This document is the "2025 Overseas Workforce Management White Paper (Southeast Asia)" released by GaiaWorks, mainly focusing on workforce management for Chinese enterprises in Southeast Asia, providing comprehensive guidance for enterprises. The content covers multiple aspects:
1. Reasons why Southeast Asia has become an investment hotspot: Driven by the global industrial chain restructuring and the "dual circulation" strategy, Southeast Asia has become the first choice for Chinese enterprises going overseas due to its superior geographical location, convenient logistics, huge market potential, consumption upgrading, continuously optimized policy environment, and its ability to help enterprises avoid trade barriers. The number of Chinese-invested enterprises and the number of overseas employees hired in ASEAN have both increased significantly.
2. Characteristics of workforce management in Southeast Asia
- Population and education: There is a large young labor force, forming a demographic dividend, but some countries face a shortage of skilled workers, and the skill levels of the workforce are uneven.
- Religion and culture: There is religious diversity, with different countries having different core religions and many religious holidays. Employees value interpersonal relationships and work-life balance. Overseas enterprises need to respect local culture and adjust their management methods.
- Policy and regulatory compliance: The labor laws and regulations system is relatively well-developed, focusing on protecting workers' rights and interests, and there is diversity. Trade unions are active, and enterprises need to balance compliance and cost. At the same time, ASEAN has a framework for cross-border data transfer, with Singapore playing a hub role in cross-border data matters.
3. Overseas workforce management compliance guidelines
- Key management points in three stages of going overseas: In the product export stage, the focus is on trade and brand building, employment mainly relies on domestic dispatch and local agents, and the management focus is on the selection, training, and motivation of dispatched talents; in the capacity export stage, overseas factories are set up for production, mainly employing local workers, and attention needs to be paid to local regulatory compliance and group management; in the industrial chain export stage, the entire industrial chain is laid out, facing a shortage of high-end talents, and attention should be paid to international talent development and data security protection.
- Compliance model: A pyramid model is proposed, including the basic compliance layer, process compliance layer, risk management layer, and support system layer, each with different management requirements and focuses.
- Self-inspection checklist: Based on the compliance model, a self-inspection question checklist and scoring system have been designed, allowing enterprises to identify weak links in compliance, covering basic compliance, process compliance, risk management, and support systems.
- Compliance map: Introduces the labor laws, labor protection department websites, and information security regulations of six countries: Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
4. Details of workforce management in six countries: Provides a detailed introduction to the situation of Chinese enterprises going overseas in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, including minimum wage standards, public holidays, statutory holidays, working hours and overtime regulations, as well as cross-border data regulations. Through case studies, it demonstrates the workforce management pain points faced by enterprises in these countries and the solutions provided by GaiaWorks.
5. GaiaWorks service advantages: GaiaWorks has helped many Chinese enterprises complete the digital transformation of workforce management in 32 countries and regions. Its workforce management system can support global business, automatically verify compliance rules, take employee experience into account, and is equipped with a global data security protection system, having obtained multiple international certifications.
