Co-funded by the European Union

Chinese Private Employment Services Contribute to the “Employees Sharing Schemes”

  • Private sector in China developed an “Employees Sharing Scheme” to transfer temporarily suspended employees to companies of the sector most in need.

In China, in order to respond to the high demands for the logistics and retail sectors and others, private employment services members of the China Association of Foreign Service Trades (CAFST) supported and facilitated the “Employees Sharing Schemes” during the pandemic.

“Sharing” means that the inactive employees are temporarily moved to another company, without any change in the employment relationship between the employee and the original employer.

Some examples include restaurant chains, XiBei and YunHaiYao, which agreed with Alibaba’s online grocery chain, HeMa, that inactive employees be temporarily transferred to help with processing and packaging online orders.

The Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Affairs said that this measure has improved the efficiency of human resource allocation to a certain extent and explained: “the original employer should protect the wages, remuneration, social insurance and other rights”.  While “the seconded company [to] provide necessary labor protection and arrange the laborers’ working hours reasonably. The two companies can clarify the rights and obligations among themselves by signing a civil agreement. The original employer may not lend employees for profit”. 

China Enterprise Confederation (CEC) is of the view that “‘Shared employees’ stimulates labour sharing between the traditional catering industry with temporary surplus labor and the emerging e-commerce retail platform with temporary shortage of labor during the COVID-19 outbreak. Traditional catering enterprises, e-commerce retail platform and employees are all solve the pressing need. Flexible employment will be a major change in China's human resources supply in the future. With the help of the development of the digital economy, resolving resource barriers, narrowing the gap between enterprises with surplus manpower and those in short supply, and realizing a rapid and accurate match between supply and demand will enable labor resources to move more effectively.”