Reasons That Company Hires Foreign Workers

Companies still hire foreign workers for these reasons.

Have you ever heard of the negative voice & feedback about hiring foreign workers? It was happening from the first rehiring until today which is almost a decade!

No matter how local Malaysians are against hiring foreign workers, there are still a lot of Malaysians who prefer hiring foreign workers.

Let’s dive in and see what are the reasons that local businesses prefer hiring foreign workers over local workers.

1. Control labour cost

In a developing country, payroll expenses are one of the costs that employers will pay attention to because most factories are still depending on manpower heavily.

In this case, an employer will try their best to control manpower between 20-25% [1] but will this affect the efficiency of the production? No! On the contrary, hiring foreign workers do actually help to increase the efficiency of production.[2]

This leads to the second reason why local company likes to hire foreign worker.

2. Increase the efficiency of production

In Malaysia, most foreign workers will send 30-55% of their salary back to their hometowns,  hence, they don’t mind working overtime.[3] The more they work, the more pay they get.

So, to employers, this is a win-win situation. Foreign workers are willing to work overtime, which means it helps to boost the speed of their company’s production, hence, some aggressive employers will take this chance to accept more orders to increase their income.

3. Locals are not willing to accept 3D jobs

During the pandemic, as Malaysians, we truly know that most of the foreign workers went back to their hometowns and were unable to return to Malaysia due to Covid reasons. Hence, most of the 3D works in each industry are facing the same issue- lack of manpower.

During that period,  no matter how high was the unemployment rate, some of the locals rather be unemployed than refuse to work 3D jobs.[4] For your information, 3D jobs mean dirty, dangerous & difficult jobs.[5]

There’s even a situation where local employers increase the wages by 20-30% but there are still no locals are willing to work. This is why local employers love to hire foreign workers because they don’t mind what the job content is.

In conclusion, no matter how many advantages we have by hiring a foreign worker, it is still not easy to hire a foreign worker as the government has set very strict rules on the application process. The process is complicated and you might be facing blacklisted if you accidentally cross the line. So, try to study & understand all the rules before applying or getting help from an agency.