After two years of living and working under Covid-enforced circumstances, how have employer and employee priorities changed?
Can a healthy paycheck trump the need for flexible work arrangements? Is it more important for an employee to fit an organization’s culture or does their work experience matter more to employers?
For the second year in a row, Tech in Asia surveyed the people that make up Southeast Asia’s tech firms for their opinions. After going through 502 responses, we’ve noticed some priority shifts and differing opinions between sectors.
Here are the key insights and the full results from Tech in Asia's HR in Tech 2021 survey.
Compared to the 2020 survey, employers see culture fit as an increasingly key quality in the employees that they bring on board. This can be attributed to the remote and hybrid work conditions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. Without the benefit of consistently meeting each other in-person, it’s become more important that new hires understand and mesh well with existing staff and hit the ground running upon joining.
It also appears that employers have decided that skills can be taught and nurtured, seeing as its relative importance has declined. Similarly, employers are less fussy about hiring only the most enthusiastic individuals - what’s more important is being able to train new hires.
That said, work ethic remains numero uno in hiring priorities, showing that having the right attitude for work is still the most important quality that employers look for in prospective employees.
As the above heat map shows, different industries have different priorities when it comes to new hires. Companies in the telecommunications, security, and IT infrastructure sectors, for example, prioritize bringing in people who have the right skills for their openings. On the other hand, culture fit is the top consideration for companies in the advertising tech, media and marketing, artificial intelligence, and logistics industries.
However, something everyone agrees on is that an employee’s years of experience - and even having the relevant experience for the job - are relatively unimportant. It appears that employers are more willing to bring in fresh faces and nurture them.
On the employees’ side, we see a stark increase in respondents stressing the importance of an above-average salary. This tracks with research from Boston Consulting Group that shows that financial compensation has become one of the five most important factors in a job in 2021.
Factors that reflect a healthy working environment such as good team members, good culture, and work-life balance have also risen in importance. This can also be attributed to a rising preference for remote or hybrid working setups, and the availability of these options usually indicate forward-looking and inclusive workplaces.
With the recent rise in social justice and environmental issues, there is a growing number of employees who are expecting more than just a paycheck from their employers. Around 50% of respondents in the Boston Consulting Group study indicated that they would not work for companies that don’t share their personal principles or values.
Given that the last two years have brought about a massive change in both employee and employer priorities, it’s no surprise to note that companies are still falling short of meeting employee expectations when it comes to benefits.
Our survey shows that the biggest gaps in meeting employees’ desired benefits lie in monetary factors - which includes salaries, bonuses, and stock options - and in work-life balance.
With the economy and job market still in flux, companies are continuing to reorganize their internal processes and reallocate their resources to adjust to jobseekers’ new demands.
Given the mismatch in expectations, many employees are looking for better welfare benefits from their employers. These include flexible or more leave days and work-life balance, which are among the top priorities that employees consider when assessing their hiring prospects.
However, employees in industries such as real estate and fintech are putting less emphasis on the benefits they receive from their employers compared to the previous year. This may be attributed to the preference for financial compensation - they’re happy to have fewer benefits if it means they get to take home a higher salary.
We also asked respondents about the platforms they use for various HR-related processes. It appears that there’s a growing preference for specialist software, with the likes of Udemy (training) and Expensify (expense claims and reimbursements) proving popular in their respective functions.
Even among the platforms that provide more well-rounded solutions, there are user preferences for specific functions. Workday and Talenta are used primarily for leave requests, while HReasily and SAP are popular for payroll management.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on employee and employer expectations continues to evolve - some of what was prioritized in 2020 have decreased in importance, and factors that didn’t matter as much last year have risen to prominence.
As we move forward, financial compensation remains a point of emphasis for employees looking to secure their rice bowls in these uncertain times. Employers, on the other hand, are becoming more cognizant of the importance of bringing in hardworking new hires that fit into their culture - years of experience be damned.
There’s also a clear need to bridge the gap between employee and employer expectations around benefits. While it’s unlikely that a meeting of the minds can occur on every aspect, companies can start by addressing the largest issues - that of compensation-related benefits and work-life balance - before they lose valuable talent to their competitors.
Digital transformation has sped up considerably these last couple of years, and employers would do well to invest in new tools and solutions that can provide their employees with the means to collaborate more effectively and encourage a healthy work environment. These tools can help companies make it through these murky economic conditions and come out strong post-pandemic.
HReasily’s platform enables companies to improve productivity by streamlining work processes such as payroll processing, leave management, and claims applications. Visit its website to learn more about how you can automate your HR management.