Salary reform is an urgent need today.

From July 1, 2024, the whole country will officially implement the salary reform policy for cadres, civil servants, public employees, armed forces and employees in enterprises according to Resolution 27-NQ/TW dated May 21, 2018 of the 12th Party Central Committee.

Salary reform in 2024 is very necessary, especially for the public sector. Because in reality, the way of calculating salaries in the public sector is too outdated. The total income from salaries and bonuses of public sector workers has become very low compared to the average living standard, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. The negative impacts of the pandemic combined with the recession of the world economy have made the lives of people in general and civil servants and public employees in particular face many difficulties, including difficulties due to the increase in prices of essential goods and services. The plan to reform public sector salaries was developed at the beginning of the term, but due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the country had to devote resources to fighting the pandemic and restoring the economy after the pandemic, so the time for salary reform was postponed.

Therefore, this is a reasonable time to implement salary reform. Moreover, the "brain drain" in the public sector has been alarming in recent years (especially in the education and health sectors). The important reason why civil servants and public employees leave their jobs in the public sector is low salaries that do not meet the needs of life. Thus, salary reform is an urgent requirement at this time.

With this salary reform, we have a new salary calculation method in the public sector, paying salaries according to job position, completely different from the traditional salary calculation method based on the salary scale and coefficient. It can be seen that the new salary calculation method has approached the salary calculation method of many countries in the world. This salary calculation method has basically adjusted the income of workers in a significantly increased direction, more scientific, more fair, and will overcome the situation where doing the same job, with the same capacity and qualifications, some people have very high salaries due to working for many years, and their salaries are increased periodically; some people have very low salaries because they have just graduated from school, just started working... Salary does not accurately reflect the job position, capacity and qualifications of civil servants and public employees, so it is difficult to motivate workers to strive.

The salary reform policy will create more fairness in the way of paying salaries, at the same time, the increase in workers' salaries will create motivation to attract and retain talented people in the public sector. Because, for the majority of workers, before deciding to stick with a job, the first concern is always the salary, then the working environment and opportunities, the ability to develop.

In the private sector, competition in salary and benefits is always the key to attracting talent. If the salaries of civil servants and public employees do not meet the needs of life, it will be difficult to create a team of professional and dedicated civil servants and public employees. Because when they have to struggle too much with the problem of "how to make ends meet", civil servants and public employees will share their time, capacity and enthusiasm in other jobs to earn more income to cover their living expenses. That could be finding extra work, even being the source of corruption, or having a depressed mentality, ready to change jobs when there is an opportunity.

However, simply increasing salaries is not enough to create a team of professional and dedicated civil servants. Increasing salaries in the public sector needs to go hand in hand with a number of other solutions: improving labor productivity, building a lean, capable team; innovating the way civil servants are evaluated, rewarded, and disciplined...