabilities are not fully utilized. In other words, these people can do more in addition to their present work; secondly, some people are allocated to the wrong positions; thirdly, some people are superfluously allocated to a certain position. A job which can be done by three people, for example, is actually allocated to five people.

It is estimated that about 25 million professional people in China were wasted in 2005,because their capabilities were not brought into full play. Economic ally, this alone caused a loss valued at around 900 billion yuan.

Yu Zhonghua, one of the writers for the report, said that in order to assess how China utilized its human resources and what effect it brought to the social and economic development, they kicked off a large investigative campaign in various departments in May, 2005. During this campaign, they issued 8,000 questionnaire forms to various Party and political institutions, national public institutions, and other organizations.

By analyzing the result, researchers find that in China, a strange phenomenon prevails in the human resources market. Employers like to hire people with a master’s or doctoral degree and think that the more these people are in their company, the better. Those who hold a B.A. or B.S. degree can be put on hold. Those who have graduated from junior college or vocational schools should not be considered at all.

In light of this, Yu said, the waste of human resources has already caused practical harm to the society. As a typical reflection of such waste, a large number of people in society tend to pursue a higher college degree, consequently causing college education to expand overly rapidly. As a result, vocational education is adversely affected and a lot of talented people choose to go abroad to find a job.