No wage issue as workforce stays competitive
By
Isabelle Chan, ZDNet Asia
Friday, November 23 2007 12:26 PM
Singapore's IT workforce may not have the numbers to match neighbors like India and China, but its quality talent more than makes up for it.
Industry observers also say Singapore's IT talent, which rank among the highest paid in Asia, will not lose their competitiveness in the wake of rising salaries.
Tan Yen Yen, managing director of Hewlett-Packard Singapore, calls the island-state "a high value-add destination".
"Companies realize this and turn to the republic not for cheap labor, but for innovative skill-sets that are hard to replicate elsewhere in the region. For example, research and innovation here are top notch, and so it management expertise," Tan noted.
Developed markets like Singapore offer world-class IT talent, she added. "From a broader perspective, these IT professionals generally provide good value for the salaries they command. Besides being highly qualified, the Singapore IT workforce is reputed to possess broad industry knowledge and relevant skill sets.
"Companies turn to the republic not for cheap labor, but for innovative skill-sets that are hard to replicate elsewhere in the region."
-- Tan Yen Yen, Hewlett-Packard
"Being stationed in a regional IT hub also means that many of them have hands-on exposure to the latest technologies from around the world. Singapore workers have proven to be adept at incorporating such new-found knowledge in their everyday work," Tan added.
HP, which employs over 6,000 people in Singapore, is "willing to pay a premium for Singapore workers' hardworking disposition, positive attitude, dedication to the task at hand, and in the case of foreign talents, their diverse experience", she said.
Weighing in on wages
According to Hudson's fourth-quarter report on employment trends, hiring expectations across industries, including IT and telecommunications, remain steady. In its survey of 723 respondents in Singapore, 54 percent forecast increased headcount, the same percentage as the previous quarter.
In terms of recruitment expectations for the IT and telecommunications sector, 51 percent said they plan to increase their headcount, which is slightly lower than the previous quarter's 54 percent. One reason for this is that companies have been recruiting heavily to staff new global and regional IT hubs in Singapore and are now starting to consolidate, the Hudson report noted.
Low average employee tenure is a major issue for employers in the current candidate-scarce market. Across all sectors, 36 percent--or more than one-third of employees--have an average tenure of two years or less, while just 19 percent of staff stay with their company for more than four years.
Hudson's survey found that across sectors, many companies are using counter offers to retain staff: 71 percent of respondents said they employed such tactics.
Singapore also has a higher proportion of respondents who "often" or "very often" receive demands for higher salaries than their companies are willing to pay, compared to any other market surveyed in Asia. There is a big gap in salary expectations: 57 percent say candidates are asking for more than 10 percent above the salaries they are offering.
Although rising wages is a concern for businesses, Arcol Desai Narasimhalu, a council member of Singapore Computer Society, said it should not be discussed in isolation.
"The experiences and discussions with employers indicate that the Singapore workforce is highly productive and well trained," Desai explained. "While absolute wages might be lower in other countries, Singapore is still competitive if one takes into account normalized wages."
Sharing a recent discussion he had with the CIO of a large investment bank that has operations in neighboring countries, he said: "He mentioned that he finds Singapore-based ICT professionals to be very competitive and productive in comparison with elsewhere."
Indeed, quality work is what employers are assured of, said Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).
An IDA spokesperson told ZDNet Asia: "While cost of labor is an important investment decision, it is, however, not the only consideration. Singapore's infocomm manpower is competitive in terms of its pool of highly-educated infocomm professionals who are also more experienced.
"For instance, in 2006, more than 83 percent of Singapore's 119,700 talent pool received tertiary education. Close to 50 percent of this talent pool is in the age group of 30 to 39 years old, indicating that more infocomm manpower is staying in the profession, and gaining greater experience," she added.
According to Desai, it is not the absolute rise in salaries that should be of concern to Singapore employers. "The key concern would be whether the ICT professionals in Singapore have been retooling themselves to keep abreast of market demands," he said.
Get RSS feeds
