HCMC workers shun traditional office jobs, demand flexibility

Thuy Duong, 36, was previously a team leader at a media company with its office in District 3.

She quit her job at the beginning of this year so that she could spend time with her four-year-old son.

Her employment contract stipulated an eight-hour workday on five days a week, but she never left office before 8 p.m. despite starting at 8 a.m.

At home, she would continue to do office work, which also occupied her weekends. Household chores and taking care of their son were left to her husband.

“Once, when my husband was on a business trip, I had to take care of my son and hardly knew where my boy’s belongings were,” she says.

She realized her life consisted of nothing but work and she was always in a state of fatigue and pressure, and she made the decision to quit two months ago.

She registered for unemployment benefits while looking for part-time work and planned to pursue a freelance career to have time for her family.

People who have social insurance, paid by their employers from their monthly salary, can get unemployment benefits for three benefits.

Duong is among those who want family-work balance, and chose to quit when unable to find that balance.

This trend has exploded since the outbreak of Covid-19, when people were forced to work from home.

People work remotely at a coffee shop in HCMC. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran

A 2019 survey by global workforce solutions company ManpowerGroup on the preferred working modes of Vietnamese people found 87% wanting part-time jobs, nearly double the global rate of 45%.

The preferred choices were freelancing (36.5%), project-based (32.1%), part-time (23.7%), contract (6.9%), and others (0.8%).

A 10-year review, Vietnamese Talent Trends (2013-2023), by HCMC-based recruitment firm Anphabe found 47% of workers wanted flexible work schedules when choosing an ideal workplace.

It ranked second only to in instant bonuses for outstanding achievements.

Anphabe’s surveys over the years have also uncovered a growing trend of participation in the gig economy. This rate was 39% in 2020, and increased to 44% by 2021.

Though workers still sought stability, participation in the gig economy continued to rise in 2023, accounting for 57% of the white-collar workforce.

Thanh Nguyen, CEO of Anphabe, says this shows a major shift in workers’ perceptions of job stability.

Now “stability” does not mean attachment to one workplace but the ability to stay financially resilient and adapt to changes by undertaking various jobs and value-creating activities with multiple sources of income.

Duong is one of more than 75,000 people who filed for unemployment benefits in the first six months of the year in HCMC.

She is also among the workers who refused full-time jobs offered by the city’s Employment Service Center.

At the time she filed for unemployment benefits, the center had 49,000 vacancies in 27 industries, but Duong refused to consider any of them, even when there are positions similar to her field.

Nguyen Van Hanh Thuc, director of the center, said when the center’s staff counsel jobseekers, they mostly get asked: “Are there any part-time or freelance jobs?”

This year the number of people looking for full-time jobs is only half of what businesses require, and even among people who do interview the job acceptance rate is not high.

In the first six months of the year the center provided consultancy to more than 112,000 unemployed people, but only 2,500 took the jobs.

Thuc says the focus on flexible, comfortable jobs is strong among generations Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) and Y (1981-96), the two main demographies in the labor market.

If Gen Z likes flexible, comfortable jobs due to its innate character, circumstances dictate this for Gen Y. For instance, at this stage of their life, they need more time for family and have the wealth, experience and social relationships to refuse undesirable jobs.

These trends have been making it difficult for industries that need staff to work from office or direct interaction like in industrial production, healthcare, education, and sales to hire people.

Tan Le, admin of many full-time and freelance community groups on social media, says membership of both groups is increasing, but the freelancer group is growing faster.

It has 1.7 million members as against 800,000 in the full-time group.

He says remote working became a thing after Covid-19 when there was a strong wave of staff cuts, followed by economic recession which forced businesses to tighten spending, and reduce staff.

In addition, with the development of technology, social networks… people who left formal jobs could easily found remote, part-time jobs.

Le also believes freelancing is popular because businesses are setting the bar higher, requiring higher KPIs but without necessarily paying higher salaries.

Many people want to do multiple jobs at a time, increasing their income, he says.

Having worked full-time and switched to freelancing himself, he believes businesses that want to attract freelancers back must first improve the work environment to be friendly.

They need to increase welfare measures and incomes and create a certain comfort in terms of time and workspace.

For years pursuing the goal of building a happy workforce, Anphabe’s Nguyen believes that “businesses wanting to attract and retain talent must constantly adapt and find new approaches, while building a work environment that supports long-term development and employees’ happiness.”

Many manufacturing businesses do attract talent by creating flexible working hours.

For example, while the workday is still eight hours, employees can choose when they start and work once or twice a week from home.

When there is additional seasonal work, many companies offer it to their employees, helping increase their incomes.