MALAYSIA looks to be gaining business traction with more employers granting salary increases to their employees this year compared to 2020.
This is according to the findings of the latest two surveys entitled Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) Salary Surveys for Executives and Non-Executives 2021.
The surveys further noted that 65.2% of respondent companies granted salary increases either to all or certain executive employees in 2021 compared to 58.4% in the previous year, while 66.4% granted salary increases to all or certain non-executives in 2021 as compared to 61.7% in 2020.
“The average salary increase for executives in 2021 was 4.40% whereas, for the non-executives, the average salary increase in 2021 was at 4.43%,” said MEF president Datuk Dr. Syed Hussain J.P.
“The surveys forecast that average salary increase for executives in 2022 is at 4.37%. For the non-executives, the average forecast salary increase for 2022 is at 4.17%.”
Syed Hussain also noted that the surveys also indicated that more than 90% of respondent companies adopted employee performance as the main criteria for determining the quantum of executives and non-executives salary increase, followed by the companies’ capacity to pay.
“Approximately 60% of the companies determined salary increase based on the profitability or productivity level, while more than half of the companies determined the quantum of salary increase based on market rate,” he commented.
In terms of bonus, the surveys indicated that 68.30% of the respondent companies granted bonuses to executives and non-executives in 2021, and forecasts that bonuses for 2022 were 1.82 and 1.66 months for executives and non-executives respectively.
“A positive indicator was that the forecast bonus for 2022 was higher than the actual bonus in 2021 of 1.58 months and 1.44 months for executives and non-executives respectively,” Syed Hussain added.
“On the employment of fresh graduates, the MEF Salary Survey for Executives indicated that 58.20% of respondent companies recruited fresh graduates as executives in the past twelve months.”
According to Syed Hussain, in terms of the type of jobs offered to newly-hired graduates, 80.90% of respondent companies offered skilled jobs, compared to 51.80% of companies that offered semi-skilled jobs while 5% of respondent companies placed newly-hired graduates in low-skilled jobs.
The MEF Salary Survey for Executives involved 212 companies from the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors and covered 180 benchmarked positions of 23,448 executives.
Meanwhile, 208 companies participated in the Survey for Non-Executives which covered 66,420 non-executives with 129 benchmarked positions.
