Photo: Mercer (Malaysia)
Mercer announced the results of its annual ‘2019 Malaysia Total Remuneration Survey’, and according to the findings, salary increases across key industries in Malaysia is forecast to remain stable at 5% in 2020, while the inflation rate is projected to rise to 2.4% from 0.9% in 2019.
The Shared Services & Outsourcing (SSO) industry is predicted to have the highest salary increase at 5.5%, followed by Life Sciences (5.4%) and Chemical (5.4%) industries.
The salary trend forecast for 2020 in Malaysia remains stable across job functions as well.
The top three job functions with the highest salary increases are production and skilled trades (5.8 %), data analytics/warehousing (5.5%), and IT and project managers (5.3%).
On the other hand, administration and secretarial jobs are predicted to receive the lowest increment at 4.0%.
As for career streams, paraprofessionals can also expect a salary increase of 5.3%, whereas executives can expect a 4% increase.
Prashant Chadha, Chief Executive Officer at Mercer Malaysia said, “It is no surprise we are seeing high salary increase forecast from industries including Shared Services & Outsourcing as they benefit from the government’s push for industry disruption and digitization.”
“Similarly, high demand for some jobs may lead to larger salary increases to attract and retain talent,” he said in a statement.
According to Prashant, in today’s age of automation, it is also imperative for organisations to focus on upskilling their workforce, beside just compensation.
The survey also finds that across industries, the voluntary attrition rate was at 6.5 per cent in the first half of 2019, while the consumer goods industry in the country came out with the highest voluntary turnover rate at 8.4 per cent.
The findings also explore some of the top reasons cited for employees leaving their organization in Asia. While the reasons vary by age group and gender, the top three reasons for employees leaving their organization are competitive pay, manager interaction, and a clear career path and job security.
The Total Remuneration Survey is Mercer’s flagship annual compensation and benefits benchmarking study and this year’s survey were conducted across 551 companies involving the participation of over 180, 000 incumbents across 3,000 jobs.
By: Siti Farhana Sheikh Yahya
