How is the Great Reshuffle driving evolution in Asia-Pacific’s talent market?

How is the Great Reshuffle driving evolution in Asia-Pacific’s talent market?

With the Great Reshuffle in play, there’s a transition underway in workplaces. Talent is prioritising flexibility and fulfilment over pay and benefits. With such a massive mindset shift, 40% of job candidates globally now consider company culture a top priority when picking a job, according to the Global Talent Trends 2022 report. It goes as high as 47% for Australia and New Zealand and 43% for Southeast Asia. Looking at what’s driving this change, work-life balance trumps salaries for job seekers globally, with 63% of professionals saying it is their priority, ahead of pay and benefits (60%).

The shift in expectations poses serious challenges for organisations looking to attract, engage, and retain talent. Because, workplace happiness isn’t just a nice to have; it is a precursor to business success. Understanding how these trends are playing out in the local talent market is key to maintaining a competitive edge. We took a deep dive into our unique data set to establish how attitudes have shifted in the workplace across four key Asia-Pacific markets. Here are the headline findings that are driving the talent markets in Australia, Singapore, India and Southeast Asia.

Employees across Asia-Pacific are looking for more balance in their lives. As the Global Talent Trends 2022 report highlights how through working from home, employees have come to truly value greater flexibility and the payoff this delivers in terms of their overall wellbeing. The emerging trend across the region is that good ‘compensation and benefits’ and the ‘ability to balance professional and private lives’ is fundamental.

Work-life balance topped the list of priorities of when looking at a new employer, for surveyed Australian and New Zealanders. However, people are also recognising the value in professional development, with training the fastest growing priority since COVID-19 began.

Work-life balance was both the top and the fastest growing priority for India’s talent pool, as concerns about the daily commute dropped 10% and people found more time while working from home.

In Singapore and Southeast Asia the past year has shown workers they can be in charge of their own day, as employer autonomy has grown in importance. Excellent compensation and benefits is the top priority overall, followed by an appreciation for balance and strong workplace culture.

The pandemic may have shifted talent’s perspective, but for organisations its supercharged disruption and accelerated digitisation across Asia-Pacific. It’s causing huge spikes in demand for tech talent.

In Singapore, according to Microsoft Asia and IDC report¹ nearly three in four organisations have sped up their digitisation, no doubt this contributed to growing demand for digital talent such as software and full-stack engineers.

The report found India now has the world’s largest and fastest growing app market, which continues to bolster the nation’s surging tech scene. Growing demand for application developers surged, with demand up 52 times in the second quarter of 2021, compared to the same period a year earlier. Demand for Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle specialists grew as the world’s second most populous country transitioned to cloud-based work, according to the IDC.²

It’s a similar story across Southeast Asia, with the region’s fastest growing in-demand role being a software engineer. However, as people increasingly going online for goods and services, there is also growing demand for customer service representatives who can help consumers find what they need. This is particularly true in the Philippines, as it recovers its position as a global leader in business processing outsourcing (BPO).³

Australia’s tech sector is hiring, according to Deloitte, with skilled workers reaching a new peak of more than 805,525 and the sector tipped to grow to more than 1.1 million within five years.⁴ However, topping Australia’s most in demand job was teachers. This likely reflects not only a supply shortage, particularly for STEM subjects,⁵ but the need for more teachers to tutor students who need extra help after extended lockdowns.

The Great Reshuffle is an unprecedented moment in the history of work. However, HR teams who champion talent have huge opportunities to help people unlock new passions and drive workplace success. LinkedIn’s Talent Insights helps HR teams benchmark the organisation’s skills and spot any gaps in the talent pool.

With 59% learning and development professionals citing reskilling and upskilling as their top priority, it is critical to unlock the new strategic potential of an organisation’s HR team by investing in areas where there is increased demand, such as reskilling and upskilling. LinkedIn Learning can help employees find courses such as technology courses to keep their skills up to speed and contribute to the growth of the organisation.

To succeed in the present state of the talent market, an organisation needs to engage employees with trust and empathy to discover new working models, cultures, and company values. Ultimately, it will require more dialogue between employers and employees to drive the best answers and bring people along as part of the process. But with the right principles and tools in place, the sky's the limit for leaders who can seize the opportunities the Great Reshuffle offers. HR teams looking to engage their workforce can use Glint to enable the hybrid workforce and achieve a successful cultural transformation.