If you're a Malaysian who's working in a professional work environment, you're probably frustrated with how much you're getting paid for your efforts in the office.
And chances are, your colleagues are just as frustrated as you are.
Well Malaysians, that's because in the words of the classic teen flick High School Musical, "we're all in this together." Literally.
Because according to the 2020 Hays Asia Salary Guide, Malaysian employees are the least satisfied with their pay among the employees polled in Asia.
It's not that bad... Right?
International recruiting agency Hays recently published the results of their study into the lives of around 6,000 working professionals within Hays' five Asian markets: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The survey found that despite having high expected salary changes, many employees ultimately received much lower increases.
It's also worrying considering that more companies aren't planning to give increments to their employees in 2020, a percentage that has more than doubled from 6 percent in 2017 to 17 percent in 2019.
The highest number of employees who asked for but did not receive a pay raise were from Malaysia (24 percent), followed by Singapore (19 percent), according to the report.
And of course, Malaysian employees were also the least likely to be offered any increments at 20 percent, followed by Singaporean employees at 19 percent.
But thankfully, "Most candidates are unperturbed, however, and still remain steady in their expectations for increments in the coming year," the guide read.
Malaysians are also the most likely to search for new positions.
The 2020 guide also found that more employees are actively searching for better, newer positions.
Malaysian employees were the most open to new roles at 52 percent. In comparison, employees from Hong Kong were the opposite and were the most closed to searching for new roles at 24 percent.
According to the guide, the main reasons why employees search for new positions have remained the same since 2016: Salary or benefit packages (62 percent), seeking new challengers (48 percent), and lack of career progression (45 percent).
So what can you do as a working professional?
Thankfully, the guide also gave some solutions to anyone who might be searching for new job prospects or are just looking to gain an additional skill to boost their chances of opening new doors.
While hard skills are still highly sought after in the market, employers are also now emphasizing the need for soft skills with 44 percent saying that psychological and emotional competency are what they really need.
In case you're unaware, soft skills refer to an employee's personal attributes such as etiquette and their ability to communicate and listen, while hard skills refer to teachable things such knowing programming codes and being able to speak multiple languages.
Best of luck to those currently on the hunt for a new position! And to Malaysians, let's continue working hard for that raise.
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Cover image sourced from Free Malaysia Today and the Malay Mail.
