People who work like unemployed

Every day at Bao Minh's company, he usually only has two hours of real "work" by using ChatGPT to compose 8 pieces of content to post on the fanpage, and the remaining 6 hours are spent watching movies.

"I work in an office so it's quite easy," the 23-year-old man described his job at a media company in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.

In May, Minh was hired for a content marketing position, writing content for the company's fanpage and website. The workload is calculated by the number of posts and interactions on social networks, with a salary of 10 million a month.

Minh said he initially enjoyed the job and that content creation was his forte. But his inspiration for the job soon fizzled out. "HR said they needed a 'fresh breeze' from young people, but that wasn't really the case," he said. The head of marketing, who was 13 years older than him, was often dissatisfied with the content Minh wrote, thinking it was difficult to understand and different.

In the first two weeks, Minh often had to edit each 300-word post more than five times. As a result, all his ideas were changed. The young man was discouraged and wanted to quit after a month, but remembered the instability of the previous two years of freelancing, so he tried to stick with it.

After many marketing campaigns, he realized that he just needed to follow the old ideas, without having to be more creative. "Low salary also made me 'lazy' to argue with my boss," he said.

Minh switched to using AI to compose content and do some editing. Every day, Minh arrives at the office at 9am to punch in his fingerprint and finishes work by 11am. The rest of the time, he chats with colleagues, watches movies or reads stories.

The boss sitting in the other room also didn't care much about what Minh did, only judging by the fact that he was present at the company regularly.

Hai Yen, 29, is often told by her friends that she has a dream job. She has no restrictions on her office hours since moving from the events department to content production at a printing company in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City.

Yen said this forced rotation left her depressed and uninterested. Her output was always the lowest compared to her four colleagues in the same room.

However, she was put on the payroll after 6 years of working with a salary of 8 million VND. Yen said that this salary was not enough motivation to try harder. She gradually got used to the criticism and switched to a state of mind waiting to be fired. "I can no longer do what I love, so I am always tired and do not want to move forward," she said.

Every day, Yen arrives at the office at 11am, has lunch, and rests until 2pm. Her actual working hours last one to two hours. Around 4pm, she changes her clothes and goes jogging in the park 3km away from the office, stops by the supermarket to buy food, and enjoys the evening without bringing work home.

Yen and Minh are typical examples of workers who fall into the state of jobless employed - a term that describes people who have jobs but do not work or work very little. They do not want or do not have the opportunity to advance, develop themselves, create value in their work, leading to low productivity and efficiency.

A 2020 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) shows that about 22% of the world's workforce is jobless. In Vietnam, a similar survey by CareerBuilder shows that 58% of workers are dissatisfied with their current jobs.

Mr. Bui Doan Chung, founder of the Vietnam Human Resources Community, said that this phenomenon is common among Gen Z and Millennials for many reasons.

First, Gen Z - the generation that accounts for 1/3 of the workforce in Vietnam - has changed their work priorities. They consider purpose and overall happiness in work very important, so repetitive, boring and vague jobs about the future make them bored and lose motivation.

The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) has also changed the way many companies and individuals work. They take advantage of digitalization to simplify working time.

The phenomenon of jobless employment shows that the human resource management department also has problems. They choose the wrong personnel or put them in the wrong position, making employees feel that they are not suitable in terms of values ​​and cannot adapt to the company culture. "Loss of motivation and trust will lead to a stagnant and irresponsible culture," said Mr. Chung. Experts believe that this is the responsibility of many stakeholders.

Mr. Chung said the above phenomenon is also common among workers who are under fixed-term contracts with indefinite terms because they are protected by law. Termination of labor contracts with this group is relatively difficult and leads to legal problems.

As a result, they unintentionally create a force of "office zombies", a group of people who refuse to learn, do not work, but also do not quit. This can easily cause internal conflicts.

Khanh Thy, 29 years old, is one of them. Thy and her colleagues at a dairy company in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City call a sales employee "immortal" because he has not been fired.

He was promoted to a management position after bringing in some good projects for the company three years ago. This man checked in on time every day but then often went out for no apparent reason. Many colleagues complained about his slowness, insensitivity, and negligence, but this person still stayed with the company.

"During the stressful period of the new project, we had to work overtime and he was nowhere to be found," Thy said.

Mr. Chung believes that the phenomenon of jobless employed workers can be limited and minimized by building a system to record productivity, achievements, and report detailed work results for each person, department, and division.

The company also needs to create a legal corridor in performing specific tasks in the workplace. At the same time, in the group of unmotivated people, they need to be actively investigated and listened to to find out related issues.

In early 2024, Hai Yen decided to quit her job because she was worried that she was approaching her 30s and had no direction for her future. Yen said she was shocked by the work schedule at a private company because the way of working and productivity were different from before.

“Maybe I just drifted for too long and found it difficult to actually do the work,” she said.