China issues new guideline on workforce sharing among enterprises

Since the Covid-19 outbreak began, the workload of employees at many offline merchants has dropped sharply, with some of them even waiting for work at home. At the same time, the pandemic has been driving a surge in orders received by e-commerce platforms, some of which are encountering a shortage of labour. Against this backdrop, some e-commerce platforms are co-operating with offline enterprises through sharing of employees, in order to lessen the pressure on the workforce of such platforms and reduce the labour costs of the offline enterprises. This new employment model, commonly called “workforce sharing”, has become a new way to tackle imbalance between the supply and demand of labour during the pandemic.  

In this connection, the General Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued the Notice on Proper Guidance and Services for Workforce Sharing (the “Notice”) on 30 September 2020 in support of workforce sharing among enterprises. This alert selects some of the key provisions of the Notice for employers’ reference.