Ensuring stable financial resources for salary reform

Complete job positions

After completing the construction of job positions, the salary reform project must also be accelerated to ensure progress according to the requirements of competent authorities. This is a requirement emphasized by Minister of Home Affairs Nguyen Tien Hai at the working session to deploy tasks in October and the fourth quarter of 2026 held recently.

Analyzing the requirements for salary reform according to job positions, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Van Trung - Department of Public Management, University of Economics and Law, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City - said that to make salaries the main source of income for cadres, civil servants, and public employees, it is necessary to synchronously implement many solutions, instead of just focusing on salary increases.

According to Mr. Trung, first of all, it is necessary to review and standardize the list of job positions in each agency and unit; build a job description and a clear capacity framework. Positions need to be classified according to complexity, responsibility and working conditions.

This is an important basis for designing a suitable salary payment mechanism. If the job position is not clearly defined, salary payment by position may only stop at form, not reflecting the job requirements and capacity of the person in charge.

From that foundation, experts believe that it is necessary to design a new salary scale according to job positions and titles, gradually shifting to paying salaries in specific amounts instead of depending on the salary calculation mechanism based on the coefficient multiplied by the base salary.

Each position can be designed with a salary range with a clear increase roadmap, ensuring reasonable correlation between positions, while creating a sufficient gap to encourage workers to improve their capacity and quality of task performance.

Payment must be linked to work efficiency

Besides innovating the salary scale, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Van Trung emphasized the requirement to link salaries with work results and the actual capacity of cadres, civil servants, and public employees.

Accordingly, it is necessary to build a transparent work result evaluation system, with specific and verifiable criteria. Salary payment according to job positions needs to be accompanied by an effective evaluation mechanism, avoiding the situation where people taking on jobs with different requirements and levels of responsibility still lack appropriate differentiation in income.

Experts also believe that it is necessary to gradually restructure income in the direction of reducing dependence on allowances, increasing the proportion of official salaries and making income transparent. The goal is to make salaries the main source of income, instead of being too dependent on non-salary items.

Along with that, there needs to be a roadmap to increase public sector income to ensure living standards and increase competitiveness in attracting and retaining human resources, especially in areas that require high-quality human resources such as information technology, finance, healthcare and education.

According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Van Trung, salary reform can only be implemented sustainably when it goes hand in hand with creating stable financial resources. Staff streamlining needs to be linked to improving the quality of the staff; and at the same time restructure budget expenditures, reduce ineffective recurrent expenditures and increase financial autonomy of public service units according to regulations.

Completing job positions is a fundamental step, but for salary reform to be effective, it is necessary to simultaneously innovate the salary scale, link income with work results and ensure resources for implementation. These are also decisive factors for salaries to gradually become the main source of income, contributing to improving the quality of staff in the public sector" - Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Van Trung emphasized.

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