Why Employee Experience is Everything in Asia this 2018!
Links recently published our 2018 Asia Salary Snapshot. Our aim is to help employers and candidates gain a better understanding of the market by putting together a survey and extrapolating the insights and market trends for the year ahead.
We recently looked into front-of-house trends, such as the greater focus on O2O (online-to-offline) strategies, with the example of Tencent, to bring the consumer experience to a full circle. We’ve also identified how 2018 will have a greater emphasis on technology and data-driven approaches, foreseeing a trend within the banking and financial services industry to use this technology to growth hack into success.
In this article, we will be examining the trends mentioned in our 2018 Asia Salary Snapshot, specific to the Human Resources, Secretarial & Administrative sector. In particular looking at different companies’ focus on creating better employee experiences, in order to drive talent recruitment and retention.
What we expect will happen in 2018
In Hong Kong and China, we see that there will be an increase in demand for Executive Assistants and Personal Assistants, especially in the financial services industry, life sciences, FinTech and technology sectors.
Businesses will also be recruiting more administrative and secretarial roles, as well as a demand in Singapore to hire for more Learning & Development and HR analytics professionals. As companies look to build better employee experiences with good employer value propositions including company culture, rewarding career opportunities and competitive remuneration packages, they will be looking for more experienced professionals in 2018.
Why is this and what are the drivers in the year to come?
The job market in general is becoming increasingly candidate and talent-oriented. A key reason for this is due to the increased awareness amongst the public towards employer brands. This, paired with the low unemployment rate, means that candidates have a lot more power to negotiate and will be more prone to job hopping.
As we predict an overall improvement in the market, with Chinese companies looking to expand their businesses overseas, companies will likely be fighting to hire more high value talent. In a study examining the importance of candidate experience, 82% of hiring managers said that they viewed it as highly or extremely important. For this reason, more attention will be placed on candidate and employee experience, thus resulting in a higher demand for companies to hire experienced HR professionals, particularly professionals with knowledge in data processing who have the skills to accurately leverage HR analytics and better accommodate the needs of high performing talent.
Given the competition for strong performing talent, 2018 will be about providing a more rounded and compelling employee experience, thus there will be a greater demand for in-house positions such as administrative and secretarial roles.
Why employee experience matters and what happens when it’s done wrong?
In a previous article we’ve talked more in-depth about why it is important to also service your employees (Pleasing customers through delighting your staff). A study found that staff who are engaged actually perform at a higher level of productivity, compared to those who aren’t engaged, 51% higher, in fact!
An article regarding Whole Foods’ new system of operation perfectly demonstrates what happens when employee experience is not considered as a priority. Whole Foods’ new system of operations, which many employees have described to be punitive and stress-inducing, caused the company to lose key talent, including team leaders, store team leaders, executive coordinators and even a regional vice president.
Learning from these examples, major companies around Asia are going the extra mile in efforts to retain and cultivate great talent. Alibaba, for example, has the Alibaba Global leadership Academy (AGLA) which is a development programme investing in future international leaders for Alibaba.
We predict that this trend of caring for the employee and thinking about the employee experience will progress as the market strengthens, thus 2018 will look to be a strong year for recruiting high value talent in Human Resources and Administration.
Contact us to get access to the best Human Resources and Administrative talent and jobs in Asia. If you’re looking for more insights into benchmark salaries and trends in Asia, click below to download a free copy of our 2018 Asia Salary Snapshot.
