This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 25, 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: For the second year in a row, Eco World Development Group Bhd has bagged the Aon Best of the Best Employer award in Malaysia for 2017.

The property developer received the award from global talent consultancy Aon Hewitt yesterday under the Aon Best Employers survey, which is in its 18th year running and is conducted across 14 different markets in the region.

“From day one, we decided to focus on the growth of the team for the growth of the business. It would not have been sustainable if the team didn’t grow faster than the business did,” said Datuk Chang Kim Wah, Eco World chief executive officer (CEO) and president, upon receiving the award.

Among Aon Best Employers for the year were American Express (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Cisco Systems (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, DHL Express Malaysia, FedEx Express, Gerbang Alaf Restaurants Sdn Bhd, OCBC Bank (Malaysia) Bhd, and S P Setia Bhd.

Meanwhile, SkyWorld Development Sdn Bhd received special recognition for the being the best employer for commitment to Gen Y, and Aegis BPO Malaysia Sdn Bhd was rewarded for being the best employer for commitment to engagement.

Best employer for commitment to leadership went to Great Eastern Malaysia, while Pharmaniaga Research Centre Sdn Bhd was named best employer for commitment to Employer brand. Its sister company, Pharmaniaga Logistics Sdn Bhd, was named best employer for commitment to high performance culture.

A common denominator among these high-performing employers is their success in four critical areas of talent management, namely high employment engagement, effective leadership, a compelling employer brand, and high performance culture, according to Prashant Chadha, managing director at Aon Hewitt for Malaysia and Brunei.

Overall engagement levels for the best employers in Malaysia were unchanged from last year at 87%, Aon’s survey found, outdoing the market average of 64%.

However, there was a risk of these engagement scores dropping, Chadha said, as they have hovered below the 60% mark in both Malaysia and Singapore before.

Jeremy Andrulis, Aon’s CEO of Southeast Asia, stressed the need for real-time expectations management between management and employees instead of seeking employee feedback only once in every one or two years.

“Companies should think about their people the same way they approach their clients,” Chadha said yesterday at a press conference following the awards ceremony.

In a panel discussion, Johan Mahmood Merican, deputy director-general for human capital at the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), highlighted the disconnect between positive headline figures and underlying concerns, such as the official unemployment of 3.4% in the second quarter versus an over 10% unemployment rate for workers up to 24-year-olds.

Although it is partially the role of the government to address this, employers also had to invest in this demographic instead of being afraid of spending on employees they may not retain, he said.

The Edge Media Group publisher and CEO Ho Kay Tat, who was also a panellist, highlighted the weaker ringgit as one of the factors that was driving young Malaysians to seek employment opportunities elsewhere, calling for policymakers to address this.

“Once the macro environment is right, everything else will fall into place,” Ho said.

Separately, Andrulis highlighted that it was the role of organisations to communicate their pay philosophy to employees.

“They need to make it clear that rewards are tied to performance and are not an entitlement,” he said.