KUALA LUMPUR (May 24): Employers in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia continue to ignore the importance of work-life balance as employee preference for it rises to the highest level in years, according to a survey by recruitment firm Randstad.

In a statement today, Randstad said the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2017 revealed that the importance of work-life balance has continued to rise to become one of the most important attractiveness factors in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Despite this, it said employers in all three markets performed so poorly in the aspect of work-life balance that the factor ended close to the bottom of the ranking.

Randstad said the ranking also revealed that employers scored the highest in financial health and good reputation.

It said while potential employees considered the financial health of the company to be fairly important, good reputation was not much of a priority, further highlighting the gap between employers and employees.

It said that pleasant work atmosphere was also found to have a gap in expectations between employees and employers. The attractiveness factor ranked fairly highly with employees, however, employers scored poorly in this area – just one position higher than work-life balance.

Randstad Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia managing director Michael Smith said the results revealed by this year’s Randstad Employer Brand Research were far from being encouraging.

“It’s widely known that work-life balance has become highly important for employees of all demographics; our research just reaffirms and measures that attribute.

“Whether organisations are resting their laurels on being financially healthy and having a strong reputation, or whether their current work-life balance initiatives are not strong enough, it’s clear that employer branding efforts need to be very carefully re-examined.

“The stakes are high for these organisations. By not addressing the evolving wants and needs of employees, they risk losing the very talent that helped them build their strong reputations and financial health,” said Smith.

The Randstad Employer Brand Award, previously known as the Randstad Awards, is presented each year to the most attractive employer in 26 countries across the globe.

It is based on the outcome of one of the world’s most representative and inclusive research into employer branding, covering over 160,000 global respondents.

The 75 largest companies are selected in each participating country, usually with more than 1,000 employees.

This list is presented to a representative cross section of relevant respondents based on region, age, education and gender.

In Singapore and Hong Kong, over 5,000 employees and job-seekers between the ages of 18-65 were surveyed.

In Malaysia, over 4,500 were surveyed.