Employees planning to use bonus as travel funds
Nearly 60% of employees in Hong Kong are expecting a year-end bonus that they can save or use as travel funds, according to a new survey from the Standard Chartered Bank Ltd.
The poll, which surveyed about 850 employees in Hong Kong, was carried out to understand the salary and financial conditions of workers in the financial hub.
Its findings revealed that 44% of employees who are anticipating a bonus expect that it will be worth at least one month's salary or more.
When asked where they plan to use it, 90% of the respondents said they plan to save part of their year-end bonus.
Another 32%, however, plan to use their bonuses for travel, which the report discovered is a major stress-relieving activity for many employees in Hong Kong.
In fact, the report found that 46% of the respondents travel two to three times a year, while 13% travel more than four times a year.
More than half of the respondents (51%) said they spend 11% to 50% of their monthly salary per trip, according to the report. Others spend:
The findings come as an earlier report from the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management found that 37.2% of employers have guaranteed bonus schemes for staff this year.
The average amount of the guaranteed bonus was 1.00 month's base pay, slightly lower than the 1.04 months in the previous year, according to the report.
On the other hand, the report found that 83.9% of employers have offered non-guaranteed bonuses to their employees. The average size of the bonus was 1.23 months of base pay, slightly lower than the 1.29 months offered a year ago.
However, the size also varied depending on the employee's level in the organisation. Top-level staff received 3.15 months of base pay, while others received:
