Singapore Companies Impose Hiring, Wage Freeze Amidst COVID-19

As the cases of Covid-19 continue to grow in Singapore, companies are struggling with the financial impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

This, in turn, can affect workers as some companies take measures such as salary or hiring freezes.

A salary freeze occurs when a company stops paying wage increases to employees for a period of time to address financial constraints. A hiring freeze also means that a company temporarily hires all nonessential hires to reduce costs.

Temasek investments

Photo credit: BloombergQuint

All Temasek Holdings employees will not see any salary increases during the company's upcoming compensation in April.

The state investor announced on Tuesday (February 25) a company-wide freeze including increases in promotions.

Temasek's management can voluntarily reduce the wages of the managing directors by up to 5 percent.

In addition, they will partially cut their annual bonuses this year.

Temasek will adjust every voluntary wage cut dollar for dollar. This amount, along with the budget originally earmarked for salary increases, will be donated to the company's voluntary T-Touch employee initiative.

Singapore Airlines

Photo credit: The Telegraph

Aviation is one of the most directly affected industries during the Covid-19 outbreak, and demand for air travel in Asia is particularly hard hit.

Goh Choon Pong, Chief Executive Officer of Singapore Airlines (SIA), told employees that the group – consisting of SIA, SilkAir and Scoot – temporarily suspended more than 3,000 flights, or 9.9 percent of all scheduled flights, from February to late May ,

The flight cuts left SIA with more than 500 flight attendants and more than 50 pilots.

In response, SIA has frozen employee hiring for "all floor positions" and is considering additional measures, such as asking employees to take voluntary unpaid leave if the situation worsens.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and will be crucial in implementing any additional measures that may be required. However, we will not do anything that affects SIA Group's long-term competitiveness, ”said the company.

On the other hand, Goh said SIA would work with tourism agencies to "aggressively increase sales and jointly promote air traffic to and through Singapore" to increase the group's sales.

CapitaLand

Photo credit: CapitaLand

The real estate developer CapitaLand freezes the salaries of all employees at management level and above.

In addition, as of April, the company's board members and senior management will cut salaries by 5 to 15 percent to "demonstrate togetherness and solidarity with stakeholders."

Singapore executives will also receive part of their CapitaVouchers compensation totaling S $ 2 million in coupons.

This aims to provide more support to CapitaLand's retail partners in addition to relief measures such as rental discounts and marketing support.

CapitaLand said it would review these measures in six months or when the circumstances around Covid-19 stabilized.

Expect salary and attitude freeze

Further salary and hiring freezes are likely to occur in the coming months.

Similar methods were used by companies during the Sars epidemic in 2003 and the global financial crisis in 2008.

We will continue to update this article as new announcements are released.

Selected image source: BloombergQuint, Daily Mail, Nikkei Asian Review