Unilever, Vinamilk, Nestle, Microsoft and IBM topped the list of Viet Nam’s 100 Best Places to Work last year in a survey released on Wednesday by executive search company Anphabe and market research firm Nielsen.

Companies receive awards at a ceremony for Viet Nam’s 100 Best Places to Work 2016. The winners were announced on Wednesday in HCM City.

Unilever won the top award for the fourth consecutive year.

In the Best Places to Work based on industry categories, Prudential Vietnam, Mercedes-Benz Vietnam, Abbott, and Viettel took the awards.

Vinamilk was again the Most Attractive Employer Brand in terms of salary, rewards and benefits; Unilever topped in terms of opportunity for growth and leadership and management; Intel in culture and environment; Nestle in both work-life balance and organisation reputation.

This year’s survey had two new categories of awards: Exemplar Businesses with Happy Workforce and the Most Attractive Employer Brand for Generation Y.

Novaland, KPMG, VP Bank, AIA Viet Nam, and Nike Viet Nam topped in the former, and Unilever, Nestle, Vinamilk, Viettel, and Suntory PepsiCo in the latter.

The survey polled 26,128 participants in 24 industries divided into three generations -- baby boomer, X and Y.

It also features in-depth interviews with 50 human resources directors representing around 30,000 employees.

Multi-generational workforce

Besides tracking the employer brand health of more than 600 leading enterprises, in this years survey Anphabe introduced a happy workforce model to measure the happiness level of employees using four major indicators: rational engagement, emotional engagement, voluntary efforts, and commitment to stay.

Most companies have three generations working together: baby boomers (born in 1950-1969), Generation X (1970-85) and Generation Y (1986-2000).

Generations X and Y are the two primary groups in the workforce with Generation Y growing quickly to lead both in number of employees and managers within the next few years, Thanh Nguyen, CEO of Anphabe, said.

Last year 22.5 million Generation X and 21.7 million Generation Y members were in the work force, while baby boomers accounted for 8.9 million.

Around 620,000 baby boomers retire every year.

By 2020 the total number of Viet Nam’s workforce will reach 59 million comprising 25.6 million members of Generation Y, 22.5 million members of Generation X and 7.9 million baby boomers.

According to the survey, the generation gap will present many challenges for businesses.

Some 41 per cent of Generation Y employees have neither emotional nor rational engagement with the business.

A full 97 per cent of businesses interviewed by Anphabe confessed that within the next three-four years it would get harder for them to connect with and satisfy young talent. 

VNS