The Robert Walters annual global salary survey, out this week, provides an in-depth analysis of salaries earned around the world by both permanent and contract workers across a wide range of sectors and offers insight into past and future trends in local candidate markets and market insights in each sector.

Sectors covered:
Accounting, finance, banking, information technology, human resources, legal & compliance, sales & marketing, secretarial & support, engineering & operations, general management and supply chain & procurement.

SINGAPORE HIGHLIGHTS

Shortage of local talent led to more overseas hires

The buoyant economy resulted in an increased demand for senior candidates to support business growth. The survey highlighted the need for Singapore employers to implement strategic recruitment policies as they continue to struggle with staff shortages and increased pressure to meet salary demands.

As a direct result of the pressure to fill positions, the firm’s recruiters have seen a shift in attitude over the past year. The shortage of local professionals, particularly at the senior level, has resulted in companies looking overseas to recruit foreign talent, particularly from Europe and Australia.

Mark Ellwood, managing director of Robert Walters in Singapore, says: “When a candidate with the ideal level of experience cannot be secured locally, more employers will consider hiring experienced overseas talent to fill the gap, especially for the niche and specialised roles. It isn’t just the financial services sector that has ‘hubbed’ into Singapore. Many organisations now have their regional headquarters here - which meant that regional heads of finance, sales & marketing, human resources, procurement and IT will also be based here and that has created demand for senior individuals with regional exposure.”

Candidates call the shots

The equilibrium between the need for high quality candidates and their availability has shifted even further. Employers have to offer more attractive packages, move more swiftly and be more flexible and imaginative in order to secure the right candidates.

Andrea Ross, director of Robert Walters Singapore, says: “With an increase in recruitment activity across all sectors, candidates have been in the fortunate position to choose between different companies. Some individuals hold more than one job offer, and counter-offers or buy backs have become more common as companies fight to retain people - which also added to the salary pressure.”

In this employees’ market, companies must be flexible and open-minded in order to close their vacancies with the best candidates in the shortest possible time. Job seekers are increasingly becoming more ambitious and in addition to a salary increase, they are also looking for roles with increased business and strategic planning exposure and opportunities to move into leadership positions.

Inflationary effect on salaries

The robust Singapore economy coupled with the high demand for professionally qualified and experienced candidates drove up salary levels. Salary increases were common across industries and skills sets as employees had more choice and employers found themselves competing with one another for the available talent pool.

Ellwood comments: “Our specialist recruitment teams are seeing strong demand from what is clearly a candidate short market. All sectors that we recruited for in 2007 showed signs of growth with financial services being one of the main hiring sectors, among others. With many banks having ‘hubbed’ and continuing to ‘hub’ their support functions into Singapore, there has been a large demand for candidates within financial services. Many organisations have started looking outside of financial services to recruit qualified people, hence putting even more pressure on other sectors.”

Increased focus on attraction and retention strategies


The general lack of candidates and salary pressure of 2007 means that HR departments are focusing their efforts on the following attraction and retention projects entering 2008:

• Improving employer branding: making the company attractive to prospective staff

• Career progression/planning: important for retaining existing staff members and securing new candidates

• Salaries: ensuring company salaries do not fall behind market rate

• Training programs and internal transfers: important for retaining existing staff members and securing new candidates

• More creative compensation & benefits packages: in terms of flexible work arrangements; offering joining or guaranteed, retained bonuses or lifestyle incentives

• Future staff planning: many companies are working in partnership with recruitment partners to identify long term staffing requirements and putting in place sourcing strategies to attract the highest quality candidates

Ellwood says: "It has become increasingly evident that while the first challenge is to successfully hire talent, ongoing development and internal incentive programmes are essential for retention and to ensure they feel their career progression is being taken seriously.”

Battle for talent - counter culture prevails

• Salary pressure is emerging within companies who have had to reassess their traditional salary bandings

• Many candidates are receiving counter offers when they resign as a way of enticing them to stay

• The knock on effect of counter offers is that they reset the benchmarks for salaries and increase pressure within larger organisations

Ellwood continues: “This has created upward pressure on salaries as organisations battle to hire the best in the market in the ‘war for talent’ while also trying to retain their own top performers. Salaries have outstripped inflation and with the rising costs in Singapore, particularly around housing, salaries have had to move upwards to attract the best.”

KEY HIGHLIGHTS – OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

MALAYSIA

• Government initiatives such as the 9th Malaysian Plan (9mp) and Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) have led to significant growth in the banking and IT industries

• This has led to an increased demand for talent as organisations set up global and regional hubs in Malaysia to take advantage of the lower cost of operations along with other incentives provided by the government

• High demand for IT talent has also led to more companies using contractors to fill short and medium term resourcing gaps

• Employers in consumer business face a “brain drain” situation as high quality sales & marketing and IT professionals are often relocating to take on regional roles in Singapore, China and other countries

• Bankers with Islamic product development experience will be in greater demand in 2008

HONG KONG

• The accounting market in Hong Kong and China was characterised by a high demand and short supply of professionally qualified, internationally educated, trilingual candidates

• Companies become more open and willing to provide guaranteed bonuses and buy out notice periods, something that was not particularly prevalent in the HR recruitment market in the past

• Overseas returnees and foreign candidates looking to enter the Hong Kong market will be in demand as employers look to expand their talent pools

JAPAN

• High performing sales & marketing candidates can expect 10-15% increases on current basic wages plus incentives; however specialists with role or client-based experience from within the sector are being enticed with even higher offers

• In the financial services industry, candidate demand has been highest across quantitative analysis and risk methodology; corporate and financial institutions analysis; ratings and transaction advisory and credit risk exposure

• The increase in the number of new investment banking and private equity entrants to the Japanese market during 2007 will continue to help fuel the demand for front office talent throughout 2008

AUSTRALIA

• Sydney: qualified accountants with two to four years' experience are in short supply, in both contract and permanent positions

• Queensland: the number of roles filled by international candidates has increased in an effort to ease the effects of the candidate shortage, most notably in the areas of large-scale project development and assessment

• Hiring and retention will remain a core focus for employers who want to stay ahead of the market

NEW ZEALAND

• The concept of the 'global worker' has become a reality

• Overseas campaigns to attract overseas qualified professionals and expat New Zealanders to New Zealand are becoming a more established feature of the recruitment process in New Zealand

• Some candidates are being recruited before they arrive in the country to prevent them entering the local job market

ABOUT THE ANNUAL GLOBAL SURVEY

The survey, generally regarded as the most comprehensive of its type in the world, is now in its ninth year. This year’s survey now includes comparative salary tables from 2007 for ease of reference. Salary figures are based on the thousands of placements made by Robert Walters recruitment staff throughout the year.