COVID-19 has badly affected the service industry, including catering, transportation and entertainment, and left a large workforce idle.

However, e-commerce and logistics have witnessed dramatically increasing orders, resulting in a labor crunch in these sectors and leading to the new mode of sharing employees. For instance, with cinemas and restaurants closed, their workers can deliver goods for e-commerce platforms.

The new approach not only unlocks new skills of workers but also improves the allocation of the workforce. It provides more opportunities for those whose companies have not resumed work and other unemployed people.

Some local governments are encouraging companies to hire or share employees temporarily. The local government in Anhui Province in east China has announced a guideline to promote flexible employment by providing subsidies for enterprises and human resources agencies to support sharing employees.

However, issues such as work-related injury compensation should be clarified. So a comprehensive secondment arrangement for lending employees is necessary between companies and companies and workers. Rights, obligations and responsibilities of each party should be clarified, as well as the management mechanism, safeguard measures, and legal risks and liability.

(This is an edited excerpt of an article originally published in Xinhuanet.com on March 20)