Companies in Malaysia focus on employee support despite Covid-19-induced cost pressure — survey

Companies in Malaysia are decreasing recruitment budget while prioritising employee engagement and support initiatives to cope with the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic, human resource consulting firm Mercer LLC said.

In a statement today, Mercer said 72% of companies surveyed under its latest Pulse Survey are likely to reduce spending on recruitment in 2020.

“37% said they will only hire for replacements this year, while another 43% are planning a hiring freeze. Only 4% are considering retrenchment.

“At the same time, some companies are also taking this opportunity to enhance employee support and engagement. 13% of those surveyed are enhancing work-life balance programmes to enable more flexible and adaptive work arrangements, while 11% plan to increase their budget for healthcare benefits. Another 6% plan to enhance their training and development initiatives,” Mercer said.

Mercer said the Pulse Survey provides an overview of how Covid-19 has impacted human resource budget allocation as well as salary and bonus implementation among companies in Malaysia.

According to Mercer, the data collection period was between March 26 and April 10, 2020.

“201 companies across 12 industries have shared their coping strategies to Covid-19, which has now enabled us [to] collectively learn from each other. Anecdotal data support our position that the report findings have maintained relevance well into June,” Mercer said.

Mercer said today hard-hit sectors are the non-financial services, manufacturing, retail and wholesale, consumer goods and life sciences sectors.

According to Mercer, companies in these hard-hit sectors have indicated the largest percentage point reduction in their salary increment budget.

“Across industries, companies in hard-hit sectors have indicated the largest reduction in salary increment budget — non-financial services (from 5.1% to 3.3%), manufacturing (from 5.1% to 3.8%) as well as retail and wholesale (from 5% to 4%). This is followed by consumer goods (from 5% to 4.6%) and life sciences (from 5.3% to 5%),” Mercer said.

Source: The Edge Markets