Hong Kong currently holds a very high value of being an expat friendly city, catering to a rough estimate of 3.1 million people as of 2018. However, this is a very hard status to maintain for the city as changes are coming about in terms of the kind of labour force Hong Kong will face in the projected years to come.
In terms of a company’s ESG requirements and data collection, they will start to see changes in the social aspect of their ESG reporting. While factors such as age, gender and ethnic diversity are often overlooked in the a company’s hiring process, in the future it will become imperative for companies to disclose their employee demographics and here are a few key pointers the companies should keep an eye out for:
- Language barriers– Currently only 1 in 5 jobs are advertised to non-chinese speakers, making it less attractive to foreign workers to come to Hong Kong, especially if they cannot speak mandarin too. While Hong Kong still remains a city with one of the longest working hours in the world, this has previously not discouraged foreign workers. However, language poses a greater barrier in which it may affect the current expat-friendly HK boasts of.
2. Women leadership– In keeping in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), gender equality in the workplace will have to be a long term target for business aiming to better comply to ESG regulations. However, in Hong Kong, women leadership in the corporate sector has remained stagnant over the past decade. Reasons for this vary from company to company, but businesses should start to rethinking their strategy by not only offering maternity, but perhaps even paternity leave so that women do not have to stay too long out of work upon childbirth, hindering their chances of making it to the top.
3. Age discrimination- Millennials are said to be the future of Asia, a study done by Accenture projected that Asia will host 60% of millennials by 2020. At the same time companies will need to deal with aging Hong Kong professionals by either age diversifying their company or find a role to fit in older workers such as with mentoring jobs and strike a balance between the aging and millennials.
Overall we see that Hong Kong’s labour landscape is rapidly changing and businesses must start to account for these dynamic factors that could reshape their company HR strategy and overall business plan. If a business aims to be more ESG friendly, they will have to try their best to reduce language barriers, have better inclusivity of minority groups and find a middle groups between such diverse age groups.
