20.10.Warsaw (PAP) - Poland is acquiring an increasing number of foreign investments, but a shortage of employees to man them is beginning to surface - informed analysts and representatives of government administration gathered at the 2nd Outsourcing Forum in Warsaw, organized by Roadshow Polska.
Outsourcing is a management strategy relying on delegating labour and tasks that, usually, are not critical to the operation of a business or enterprise to an external partner (the so called outsourcer).
As stated during the discussion by Andrzej Kaczmarek, the Deputy Minister of Economy, "the government will strive to make sure that by the year 2013 Poland finds itself among a group of countries whose economy is based on knowledge, for which foreign investment, especially of the innovative kind, is essential".
According to Marcin Kaszuba, the Director of BIZ Department at the Ernst&Young consulting firm, the Polish government was successful in attracting large outsourcing investments. Suitable conditions of support for such investments have determined that Poland was deemed as a "superb location for BPO-type investment".
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) investment is a term used to describe a sector of services in which international corporations contract out the fulfillment of select enterprise support operations. Investors can establish them in Special Economic Zone territories which can offer the enterprises tax breaks, for example.
"According to international rankings of places suitable for investment our country is a superb location for BPO centers - depending on the ranking it places 1st or 3rd. In the year 2005, BPO investments in our country generated 37 000 jobs" - said Kaszuba.
According to him, however, a problem of lack of qualified work force is beginning to surface for those investments and foreign investment in Poland in general, which, if not solved quickly, will cause a noticeable decline in Poland's position in the international investment ranking.
For Jeremi Mordasewicz, an adviser to the management board of the Polish Confederation of Private Employers Lewiatan, the problem with the work force for foreign investment in Poland "is a derivative of the success in acquisition of such investments" because the employers already got accustomed to the fact that human reserves in Poland are very deep and there is enough employees for every investment. For the past few years, the Polish job market was "flooded annually with the same amount of young people as in the entire European Union".
The 2nd Outsourcing Forum "Poland as the European Service Center" in Warsaw gathered over 100 participants from manufacturing, advising, consulting and service companies, the media, as well as the government administration representatives. (PAP)
