Once the EU accession is completed, the salaries will go up and the first to do so will be those of the top management, believes Othmar Hill, the chairman of the Austrian recruitment and HR consulting firm Hill International.
"Foreign companies are starting to realise Romania means a 22 million people market and when investors enter a market the strongest need they have is for managers," Hill told ZIARUL FINANCIAR.
This would be one of the reasons why managers will be the first professional category to see a jump in incomes, an element that will push fewer and fewer managers to seek a career outside Romania.
"I don''t think more than 3% of them will choose to work abroad in the future, especially since the development prospects of the local market are extremely promising, which - I believe, will make people stay and those that left come back," Hill says.
Another argument against manager migration would be, in his opinion, the fact that relocation is an inconvenient process that entails losing one''s social network, and that not many people are willing to start from scratch in a new place.
At the same time, Hill adds, the migration will be not be strongly felt from the opposite direction, either, because expats are quite a costly solution. What seems more likely, however, is that the foreign companies entering the domestic market will send business mentors, project managers, financial managers and HR managers to help develop the business for a while.
The number of Romanian managers, he says, will increase once more and more businesses emerge, which has an extremely beneficial effect for any economy.
"The managers are the ones actually running the world, not the politicians. They are truly "globalised", while politicians are more obtuse, because their future prospects are usually restricted to three years," Hill says.
However, he believes that the weak points of the Romanian managers and generally of the Eastern European managers reside in the leadership department. Many of them, he says, actually expect to be understood without taking too much trouble to impose their will on their subordinates.
The technical problems, Hill says, are not a reason for concern, because people are willing to learn and acquire skills in terms of correct use of management "tools". What needs to be improved is the style and, also, internal communication.
"There will always be problems when it comes to negotiating style, the manner in which products are sold, the style of persuading and mitigating conflicts and this is why these aspects need improvement," he explains.
In his opinion, human resources services will play a very important role in the upcoming period, because products are essentially the same; it is the people promoting them that make the difference.
Othmar Hill is the chairman and founder of one of the biggest recruitment and HR services companies, Hill International. The company is based in Vienna, was set up in 1975 and has 37 branches in 21 countries at the moment. It was the first HR company to enter Romania in 1990, along with one of its most important clients, Coca-Cola.
Friesland Romania group, the largest producer on the domestic dairy products market, last year attained a 25% growth in turnover, almost three times higher than the overall market. Estimated at 800 million euros, the dairy products market is divided among three major players, Friesland, Danone and LaDorna, followed by a series of medium-sized companies like Hochland, Albalact or Covalact. The key brands in the Friesland Romania portfolio drove the growth of the turnover to 91 million euros in 2005. "Last year''s results are due to the development of the Milli brand, which went through a rebranding process, as well as to the constant growth of the Napolact and Dots brands," stated Gerbrant de Boer, general manager of Friesland Romania. Friesland also makes the Oke brand on the dairy product segment, while the ice cream division comprises Napolact-branded products. "We will exceed 100 million euros in terms of turnover," de Boer added. After having allocated more than 17 million euros for the acquisition of four dairy product plants in Transylvania and Banat, the Dutch group has no intention of expanding by new acquisitions. "The priorities of the group target consolidation of the business," de Boer said. To that end, Friesland has doubled its investment budget for this year, allocating more than 6 million euros for the development of projects at its factories in Baciu (Cluj county) and Mures.
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