Singapore - Aware of the economic climate, workers are more careful in evaluating opportunities and are showing more restraint in job-hopping. Yet, few employees are willing to settle for less when negotiating for their salary demands, according to the latest Hudson report.

Gina McLellan, Singapore country manager for Hudson says even though "many employers are seeing a decrease in staff turnover, there is little sign of any reduction in asking salaries for new managerial hires".

At 15%, companies in the media/PR/advertising sector are the most successful in lowering salary demands, according to the survey. On the other hand, only 2% of bosses in the manufacturing sector could do the same. Even then, the scope of negotiation for employees successful in lowering asking pays were fairly limited. Of the 10% of employers who report that they can negotiate down salaries for new hires, nearly half (47%) say they can only achieve limited reductions of 1 to 5%.

This response suggests that the easing of Singapore’s labour market has had little impact on workers so far.

“Salary inflation is still an issue for employers looking for top talent,” McLellan adds. “Employers will only have more bargaining power to negotiate down salaries for new hires when companies are making widespread cuts in staff and drastically reducing their hiring - which is not the case at present.”

According to the report, 43% of the 2,600 executives in key business sectors say they are likely to increase their headcount in Q3 2008, compared with 49% in Q2.

This decline in hiring expectations is most apparent in the consumer sector where less than a third (32%) of respondents plan to recruit more staff, down from 49% the previous quarter. Employers are being cautious about hiring staff, with over half (53%) planning to keep their headcount steady.

The fall in staff turnover rates also suggests employees are content in their current positions, and McLellan attributes this partly to the employment of effective talent retention strategies. “Many employers have been focused in the last few years on developing more sophisticated retention policies, raising salaries and offering performance-related bonuses are still important retention tools but learning and development opportunities, career path planning, the opportunity to transfer overseas and work/life balance policies are becoming increasing prevalent.”