KUALA LUMPUR: A survey on employee experience has found that Malaysian employees have become less engaged at work over the last 12 months.
The Qualtrics' 2024 employee experience trends report has revealed that indicators of an optimal employee experience in Malaysia have fallen over the last 12 months as hybrid work arrangement evolve.
Based on responses from nearly 37,000 employees globally, including more than 500 from Malaysia, all leading employee experience indicators have declined from 2023.
Employee engagement fell to 76 per cent in 2024 from 82 per cent in 2023, experience exceeding employee expectations was down to 47 per cent versus 58 per cent, intent to stay to 76 per cent versus 82 per cent in 2023, inclusion to 82 per cent vs 87 per cent, and well-being to 75 per cent vs 84 per cent in 2023.
This trend is reflected across Southeast Asia, highlighting the need for organisations to re-focus towards people-centricity.
Qualtrics XM Institute Principal XM catalyst Dr. Cecelia Herbert said as economies focus on improving productivity, employee experience is one of the most important levers to prioritise.
"Organisations that maintain their people-centric focus, and effectively enable their teams to do great work, will be the standout performers in years to come," she said.
The research shows that Malaysian employees prefer spending two to four days in office as compared with working fully remote or fully in office.
Employees in hybrid working arrangements have the highest levels of engagement (76 per cent) and feelings of inclusion (73 per cent) and intent to stay three years or longer (62 per cent).
On the other hand, people who were completely remote reported the highest levels of well-being (75 per cent) and that their experience had exceeded their expectations (39 per cent).
This year, AI accessibility has increased dramatically, with programmes like ChatGPT and Midjourney receiving a lot of attention.
With 45 per cent of respondents saying they are open to having AI assist them at work (compared to 42 per cent globally), the percentage of Malaysian workers who are open to accepting AI in the workplace is slightly higher than the global average.
Workers are more comfortable with AI in the workplace when they have a sense of control over it, such as for writing tasks, as a personal assistant, and contacting support functions.
However they are less in favour of receiving education from an AI Bot (37 per cent) or having their performance appraised by AI (26 per cent).
However, in contrast to the back-office employees, frontline staff members, such as cashiers, feel their fundamental needs for compensation and benefits are not being met, they lack support to effectively do their job, but don't feel they can propose changes to the way things are done.
Now, the new job first-year honeymoon phase has vanished as new hires in Malaysia with less than six months tenure now have lower levels of engagement (68 per cent), intent to stay (35 per cent), well-being (59 per cent), and inclusion (56 cent) compared with more tenured employees.
According to the research, the first few months of a new position are crucial for developing devoted and loyal employees. However, just 41 per cent of HR directors emphasise onboarding new hires to ensure their full integration.
Today's employees (66 per cent) are comfortable with their employer listening passively to work emails, work processes like interview notes, virtual meeting transcripts, and chat messages to improve their experience.