How a Semiconductor Manufacturer Improved Workforce Stability Through HR Outsourcing

Many manufacturers invest heavily in recruitment but spend far less time examining what happens after people are hired.

Yet production disruptions are rarely caused by vacancies alone. More often, they stem from workforce instability: rising turnover, inconsistent attendance, weak performance visibility, and the growing burden of managing large workforces across multiple shifts and sites.

One semiconductor manufacturer operating in Vietnam faced a similar challenge. The company required access to a large skilled workforce, but the bigger issue was maintaining workforce stability once employees were deployed. Recruitment alone was not solving the problem.

The Challenge: A Workforce That Needed More Than Recruitment Support

• The manufacturer operated with more than 1,000 skilled workers and required ongoing workforce support across multiple operational areas.
• Recruitment demand remained high, but the business also needed stronger control over attendance, overtime, leave administration, workforce reporting, employee engagement, performance management, safety compliance, and day-to-day labor coordination. These activities consumed significant management attention.
• Production leaders needed workforce capacity to remain stable. HR teams needed greater visibility into workforce performance. At the same time, the business required the flexibility to increase or decrease workforce size as operating requirements changed.

Perhaps most importantly, workforce turnover remained a persistent challenge.

Replacing employees repeatedly created operational disruption and increased pressure on supervisors, recruiters, and HR teams.

What Manpower Vietnam Delivered

Rather than focusing solely on hiring, Manpower Vietnam implemented an HR outsourcing model centered on workforce management.

• A dedicated onsite team was established to support workforce operations directly at the manufacturing site. Responsibilities extended beyond recruitment to include attendance management, overtime tracking, leave administration, workforce reporting, employee engagement activities, labor management, and routine workforce coordination.

The model also introduced structured governance.

• Workforce performance was reviewed regularly through quarterly business reviews, with agreed KPIs and service levels used to monitor program effectiveness. Instead of treating workforce issues as isolated incidents, both teams reviewed workforce trends and performance indicators through an ongoing management process.

The goal was straightforward: improve workforce stability while reducing the operational burden carried by internal teams.

This reflects a challenge facing many manufacturers today. Recruitment activity often receives the most attention, but long-term workforce stability frequently determines operational performance.

Results

The most significant result was a sharp improvement in workforce retention.

• Annual turnover declined from approximately 30% to 10%, significantly reducing workforce disruption and lowering the recurring cost of replacement hiring. This improvement created benefits beyond retention metrics.
• A more stable workforce reduced the constant cycle of replacement recruitment, onboarding, and workforce adjustment. Supervisors spent less time managing staffing shortages and more time supporting production objectives. Workforce knowledge remained within the operation instead of being lost through repeated turnover.
• The client also gained a more structured workforce operating model. Attendance monitoring, workforce reporting, leave administration, overtime management, and employee coordination became part of a managed process rather than a series of reactive activities.
• Quarterly performance reviews created visibility into workforce risks, allowing issues to be identified and addressed earlier. Workforce decisions became more data-driven and less dependent on individual managers, escalating problems after they had already affected operations.

The outcome was not simply lower turnover. It was a more predictable workforce.

“They are transparent. Manpower share the detailed information always and the information is well explained and trustworthy.”

Client Feedback from Manpower's Quarterly NPS Program

What Manufacturing Leaders Can Learn

3 lessons stand out from this project.

• First, turnover should not always be viewed as a recruitment problem. In many manufacturing environments, it is a workforce management problem. Recruiting replacements repeatedly may address symptoms without addressing root causes.
• Second, workforce ownership matters. Attendance, performance, engagement, and retention all influence production outcomes. Without clear accountability, small workforce issues often become larger operational problems.
• Third, workforce stability creates business value. Stable teams require less replacement hiring, retain more operational knowledge, and create fewer disruptions for supervisors and production managers.

These lessons reinforce arguments discussed elsewhere in this cluster. Strong recruitment decisions still matter, including assessing technical potential during recruitment and challenging unrealistic mass hiring assumptions. However, once employees arrive, management discipline often becomes more important than recruitment activity itself.

Many workforce strategies focus on attracting talent. This case highlights a different challenge: keeping workforce capacity stable after deployment.

Manufacturers that understand workforce stability and focus on choosing the right workforce response often discover that long-term workforce performance depends as much on what happens after hiring as before it.

For employers operating in Vietnam, the Manufacturing Workforce Solutions team at Manpower Vietnam supports workforce planning, recruitment, deployment, onsite workforce management, and ongoing workforce execution throughout the workforce lifecycle.

Contact us to discuss your plan

FAQs