A recent survey by Randstad Hong Kong found that 63 percent of Hong Kong businesses are still proceeding with plans to hire for replacement and critical roles, despite business disruption and fears of restructuring. However, this does not mean that they will be maintaining or increasing their headcount, let alone maintaining salaries and benefits. A third of survey respondents said they have parked headcount growth until the economy improves; 13 percent said they might be applying salary adjustments, bonus suspensions, and other measures to mitigate anticipated losses.

The overwhelming majority of businesses have also taken measures to protect their employees, with 65 percent of respondents saying they are allowing employees to work from home, 22 percent having introduced shift or split team arrangements to minimize the number of people in the workplace at a given time, and four percent actually allowing employees to leave work earlier to avoid peak commuting hours.

However, this does not seem likely to lead to increased remote work in Hong Kong in the long term. 44 percent of businesses said they already offer remote working options: so this is nothing new to them. Another 24 percent said it is only temporary and they have no plans to offer the option once the Covid-19 outbreak ends. Furthermore, only a tiny minority, eight percent of businesses, are actually equipped to support remote work right now.

Then, there is the 25 percent of businesses that have completely frozen hiring or parked their headcount indefinitely. Although the survey results do not break down respondents by industry, it’s easy to guess that these businesses are most likely from the retail, consumer, and hospitality industries, which were already seriously affected by the past year of civil unrest and are now looking at still worse conditions. Whether some of these businesses will even survive the coronavirus outbreak to hire again is still in the balance.