Nearly 20 percent of Taiwanese businesses will not give year-end bonuses this year because of the global financial crisis, with businesses planning to hand out bonuses equal to 1.08 months of salary on average, down 30 percent from a year earlier, a survey released yesterday showed.
“The percentage of companies skipping year-end bonuses this year is at an all time high,” said Monica Chiu (邱文仁), marketing director of online human resource agency 104 Job Bank (104 人力銀行).
Among those companies that plan to hand out year-end bonuses are the finance and insurance sectors, which despite being the first to be hit by the financial storm, still ranked first with an average bonus worth 1.93 months’ of salary, but this is a big cut compared with bonuses of up to 2.6 months last year, Chiu said.
The information and technology (IT) industry, which has been in the spotlight recently as a string of local companies have announced large-scale job and pay cuts to reduce costs, ranked second with bonuses of 1.15 months’ salary, while the construction and real estate sector came in third with 1.11 months of salary in year-end bonuses.
The wholesale and retail sector was fourth, with a 1.05 months salary bonus payment, and the manufacturing sector ranked fifth with 1.04 months of salary as a bones, the survey showed.
In addition to year-end bonuses, 48 percent of companies polled said they would still host year-end dinner parties this year despite the economic downturn, whereas 21.4 percent of firms had already informed their employees that there would be no dinner party this year.
The two primary reasons businesses made the cuts are poor sales performance, said 43 percent of respondents, and the impact of the global financial crisis, said 37.5 percent of those surveyed, Chiu said.
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