To help companies building and counting their positive brand recognition in the market, the Myanmar Employer Awards program (powered by JobNet.com.mm) conducted a public opinion poll survey in late 2019. The survey results from over 10,000 respondents uncovered the top three reasons why people selected their favorite choice of companies in Myanmar that they’d define as a great place to work.

Key findings:

• Employees selected companies based on the career opportunities, benefits and salary packages, the quality of a company’s products/services, training and development programs, working environment conditions, and professional skills of employees
• People’s preferred choices of the companies in Myanmar came largely from Beverage, Telecommunication and Retail industries
• The survey data provided employers insights to evaluate best places to work in Myanmar and to build brand awareness through the mind of job seekers

From the survey responders, which included a split of Managers, Experienced Non-Managers, and Fresh Graduates (Entry Level) as well as about 10% of the responses from Director-level and above, it is seen that 23.5% of the respondents voted for companies which they believe as the best salary provider, slightly the highest reason for selection of a company as a best place to work. In the meanwhile, 19.5% of the vote occurred from which people believe the best career advancement opportunities provider as the second main reason. A further 18.3% of responses voted based on their preference upon the product and service quality of company offerings. The rest of the respondents voted their best choice of company for other reasons which included the provision of training and development program, employees’ benefit package, and best working environment.

Turning to the statistics, majority of the survey participants chose companies from Beverage industry which results at 56% of overall, which has a strongly developed corporate presence in Myanmar. Comparing the data of industries that people voted, Retail and Distributing industry comes in as the second highest voted industry at 14% of voting result and Telecommunication industry as the third with 9% of voting rate. In the meantime, 6% of the vote had been occupied by Technology industry while other industries such as Consumer Driven, Consulting, Logistics, Utility, Microfinance, and Education have slight differences of voting rate from 1% to 4%.

Matt De Luca, Managing Director of JobNet.com.mm, also saw some interesting trends in the dataset. Matt noted: “Every year we have been doing this survey, more and more we see the alignment between Myanmar employee standards and international best practices come closer and closer together. I believe the MEA program pushes companies in Myanmar to provide top level services to their staff, which benefits the staff and the economy as a whole when people feel comfortable and confident in the place they choose to work.”

The 2019 People Choice Survey conducted by the Myanmar Employer Awards (powered by JobNet.com.mm) showed the market reasons behind why the companies gained brand recognition throughout the eyes of the public; and the survey intends to support best practices that employers can adopt for creating strong brand awareness and brand identity in the country.