As many Asian markets are mobile-first, it makes sense that Asia has one of the highest social media penetrations globally.
According to the Compass Index by Compass Offices, where 1,200 respondents across seven countries in APAC were surveyed, workers in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore were especially social media savvy.
In fact, close to 60% of employees in Hong Kong said that they used social media, and only 44% refer to news site, as their number one channel for information. While 54.6% of workers in the Philippines said that they choose social media, followed by 18.4% who consider newspapers as their top source. Singapore is next in line, with 52.5% listing social media as their go-to, while 50.3% looked to news sites. In Vietnam, 50% of respondents also cited social media as their primary information source. Coming in a close second, 48% used news sites.
“Asia has leapfrogged in terms of mobile adoption, it makes sense that our survey indicates that most of employees are using laptop and smartphones to access their work. As the BYOD (bring your own device) movement is now widely accepted, we’re going to be seeing more interesting social trends and push towards flexibility in the workplace in the coming years,” said Andrew Chung, CEO of Compass Offices.
In 2014, IDC released a report that said nearly 155 million consumer smartphones will be adhering to the BYOD model across APAC and that adoption would be increasing by 62.7% year-on-year. Findings revealed that companies across APAC are open to BYOD “as a way to drive mobility in their organizations” while 60% of surveyed firms in the region have implemented related work policies.
“With its widespread adoption in Asia, companies should be able to leverage mobility and flexibility that technology can offer. And as social network has begun to be used not just socially, but also professionally, employers are ought to consider on how to make social media as part of team communication and project collaboration,” added Chung.
According to a 2015 McKinsey report, “fully networked organizations,” which are companies that use social technologies for internal and external purposes, are “seeing the greatest benefits from social interactions.” It’s worth noting that these companies have social tools extensively integrated into all of their processes, which extends past just sales-and-marketing activities and into IT management and recruitment.
To add on, the Compass Index revealed that workers in the Philippines (60.5%), Hong Kong, (53.73%), Vietnam (60%) and Singapore (54.1%) all cited Facebook as their most visited social platform. YouTube came in second for the Philippines (25%) and Vietnam (41%). In Singapore, 51% of workers selected WhatsApp as another social platform that they use as frequently as Facebook.