Characteristics of the business prior to the Pandemic
For a few years in a row, Poland has been experiencing unprecedented growth. According to data released by IMF in Feb 2020, Poland has outreached Portugal in terms of GDP per Capita in terms of domestic purchasing power parity (PPP) – USD 33,891 to 33,665 (Portugal). Furthermore, Poland, and especially Krakow is the European Centre for hosting SSC/BPO organisations and for that reason it also attracts not only local but also the international community. Together with large organisations, Krakow was also becoming a booming place for startup communities and SMEs servicing large market players. As a result, the labour market was continuously absorbing the incoming workforce regardless of the nationality.
Given the mentioned economic growth, and geographical location, Poland is a great starting point to search for business opportunities not only in the country but also in the Czech Republic, which has also a dominant position in the EU in terms of the economy. Then, Poland can be the gate to all Baltic States. What is more, Poland is an Eastern border of the European Union, so the vast majority of immigrants were holding Ukrainian nationality. In 2019 Polish Migration Office has registered over 238,000 Ukrainians, which makes them the biggest migrant group (72% of the total number of migrants). - only in 2017, those persons were responsible for 0.6% of the total Polish GDP. There is also an estimated number of over 1M Ukrainians are not registered in the immigration office. It means that they are still contributing to the country's growth, but they are not protected by the labour code. Furthermore, the majority of them are overqualified for the positions they are taking.
COVID-19 impact
One of the rough estimates claims that almost one-third of the total employees will not get back to the office anymore. The home will become the new office - this trend was observed already for a long time, however, the pandemic has sped up the process. There are several challenges which are coming together with that trend - technological, such as the internet speed but also the ones purely connected to the HR, such as learning and development and measuring productivity.
SMRT.bio Post COVID-19 Answer
There is no doubt that once started, the process of creating virtual teams will grow. What is also certain, there will be growing numbers of opportunities coming from the third sector of the economy to support socially disabled groups, such as migrants who will be the first group impacted by redundancies connected to the economic crisis which is an inevitable result of the current pandemic.
The other opportunity comes with an all-in-one solution coming from SMRT.bio platform. The Polish recruitment market is a mature market - due to the lack of resources Polish HR specialists are used to the situation where they need to invent the tool by themselves because their department is constantly underinvested. What is missing on the market though is a platform which offers all solutions in an easy, intuitive way for reasonable pricing.
Upcoming steps
