KUALA LUMPUR: More women are holding management positions in Malaysia this year, with the country overtaking Hong Kong and Singapore for the first time, recruitment firm Hays said, ahead of International Women’s Day this Sunday.
The 2015 Hays Asia Salary Guide revealed that 34% of management positions in Malaysia are held by women, up 5% from last year and higher than the Asian average of 29%.
Malaysia ranks second to China (36%), which remains the region’s diversity leader, and is followed by Hong Kong (31%, down from 33% last year), and Singapore (27%, unchanged year-on-year), while Japan only has 19% of its management positions filled by women, Hays said in a statement yesterday.
“Malaysia has taken a big step forward when it comes to gender diversity in the workplace,” the firm said in the statement.
Christine Wright, managing director of Hays in Asia, said more workplaces need to embrace flexible working practices, highlight female role models, change organisational policy in support of gender diversity and give better board backing for diversity issues.
“Interestingly, the dialogue about how to achieve gender diversity in the upper echelons of management has turned away from quotas, with most people now saying that implementing quotas would not make real change happen.
“Instead, cultural change and practical measures are the agreed solution over formal quotas,” said Wright in the statement.
She said one of the best practical measures was to put performance-related promotion policies in place as this would ensure people will be promoted based on their performance alone, encourage meritocracy and remove unconscious bias from the decision-making process.
The guide also revealed that Malaysia had seen “impressive salary increases”, compared with the more moderate pay rise in Hong Kong and Singapore.
A total of 48% of employers in Malaysia increased salaries by 3% to 6% compared with the last review, 31% increased wages by 6% to 10%, and 9% of employers raised by more than 10%, the guide revealed.
Hays said 2,361 organisations representing 4,017,026 employees took part in its survey. — The Malaysian Insider
This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on March 3, 2015.