James Kon
The Manpower Planning and Employment Council (MPEC), with the support of the Labour Department recently launched the first series of salary guidelines for the private sector.
The Salary Guideline is a recommendation of minimum salary scales for selected job positions as per the job levels that can be used by employers to develop competitive salary packages to attract local Bruneians to work in the private sector and for local job seekers or employees to determine their market value at the starting point of their careers.
There are 22 job families comprising 100 job positions identified in the guideline and developed based on the industry’s demand. These jobs are in logistics, customer care, administration, information technology, culinary, retail, finance, tourism, cleaning services, hospitality, teaching and the energy sector.
The methodology for the salary analysis of the Salary Guideline was derived through extensive analysis using business reporting data as of September 2020 with 114,865 employees as the sample population, while the methodology for job description was derived from a sample of 13,371 positions compiled from the JobCentre Brunei portal as of January 2020.
The development of the Salary Guideline by the MPEC is a significant first step towards ensuring local jobseekers and employees receive salaries that are suitable to their skills and productivity at each level of the career ladder.
VALUE OF WORKERS
Although the guideline is not yet the official government policy, the private sector is called to follow its recommendations.
At the launching ceremony of the guidelines, Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mohd Amin Liew bin Abdullah, who was also the MPEC Chairman, said human assets differentiate an organisation from its competitors and that it is only natural for employees to be provided with fair compensation, labour market security, as well as a decent working environment to further stimulate their performance.
He underlined the importance of manpower, especially those who helped businesses to remain open during times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The minister urged private sector employers to utilise the salary guidelines in exercising best practices in developing competitive salary packages to attract and retain potential employees.
The minister also called for the Chambers of Commerce to encourage members to use the salary guideline as it can provide value to both employers and employees to promote the nation’s growth and productivity.
The guidelines are also intended to complement and support the development of other key manpower policies such as the localisation ratio and other wage standardisation mechanisms, he said.
This can assist companies and local employees in the private sector to exercise best practices in human resource management.
The Salary Guideline can be found at https://www.mpec.gov.bn/.
