KUALA LUMPUR — Talent is not necessarily lost because workers are offered higher salaries elsewhere, but because they reach a ceiling in their career, according to former AirAsia Group chief people officer Intan Shahira Mohd Shahru.
She said compensation remained an important baseline for retaining employees, but it was rarely the only factor determining whether experienced talent chose to stay or leave.
“Talent don’t leave countries, talent leave ceilings,” she said at the forum at IEG Campus on September 10.
Intan said employees were increasingly looking at career progression, opportunities to develop, a sense of purpose and the prospects offered by an organisation when deciding whether to remain.
She said organisations therefore needed to look beyond salary packages and consider whether employees could see a clear future within the company.
She cited her own decision to return to Bank Negara Malaysia after working in Thailand as an example of how purpose and national contribution could influence career decisions.
Intan said she had been attracted by the opportunity to contribute to Malaysia's Financial Sector Master Blueprint, demonstrating that professional fulfilment could sometimes outweigh purely financial considerations.
She also highlighted family considerations as another factor influencing talent mobility, particularly for employees taking up opportunities in other countries.
Organisations seeking to attract international talent, she said, should therefore consider relocation support beyond the individual employee, including issues such as housing and schooling for their families.
Taylor's University Programme Coordinator and Senior Lecturer Dr Paul Anthony Maria Das said salary was important in attracting workers but was insufficient to retain them over the long term.
He said employees also needed career growth, job security and confidence that their future prospects would improve within the organisation.
“High salary may attract (talent) for a few years; good opportunities/confidence make people stay,” he said.
Dr Paul said countries also needed to ensure that investment translated into high-value employment and opportunities for local workers, rather than simply bringing capital into the economy.
He said a country could be considered successful in talent competition when skilled people wanted to come, remain and contribute to economic growth.
The issue of talent retention has become increasingly important as workers gain greater mobility, particularly with the expansion of remote and cross-border work.
IDstar chief executive officer Ferdinand Prasetyo said the rise of remote work had enabled Indonesian professionals to work for companies and clients beyond their domestic market, further expanding the pool of opportunities available to skilled workers.
He said organisations would therefore need to compete not only on compensation but also on the quality of the opportunities, working environment and professional development they could offer.
Intan said employers could also learn from the reasons employees gave when resigning.
If an employee cited a salary increase of 30 to 40 per cent as the main reason for leaving, compensation was likely to be the dominant factor, she said.
However, if an employee explained the new organisation, role, reporting structure, team, culture and values in detail without focusing on salary, it could indicate that the decision was driven by career or organisational considerations.
She added that companies should also recognise that retaining every employee was not necessarily the right objective when there was a fundamental mismatch between an individual's values and those of the organisation.
The panellists said the ability to retain talent would ultimately depend on whether employers and countries could create environments where skilled workers could see meaningful long-term opportunities rather than simply higher short-term earnings.