Conducted by the HKIHRM from March to April 2021, the January 2021 Pay Trend Survey covered 70 companies and a total of 100,300 full-time employees.

An overview of pay adjustments

Among the 31 companies who responded to the survey, 61.3% had overall positive adjustment while 35.5% had overall zero adjustment. Only 3.2% resorted to overall negative adjustment. Among the 30,575 full-time employees, 50.5% of them received positive pay adjustment while the rest got zero pay adjustment.

Pay adjustments by employee level

The weighted average of total pay adjustment was 1.1%, reflecting employers’ reticent approach in a slowly reviving economy. At 0.4%, the total salary adjustment for top employee level was the lowest, suggesting the C-Suite’s willingness to have a lesser salary raise to navigate the new normal with their workforce. The total pay adjustments for senior, middle, and general employee levels were 1.3%, 1.3%, and 1.1% respectively. 

Pay adjustments by size of company

In terms of company size, the weighted average of total pay adjustments for large, medium, and small companies were 1.1%, 1.0%, and 1.2% respectively. This showed that no matter what the company size, organisations tended to mildly adjust salary in times of COVID-19.

Pay adjustment for local and multinational companies

The weighted average of total pay adjustment for multinational organisations was 1.8%, almost 1% higher than local organisations’ figure of 0.9%.

Non-guaranteed bonus

Among 48 companies who responded to the survey, the weighted average of nonguaranteed bonus paid in January/February for all employees was 1.77 months of pay. The weighted average of non-guaranteed bonus paid in January/February for top, senior, middle, and general employee levels were 6.43, 2.63, 1.95, and 1.23 months of pay respectively. This refl ected the vast discrepancy in non-guaranteed bonus paid between the C-suite and staff at other ranks.

Pay adjustment forecast

Among the organisations which provided budget adjustments for February to October 2021, which covered a total of 17,650 employees, 15.8% of them stated that they would implement a pay freeze. The forecasted overall average pay adjustment stood at 1.9%.

Business and manpower outlook

Among the organisations which responded to the question on business outlook, 16.2% forecasted that their business would take a turn for the worse. Slightly more than a third of the companies expected their business performance to stay the same as last year. 

Only 14.7% of the organisations had hiring increase in the pipeline while more than half would freeze or cut headcount this year. For the companies who intended to reduce hiring, almost 90% would restructure or rearrange manpower while 75% harboured no intention to replace the reduced headcount.