the 18th WEC Northeast Asia Regional Meeting was held in Suzhou
On October 17, 2024, the 18th WEC Northeast Asia Regional Meeting was held at "Huigui (return to the Nature), the office building of Suzhou Engma Service Outsourcing Co., Ltd. This event was jointly organized by CAFST and Engma.
The event, serving as the information exchange window with reference to the policy, labor market situation and the activities of each association among CAFST, JASSA and KOHRSIA, is held annually by CAFST, JASSA and KOHRSIA in turn. As the first face-to-face meeting since 2020 among these three parties, this conference brought together approximately more than 80 executives of hr service industry in China, Japan, and South Korea. Ms. Bettina Schaller, President of the World Employment Confederation (WEC), was invited to participate the meeting too as a distinguished guest speaker.
Hosted by Ms.HUA Tianhong, the Secretary General of CAFST, this meeting was arranged in two sections, morning section and afternoon section. In the morning section, Mr. Masahiro IKEDA, the newly elected Representative of WEC NEA Region, Mr. ZHANG Jie, the representative of CAFST’s President, Mr. Kenichiro KAWASAKI, Chairperson of JASSA, and Mr. KIM JEONG-HYEON, the President of KOHRSIA made opening speech or greeting speech respectively. Government official from local related department made a welcoming speech. Ms. Bettina Schaller, President of WEC, addressed the participants on the work we want campaigen, highlighting various initiatives undertaken by WEC over the past year.
In the first discussion section—the activity report, Mr. Forrest LIN, the research director of CAFST, Mr. Koji SAKAMOTO, Vice chairperson of JASSA, and Mr. RO UN-SU, Department Manager of KOHRSIA made a briefing on the current labor market situation, development of hr service industry and activities of each association. Demographic shifts, with ageing populations are common theme of three countries. In China, government departments attach great importance on promoting employment rate. To cope with problems such as an aging population, insufficient labor supply and pressure on social security funds, the reform on deferring retirement age will be implemented from January 1 next year, and the statutory retirement age will be gradually extended to 63 for male workers, for female workers, 58 and 55.
In the second session in the afternoon, Mr. ZHUANG Zhi, Chairman & CEO of Engma, also as the director representative of CAFST, Representatives from JASSA, Mr. Hiroshi OHARA, Vice Chairperson with Mr. Hideto AOKI, Randstad Operating officer public affairs division head, and Mr. NAM Chang-Woo, General Secretary of KOHRSIA made a presentation, with a topic, “BPO, a new growing point for human resources services industry?” focusing on the situation, regulation, best practice of business process outsourcing (BPO) provided by human resources service agencies in each country. In China, BPO is maintaining a steady growth over these years. However, comparatively speaking, there is stricter restrict on BPO in place, in Korea and Japan. There is clear possibility that BPO, in compliance with the related regulation and standard, and be closely combined with the supply chain of the clients, could bring more business to human resources service industry.
On October 18th, part of members from JASSA and KOHRSIA invited to visit China Suzhou Human Resources Service Industrial Park (hr agencies cluster) to have a deep observation on hr services ecosystem generated by the park.