Best employers in Asia

JAKARTA (JP): Malaysia and China dominated the list of the top 20 best employers in Asia, each with five companies, according to a recent survey conducted by human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates.

Surprisingly, a company from Indonesia, PT Elegant Textile Industry, was voted the fifth-best employer after The Portman Ritz-Carlton, Shanghai, Agilent Technologies and The Ritz-Carlton Millenia, both in Singapore, and Western Digital, Malaysia.

The survey, which covered 355 companies from eight Asian countries, was based on interviews and questionnaires with 92,000 employees and presidents and human resources professionals.

It also selected the best employers in each of the countries studied and singled out the five best companies in Indonesia: Elegant Textile, Bogasari Flour Mills, Indofood Sukses Makmur, Toyota-Astra Motor and the Texmaco Group.

Hewitt said in a statement here that the survey found that being a good employer means a great deal and that a happy workforce rewards a company through better profits, higher productivity and lower employee turnover.

The study also concluded that the 1997 economic crisis in East Asia seemed to have come as a wake-up call for companies to start rethinking their employee relations. (vin)