Tech in Asia collated 274 responses, mostly from employees of companies in Southeast Asia, to glean some insight into the hiring practices among the region’s players and what role HR tech plays in their operations.
Here are the key insights and full results from Tech in Asia’s HR in Tech 2020 survey.
When deciding whether or not to join a startup, most employees consider culture fit. But it takes a lot more than monthly happy hours and foosball sessions in the office to entice potential recruits. Close to 90% of workers, for instance, say that it’s important to have good team members and a good boss when working in a startup.
That said, culture fit goes both ways. Seventy-six percent of companies think that bringing in people that fit their culture code is an important consideration during their hiring processes. However, making sure these people have the right skills for the job is more important: 84% of companies rated employee skills fit as crucial when hiring.
This isn’t surprising. After all, startup founders are running a business; if they just want someone cool to hang out with, friendship is usually free.
Having a proven track record for success is usually an advantage for people looking to get hired by any organization. Companies say, though, that an applicant’s chances of being considered are much higher if they have experience relevant to the role they’re applying for, as opposed to just having many years of work experience - and this seems to ring true regardless of the company’s size, the sector it is in, and the location of its headquarters.
As seen in the above heat maps, the years of experience a candidate has is one of the least important factors for any employer, whereas skills fit is always among the top qualities that companies look for in a candidate. Evidently, as long as potential hires have the right skills and relevant experience for the role, the number of years of experience they have is just that - a number.
That said, possessing relevant experience doesn’t mean much if companies don’t think a candidate is passionate about what they do. Case in point: 83% of companies rate enthusiasm and passion as important characteristics for employees to have, compared to the 62% who say that potential hires need to have relevant work experience. Additionally, 88% say that candidates who showcase strong work ethic are more likely to be considered for a role.
Between employee perks - free meals, snacks, or entertainment in the workplace - and benefits like healthcare, insurance coverage, training, development opportunities, or bonuses, employees much prefer the latter. However, it seems most firms aren’t providing them with what they want.
The biggest gap in meeting employees’ desired benefits is in training and development opportunities, which only 45% of companies offer despite 85% of workers saying they’re important. A majority of the respondents - 78% of them - also value bonuses, but only 44% of employers offer that benefit.
On top of that, while flexible work schedules have been linked to increased productivity, only 39% of staff work for companies that offer this perk.
The ongoing pandemic has certainly accelerated the digital transformation of companies across various industries, which has made remote working the new normal. So it’s no surprise that 73% of workers also want to have flexible work and leave schedules even when things get back to normal.
The benefits we listed in our survey could be categorized into three different groups: Monetary compensation, welfare benefits, and people. And it seems that depending on the industry an employee is from, they might treasure some benefits over others.
Workers from fintech, ad tech, AI, gaming, and food tech companies indicated that having good monetary compensation at their jobs is more important than having good welfare benefits. On the other hand, those from media, real estate, and health firms prefer good welfare benefits over good monetary compensation.
Grab data scientist Will Ho explains that this could be a result of an increasing demand for specialized roles. LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report found that data scientists, data engineers, AI specialists, and data analysts are among the top most in-demand talent among businesses across several Asian countries. With a growing competition among businesses to hire the best candidates, the average salaries and the availability of monetary compensation increased as well.
When comparing the importance of working with good colleagues and having good monetary compensation, respondents from the media industry said that the former was of greater importance. Working with good colleagues, however, is not as important for employees from the social networking and communications and the logistics and transportation industries, who are more inclined to join a company that provides better monetary compensation.
People from the real estate and health sectors rated good welfare benefits as more important than working with good people, unlike respondents from ecommerce and fintech who made the opposite rating.
Another interesting data point emerged in the survey, showing that respondents in the education tech sector rated all three types of benefits of lower importance compared to respondents in other industries.
This could be attributed to the fact that workers within the edtech sector tend to come from traditional education, where salaries and benefits are significantly less attractive, points out Joice Gumala, who heads online English tutorial service Topica Native. The platform is a unit of. Vietnam-based edtech startup Topica.
She adds that because edtech is still relatively nascent compared to other tech verticals, people who join the scene tend to be keen on becoming “a driving force that shapes its culture, along with its founders.”
As we age, our priorities change - and the same rings true in the workplace, with regard to our perspective on benefits.
One notable finding was that millennial workers aged between 24 and 39 seem to have placed significantly less importance on most benefit types than their younger counterparts. Instead, they put much higher value in companies with a good culture and boss as well as good team members compared to respondents from most other age groups. This could be because millennials typically don’t just work for a paycheck, seeking purpose and development in their careers.
Having good team members, a good culture, a good boss, and access to training and development are universally the top benefits for employees of all ages. However, when we exclude these benefits from the chart, we can see how priorities for other benefits change at different stages of employees’ lives:
Interestingly, younger employees placed the highest priority on healthcare and insurance benefits compared to their older counterparts. This could be due to the fact that younger workers, who’ve only been working for a short time and have not yet saved a significant sum of money, are the most vulnerable to financial trouble if they get sick.
Having a good work-life balance and a flexible work schedule or more leaves of absence are two of the other top priorities for younger employees, possibly because they are at a stage when people typically get married and start having their own families.
Though the importance of benefits overall decreases as the respondents age, the sharpest dip was in whether potential employers provided meals, snacks, and entertainment in the workplace. Having shares and stock options was another benefit that was generally rated as less important, though this could be due to employees’ lack of exposure to a culture of cashing out their employee stock option plan - something that is especially true in developing markets such as Indonesia.
Curiously, the demographic that placed the least importance in share or stock options were the millennials. This could be because they’re at an age when they require more money for short-term expenses, and might not be able to spare the capital to invest in shares or stock options.
Startups, however, might benefit from offering their staff shares in the company. Doing so further encourages and incentivizes employees to work toward the success of the company, as the higher-valued the startup is, the more valuable their shares would be.
However, Nathanael Kitingan, chief legal officer at HR tech firm HReasily, advises startup founders looking to offer an employee stock option plan (ESOP) to first seek advice from others that have taken that step.
But to convince employees to invest in the company, founders must consider what kind of ESOP would be most attractive to their staff. That’s why Kitingan says it’s also vital to consult the company’s accountant and lawyer before doing anything.
With more attention being placed on HR tech, a slew of digital tools has become available in the market. Still, less than 50% of companies we surveyed use such tools for expense claims and reimbursement or clocking employee attendance. Even fewer use online software for activities such as recruitment, performance appraisals, or onboarding and training.
As the pandemic pushes more employees to work from home, over half of workers think companies should look into investing in tools for HR-related activities. More than 75% say that expense claims and reimbursements and attendance tracking should be done via HR software services.
However, tasks that require more of a human touch such as onboarding, employee engagement, and training are not as easy to automate compared to more routine processes. So it makes sense that fewer people want to use software for these activities.
Additionally, more than 80% of employees say that payroll and leave request processes should be moved online, but only about 60% of companies have already done so.
We also asked respondents which software they use at their companies for various HR-related processes. Here are the most popular tools.
What software does your company use for payroll?
What software does your company use for leave request?
What software does your company use for expense claims & reimbursments?
What software does your company use for medical benefits?
What software does your company use for time & attendance?
What software does your company use for recruitment?
What software does your company use for training?
What software does your company use for performance appraisals?
What software does your company use for employee engagement?
What software does your company use for onboarding?
The Covid-19 outbreak has forced several businesses across the region to execute layoffs and pay cuts. Almost 40% of survey respondents said their companies have had to do the same.
Though some businesses have been lucky enough to avoid taking such drastic measures, almost 65% of them have seen revenues drop amid the pandemic, with almost half of them seeing a drop of more than 20% in their revenue. Only 13% said their earnings have remained the same or grown in this period.
But it seems that hiring has not been affected much across the board. According to 70% of respondents, their companies are still hiring this year. However, more than half of them say that they’re facing challenges in finding qualified candidates for open roles.
Despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, it looks like a majority of businesses are stepping up measures to remain relevant and even capitalize on the post-pandemic economy. But these initiatives require skilled workers with a passion for innovation and the right enthusiasm who can thrive in the hustle culture that the startup scene demands.
To attract these people to join them, companies need to showcase that they take care of their staff - be it in the form of better remuneration or attractive benefits that help employees excel in their roles - or else risk losing valuable talent to competitors. On top of that, a majority of workers want employers who trust them to be productive without imposing strict hours - a policy that’s become more popular in today’s work-from-home economy.
However, such a work culture can only be achieved by leveraging tools that empower employees to collaborate with their colleagues remotely while also allowing employers to manage their staff and resources effectively.
Overall, it’s evident that workers think more can be done on the employers’ end to create the ideal working environment that will help businesses come out on top once the pandemic blows over.
Demographic breakdown
Of the 274 survey respondents, 40% are employees who don’t make hiring decisions, while 22% are those that do. Meanwhile, 12% of the responses came from startup founders and 4% came from investors.
Majority of the respondents are between 25 to 34 years old and have been working at their current companies for more than a year. Forty-two percent of them work at companies with less than 200 employees.
The largest group of respondents came from fintech companies, followed by employees in software-as-a-service businesses, the professional services sector, the education industry, and ecommerce companies.
HReasily’s easy-to-use platform enables companies to improve productivity by streamlining work processes such as payroll processing, leave management, and claims applications. Visit its website to learn more about how you can automate your HR management.