China (91 per cent), Botswana (86 per cent), India (85 per cent) and Turkey (83 per cent) have the highest percentages of businesses reporting higher staff costs.
Alex MacBeath, global leader for privately held businesses at Grant Thornton International says, "Significantly, it is the emerging economies that are being hardest hit by increased staff costs. This is real evidence that the era of downward pressure on inflation in emerging economies is coming to an end."
Businesses are also more focused on recruitment and retention of staff than they were 12 months ago. The survey found that 59 per cent of PHBs are more focused on finding and retaining employees than they were a year ago. Emerging economies were most focused with Vietnam top with 84 per cent of businesses more focused, followed closely by mainland China (81 per cent).
Alex continues, "Staff shortages and an increasing awareness of the importance of people to competitiveness are driving PHBs to take action on recruitment and retention policies."
7800 privately held companies in 34 countries participated in the survey.
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