The amount of money generated by employees for their employers reduced in Romania by 9 percent between 2010 and 2011, according to consultancy firm PwC. The company's Saratoga study on Human Capital showed that in 2011, for each unit of money, be it a euro, a dollar or a leu, Romanian workers generated on average 1.22 units in return, down from the 1.34 units return in 2010. Over the same time period, the percentage of total costs accounted for by employees has also risen slightly.

“Unfortunately, Romanian companies were confronted last year with a deterioration of profitability, correlated with an increase in labour costs. Therefore, the human capital return on investment in Romania has lagged behind the Central and Eastern European average,” said PwC Romania Human capital team leader Horaţiu Cocheci. According to PwC, on average for every dollar or euro spent on a Central and Eastern European (CEE) employee, the employer gets 1.57 in return, significantly higher than the profits generated by Romanian workers.

Looking across sectors, some bucked the overall trend – return on employees in information technology and telecom increased – meanwhile in banking, fast moving consumer goods and industry the return fell more steeply than the average rate.

Employee turnover got closer to the CEE average: 15.6 percent of Romanian employees left their jobs in 2011, compared to 16.7 percent on average across Central and Eastern Europe. There is, however, a big difference in turnover across different sectors; as high as 41.3 percent in retail, while in industry the figure is 7.6 percent. Cheering news comes from the figures for voluntary versus involuntary severance of employment – 74 percent of separations in Romania were voluntary compared to the 63 percent CEE average.

After four years of restructuring, the numbers of employees with administrative role has fallen, from a ratio of 1:31 to 1:91 employees. Meanwhile, IT specialists have got much thicker on the ground, from one IT specialist to every 87 employees to one for every 58.

Absenteeism is very low in Romania, well below the CEE average. At 1.4, the rate was amongst the EU's lowest and around a third of the 4.3 percent CEE average rate. The news on training Romania's workforce wasn't so good. Average training hours per employee fell sharply, from 25 in 2010 to just 15 hours in 2011. Spending on training employees is also well under the CEE average – EUR 144 per employee in Romania against EUR 186 per employee on average across Central and Eastern Europe.

PwC Romania's study of human capital draws on data provided by 84 companies from eight sectors (telecom, technology, industrial products, pharmaceuticals, retail, fast moving consumer goods, tourism and leisure and banking).

Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com