Urgent need to act now or risk losing competetive advantage
It’s an employer’s market now and their desire for multi-skilled marketing and creative staff has emerged as a new trend in the latest annual Aquent Asia Pacific salary survey, ‘The Aquent Orange Book’. Aquent Malaysia finally unveiled the findings of The Aquent Orange Book 2008-2009. The survey highlighted that across the region, the top challenges facing the marketing, communications and creative industries are skills shortages, high turnover rates, escalating salaries and competition from overseas. This has resulted in a rising demand for contract positions and a need for companies to implement innovative retention strategies.
The survey was carried out in Q12008 and the regional executive search firm used four languages and surveyed eight countries (18 cities). Participation was initiated by email between 23 January and 21 February 2008, with up to four reminder notifications between 6 February and 18 March 2008. Responses were cut off for final editing, cleansing and tabulation on 28 March 2008, with a total of 5,047 valid survey returns (a 13.8 percent completion rate) compared with 3,931 (7.7% completion rate) during the previous survey.
Increasing demand for skilled talent and contract workers
There is a huge resource gap faced by the marketing, communications and creative industries, especially in the fields of digital media and integrated marketing. With skilled talent in short supply, the search has expanded beyond the local talent pool to include qualified candidates from across Asia,” said Steven Pang, Regional Director, Asia, Aquent. “Recent trends indicate that employers are increasingly on the look-out for skilled personnel who are willing to take on contract positions. Experienced contract staff can meet short-term requirements like seasonal peak periods, new and additional projects, unpredicted workloads and critical stages in project cycles,” said Pang. The report explained that more than 30% of the companies surveyed intend to increase freelance/temporary/contract staff in the coming year to meet demand. Employers in Korea (55%) are the most prepared to use a flexible workforce in the year ahead, followed by Singapore (46%), China (43%) and Malaysia (42%). The rates for the other markets are 29% for Taiwan, 28% for New Zealand and 21% for Japan.
Setting industry best practices to retain top talent
The Aquent Orange Book 2008-2009 highlights that the creative industry in Malaysia has a high staff-turnover; with 68% of respondents indicating that they had changed jobs at least once in the last two years. Advertising agency account management (31%) and creative departments in digital agencies (28%) recorded the highest staff-turnover rates. Malaysian companies, who have succeeded in maintaining a staff-turnover of 10% and less, strategically focus on developing retention strategies that set or reflect industry best-practices. These companies invest in their staff and offer their employees career development programmes (81%), external training (67%) and internal company training (52%). “Robust retention schemes and added benefits can help companies hold on to star performers. With the current economic climate, employees do not expect dramatic salary increments. Top talent are less likely to explore new roles if they are presented with opportunities for professional development,” said Priya Bala, Area Manager, Kuala Lumpur, Aquent. Bala cautions however “in examining retention strategies, remember that women generally have different priorities from men. Bear in mind that basically, what most women want are flexible work practices in order to have greater work-life balance. This is the most important retention strategy that companies need to invest into to keep their top female performers.”
What Lies Ahead
Malaysia will continue to see a rising demand for experienced talent in the PR/communications, digital and advertising industries throughout 2009. The digital agency sector is expected to present the highest number of job opportunities, with 92% of companies surveyed expecting to increase its head-count in 2009. The report further disclose that new and innovative digital communications technologies have revolutionised the creative industry. There is demand for people in the digital media arena and those able to integrate digital into the overall marketing mix. Pang added that new media and digital are among the sectors where demand for experienced and talented staff is most acute. Social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook are becoming increasingly popular (4%, 5%), although still not as widely used as more traditional strategies.
The Report
‘The Aquent Orange Book provides salary information for hundreds of staff categories and includes detailed statistics on revenue growth, staff turnover, retention strategies, salary increase percentages, and forecasts on permanent and contract hiring trends. It is a valuable management tool for any decision-maker operating in the marketing, communications and creative sectors.