Singapore - third in voluntary pay cuts
Over 40 percent of Singaporean employees surveyed said they were willing to take reduced salaries when it comes to the crunch, and only South Korean and Indian workers were more agreeable than Singaporeans to accept pay cuts. In fact, an average of 30 percent of Asia Pacific respondents stated they would accept a pay decrease to help their companies in difficult times.
Watson Wyatt, a global professional services firm, surveyed 115,000 employees of over 500 companies in 11 Asia Pacific markets including Japan, Taiwan and Australia, on employee attitudes in the region. The research includes both multinational corporations and domestic companies from 18 major industries such as finance, construction and IT.
The survey uncovered that employees maintained a positive outlook, and more than 70 percent of respondents suggested that the better their companies performed, the better their pay would be. Asia Pacific employees' overall low satisfaction with compensation & benefits could be attributed to the belief that they are not paid well because their companies are going through tough times. Workers are probably hoping for improved profits and better salaries in the future.
The results are good news for employers in Asia as they suggest that most employees are proud to work for their companies and are committed to the firms' success.
New wave of project leaders
Project Management Institute (PMI), a not-for-profit professional association for project management (PM), commissioned a survey on how C-level executives viewed project managers and they discovered that most the 225 CEOs, CFOs, CIOs and senior-level executives interviewed held the profession in high regard.
Across the US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan and China, 88 percent of respondents believed that professional project managers were effective in ensuring successful completion of projects and change initiatives, and 92 percent of respondents from Japan and Hong Kong both agreed that PM was a valuable asset to their company. Japanese companies lead in the utilisation of project managers as more than 90 percent employed full-time PM professionals. In contrast, only 40 percent of Hong Kong companies have ever used project managers, the lowest amongst the six countries surveyed.
Executives in both Japan and Hong Kong viewed PM as a tactical function whilst their counterparts in the US and Europe tend see it as a strategic function.
"Previously, project managers were actually multi-tasking financial managers," said Greg Balestrero, CEO of PMI. "Now, the one holding the purse strings does not automatically become the best person to manage a project. The shift in perception means that project managers are becoming critical competencies for corporations."
Yes, the use of project management will grow further.
France = 80 percent
The US = 76 percent
Japan = 60 percent
Hong Kong = 48
Germany = 47 percent
The UK = 32 percent
Source: Project Management Institute, Thought Leadership Study, Jun 2004
More time off, less cash
More American staff would sacrifice pay to spend more time with their families, according to a survey released by Salary.com, a provider of compensation solutions. Visitors to its website and readers of its monthly newsletter answered the question, "Which would you prefer: US$5,000 increase in base pay or the equivalent in time off?" and more than 4,600 employees, from various industries, locations and company sizes, answered. Given the choice, 39 percent of respondents said they would choose more time off instead of a raise.
When a similar survey was conducted in 2001, 33 percent of respondents said they would opt for more free time. Although most employees would still choose a raise, the increased number of respondents who would prefer time off in the 2004 survey, represents a significant change in employees' work mentality.
"The changing work priorities of employees will put pressure on employers to offer more flexibility," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "Successful companies will recognise that their employees value forms of compensation beyond money."
Source: Salary.com Survey, Nov 2004
Multifarious e-learning
Learning Circuits, an American Society for Training & Development online e-learning magazine, ran a web-based survey to find out specific e-learning tools commonly used, and to indicate management and employee support levels for e-learning.
When asked how their organisations use e-learning, the group of 164 respondents, which mostly consists of training and human resources professionals, ranked desktop training as tops at 38.4 percent. IT training was followed closely by general business skills, which covers everything from leadership training to sexual harassment training to diversity training. Customer service training and task-specific skills tied for third at 30.4 percent.
The respondents also shared which division managed or initiated e-learning programmes and it was no surprise that training-related departments were in charge of the majority of e-learning initiatives. Training professionals lead at 57.3 percent whilst e-learning and HR managers follow far behind at 7.8 percent and 6.8 percent. However, more than one-quarter of e-learning initiatives originate and are administered from other business functions such as IT, sales and marketing.
Reality of talent engagement
Only 10 percent of the UK's financial services (FS) organisations are confident that they "very successfully" engage their talented executives through a high motivation, high loyalty and high performance environment where executives can play to their strengths. Only three percent of organisations are very successful at converting raw potential into performance through effective development and barely four percent of organisations are very successful at career management and succession planning.
The dismal showings reflect the realities of talent engagement. In the vast majority of organisations, employees have little understanding of how they might develop their careers internally and therefore are more likely to change employers. Similarly, most organisations are not systematically filling their leadership pipeline.
TalentMax conducted hour-long interviews amongst 56 human resources directors in the FS sector to determine how HR is addressing key talent issues and found that even though 88 percent of FS organisations surveyed believed that talent is a "very important" or an "important" contributory factor in organisational performance, only 47 percent of the HR directors interviewed have proper talent management programmes in place. The lack of talent management systems could have been the contributing factor to the low number of FS companies that believed they are very successful at engaging talent.
Even though almost half of those surveyed conducted engagement surveys to measure motivation and loyalty levels, 60 percent of those firms conducting surveys ignore or barely take follow-up action with the findings. Apart from surveys, other engagement metrics include entry interviews, exit interviews, performance assessments and career development interviews.
Source: TalentMax, Maximise Return On Talent Survey 2004
