The latest information from the Polish Investment and Trade Agency is very promising. In the first quarter of this year, the agency completed 22 projects worth almost EUR 240 million.
As a result, around five thousand new jobs were created. Foreign investment in our country is doing well, and forecasts for the rest of the year are also promising.
Money Is Flowing into Poland in a Broad Stream
- We predict that the investment trend will continue - says Joanna Wanatowicz, regional director at Grafton Recruitment Polska. - Compared with other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, our country offers a huge and diverse market of human resources. Both in larger cities and in developing ones, the activity of organizations supporting the development of foreign investment is clearly visible. Thanks to this, Poland is perceived as a destination for setting up and expanding operations.
The Services Sector Is Growing Stronger
Research conducted by Grafton shows that last year most investments concerned business services centers and R&D. It is worth adding that the automotive industry, which is also very developed in southwestern Poland, is also constantly growing stronger.
- We estimate that this trend will continue. We came to this conclusion from the point of view of an organization specializing in supporting the building of human resources specifically in newly created or expanding investments. We see that the scale of market development
and the related scale of availability, as well as the fluidity of human resources, favors attracting new employees from the business services sector and beyond. We also observe
that more and more service centers located in Poland are either running increasingly advanced processes or are moving from simple to advanced processes in a shorter time. This is happening because our market has a sufficient number of employees with competencies that allow for increasing the complexity of the processes handled - explains Wanatowicz.
Fresh Blood on the Labor Market
It is also important that the population of students and graduates ensures an inflow of "fresh blood," especially in the initial stages and for handling simple processes.
- We forecast further development of investments in the areas described, and within this direction, centers of a business process outsourcing (BPO) nature, operating internationally, will certainly have a strong representation. The Polish labor market ensures diversity of resources in terms of foreign language skills. It is therefore no surprise that companies serving clients in even several dozen languages operate widely and successfully here.
It Is No Longer a Trend, but a Noticeable Tendency
Technical support, transactions, HR administration
and payroll processes are developing just as strongly. ITO centers (IT processes) and software development remain a consistently strong position, including technology hubs operating as part of servicing one large organization.
Recently, much was said about the uncertainty of foreign investors related
to the current political situation in Poland. What is happening now in this matter?
- Investors are certainly observing the political situation in our country and relations with the European Union. From our conversations with investors, it appears that they show great pragmatism and study economic indicators, carry out analyses of labor costs and wage levels in various markets, also in comparison with other countries in our region - adds Wanatowicz.
