Hiring picks up across APAC as businesses adapt recruitment plans

Despite continued headcount freezes and reductions, job vacancies and job placements at PageGroup have been rising steadily month on month since Q3 last year.

The new Michael Page Talent Trends 2021 report, which compiled the responses of over 5,500 businesses and 21,000 employees across APAC, revealed that while some employers were choosing to consolidate to protect the shape of their business in the short-term, many remain focused on attracting talented people to allow for future growth.

During an interview with the BBC Asia Business Report, Sharmini Wainwright, Senior Managing Director NSW at PageGroup said that optimism was returning to the region, with more than 42% of surveyed companies looking to increase their headcount in 2021.

“Mainland China saw the deepest cut in terms of the active number of jobs we were working on in the professional space. Interestingly, when we fast-forward a couple of months to the end of [last] year, Mainland China is now in the strongest position – and is the sharpest recovery we have seen,” Wainwright revealed.

“The recovery phase typically takes between three to five years but there is almost a nice climb that [businesses] are able to achieve every year.

“We focus on the professional space in terms of the labour market and what we expect is a new year’s turn, which means a lot of organisations naturally start to move towards optimism. Also, many of them have been very tight in the amount of resources that they have had – so one individual covering roles for other individuals, and that can only last for so long.”

Sharmini Wainwright, Senior Managing Director NSW at PageGroup interviewed on BBC Asia Business Report.

Anthony Thompson, Regional Managing Director, Asia Pacific at PageGroup, added that businesses across APAC were adapting their recruitment plans during the pandemic, rather than waiting it out and potentially missing out on key talent.

As a result of this strategy, hiring levels are picking up again.

“A reduced rate of hiring does not necessarily mean that businesses are shutting their doors to qualified talent altogether. At no point in 2020 did we see that,” Thompson explained.

“We saw very positive trends upward from Q2 to Q3, and Q4 versus Q3.

“We are not back to levels that we would consider to be ‘normal’ but it is getting closer and closer each month – operating at 85% to 90% in most cases.”

Thompson said that in some larger markets, such as Japan and China, PageGroup experienced growth in hiring activities toward the end of 2020, compared to 2019, which was highly encouraging.

“We expect the positive trends to gradually continue across the region as a whole,” he added.

“While it is clear that the impact of COVID-19 is not disappearing imminently, most companies in most markets have adapted. And rather than wait for the situation to be completely resolved, they have been making hiring decisions and executing business plans for the future.”

He said optimism certainly exists for APAC’s job market this year, as 42% of surveyed businesses revealed they were already looking to increase headcount.

Hiring trends in Malaysia

When it came to Malaysian companies, Talent Trends 2021 found 27% were looking to increase headcount in 2021. This comes as several reports and economic data confirm that Malaysia is slowly but surely making a comeback.

According to the World Bank, Malaysia’s economy contracted by as much as 5.8% in 2020. Mobility restrictions, social distancing measures and border closures caused private consumption and services exports to shrink dramatically. Aside from manufacturing, which maintained a relatively good shape in 2020, all economic sectors in Malaysia registered declines in the fourth quarter due to subdued private consumption and weaker public investment. The resurgence of the virus in late 2020 deepened the recession as well.

With that said, World Bank also reported that Malaysia is already looking to bounce back in 2021 — a rebound of 6.7% to be exact. Part of this has to do with fiscal measures, like cash transfers and wage subsidies, which have boosted household spending. Furthermore, with the third wave of the pandemic under control and vaccine distribution just starting to come online in the country, Malaysia could be looking at a faster-than-expected recovery in consumer demand, greater investor confidence, as well as a more robust recovery in domestic economic activity.

When asked about Malaysia’s economic outlook, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the Economy, said, “Seizing new growth opportunities and overcoming potentially long-lasting challenges brought on by the COVID-19 crisis will necessitate bold structural reforms in the medium term. Malaysia needs to take advantage of its recovery from this crisis to emerge as a more durable and inclusive economy in a structurally different post-pandemic future.”

The Talent Trends 21 report provides insights into what businesses and employees experienced in 2020, practical learnings and what is expected in 2021 including salary expectations. Click the image below to download the full report.