Employee confidence levels soar
HONG KONG EMPLOYEES are beginning to wonder when the party will end and the booming jobs' growth that is driving higher salaries will begin to slow.
The pulse of the workplace was measured by Right Management, a provider of integrated consulting solutions in the employment industry, from June to November last year, and showed that its Career Confidence Index for the city, which was 55.7 out of a perfect score of 100, was slightly down against a rising global trend that had pushed worldwide index to an all-time high of 58.6.
Doug Matthews, executive vice-president, operations, at Right Management, said worker confidence levels had risen in 15 of the 18 countries surveyed.
'It is the highest global Career Confidence Index level in the three years that Right Management has conducted the survey - an increase from 57 last May,' he said.
The survey covered nearly 9,100 workers in 18 countries.
The survey found that Hong Kong employees continued to show increasing confidence in the current conditions, but were wary of what lay in store in the next six months.
According to a survey of 608 full-time workers by Right Management, there was a 6 per cent increase in the Career Confidence Index from 52.5 in November 2005 to 55.7 in November 2006.
In an interesting twist, the survey reported that the number of Hong Kong employees who believed there was a possibility they could lose their job in the next year increased slightly over the six months from May to November 2006 from 16.7 per cent to 21.2 per cent.
This led to a slight drop of 4 per cent in its Career Confidence Index measured over the six-month period.
The picture around the region showed that employees in Japan were once again the most confident workers in the North Asia region. A total of 88 per cent of Japanese workers believed that they were not in danger of losing their jobs in the coming year.
Britain meanwhile, replaced Germany as having the world's most pessimistic workers, captured in the lowest Career Confidence Index of any of the 18 countries surveyed at 45.3 - a steep decline of 13 per cent from an index reading of 52.2 in May last year.
