KUALA LUMPUR: Wage increases across key industries in Malaysia are forecast to remain stable at 5.0% while the inflation rate is projected to increase to 2.4% from 0.9% in 2019, according to Mercer’s Annual 2019 Malaysia Total Remuneration Survey.
The shared services and outsourcing (SSO) industry, it notes, is predicted to have the highest salary increase at 5.5% compared to 5.3% in 2018, followed by life sciences (5.4%) and chemical (5.4%).
Mercer Malaysia CEO Prashant Chadha said well-performing companies and industries might be more incentivised to provide employees with increases higher than the market average.
“It is no surprise we are seeing high salary increase forecast from industries, including SSO, as they benefit from the government’s push for industry disruption and digitisation,” he said in a statement on Dec 5.
Prashant said similarly, high demand for some jobs may lead to larger salary increases to attract and retain talent.
“In today’s age of automation, besides just compensation, it is imperative for organisations to also focus on upskilling their workforce. The recent 2020 budget announcement to allocate funds for the development of a digitally competent workforce will bring about a positive impact,” he added.
The salary trend forecast for 2020 in Malaysia remains stable across job functions as well.
The top three job functions with the highest salary increase are production and skilled trades (5.8%), data analytics/warehousing (5.5 %) and IT and project managers (5.3%), while administration and secretarial jobs are predicted to receive the lowest increment at 4.0%.
As for career streams, paraprofessionals can expect a salary increase of 5.3% whereas executives can expect a 4.0% increase.
Across industries, the voluntary attrition rate was at 6.5% in the first half of 2019, while the consumer goods industry in the country came out with the highest voluntary turnover rate at 8.4%.
The Total Remuneration Survey is Mercer’s flagship annual compensation and benefits benchmarking study that identifies key remuneration trends and predicts hiring and salary increase, with participation increasing to 551 companies across various industries in Malaysia this year.
In addition, Mercer also conducts regular pulse surveys throughout the year to keep up with the impact of the rapidly changing business environment and compensation and workforce trends. – Bernama
