Who holds the cards on the Polish labour market - the employee or the employer?

A decrease in the unemployment rate, the need to fill vacancies with staff from across the eastern border and a dynamic increase in salaries – has the labour market in our country really become such an Eldorado for employees? This question will be answered by Martyna Bloch – Regional Recruitment Manager at Professional, which is part of the LeasingTeam Group.

Poland as an employee’s market?

Basically, there is no employee market in Poland. Companies still have a strong position of the employer, and labour law regulations concerning mobbing or the issue of determining the relationship or working time are often either circumvented by means of, for example, civil law contracts, or not taken into account at all. Of course, there are institutions that protect employees in the form of trade unions, court proceedings or simply HR, although few employees have the opportunity to use them. This is due to the fear of losing their job, long and costly lawsuits, and a kind of infamy that can reach an employee if they apply for a job in a competing company.

Niches on the Polish labour market

If we were to talk about the employee’s market, we should point to shortage workers. Usually, these are specialists who can afford, within reason, to set conditions for a potential employer. More and more often there are also situations in which various types of services are performed by a specialist not as an employee employed in a company, but as part of their own business. Most often, we can encounter a phenomenon similar to the employee’s market in the IT environment, where large companies outdo each other in acquiring employees, reaching out to younger and younger people, sometimes even those who are still at university.

Challenges from the perspective of specialists

From the point of view of a recruitment agency, the modern labor market is undoubtedly a challenge. It is necessary to reconcile the increasing requirements of younger employees, such as gym memberships, private medical care or co-financing of cultural needs, with entrepreneurs who have been following their own scheme for several decades. Society is becoming more and more aware of its rights, although on the labor market it is still the entrepreneur who deals most of the cards.

Despite the recent increase in salaries, it is still mainly up to the employer to decide what the employment relationship will look like. In this context, the dialogue between the employment agency and the entrepreneur is extremely important in order to be able to present the potential candidate with the full range of opportunities offered by this particular company. You should strive to make the employee an informed decision about employment, having full knowledge of the offer. Only then will he be associated with it for a long time. That is why it is so important to verify not only the candidate’s qualifications during the recruitment interview, but also the motivations that drive them and their predispositions to perform the job.

Government programs such as 500+ and their impact on the labor market

Regardless of the political option, it should be stated that social programs such as 500 and 300 plus in some way change the situation on the market. Many lower-level workers are giving up looking for work in favor of using government programs that allow them to have a slightly lower or similar quality of life without having to go to work.

In order to fill the lower-level positions vacated by Poles, we have to look for employees among foreigners. Most often they come from among economic and political emigrants, from Ukraine, Nepal or India. Although they are willing to work, hiring them is not always easy, m.in. due to the language barrier or prejudices that may lie with the employer. The task of the agency is therefore to properly select employees for employers and vice versa.

What’s next?

Despite the commonly held belief, we are still far from the employee’s market.
It is true that we are observing an increase in employers’ care for their employees, related to the greater difficulty of filling a vacancy. However, our experience shows that it is still the employer who deals the cards to a greater extent and dictates the terms of the game.