Environmental Scan 2017: Human Capital Issues within the Medical Devices Sector
3 Industry Workforce
3.1
Current Workforce Profile
The medical devices industry in Malaysia is estimated to engage around 65,800 full time
employees and 6,400 outsourced production workers (i.e. workers that are not under the
company’s payroll and are directly involved in production).
The 68 surveyed companies had around 22,000 jobs as of December 2016. 20,000 (91%) of these
jobs were fulfilled by the companies’ full time employees whereas the other 2,000 (9%) were
fulfilled by outsourced production workers.
The surgical/medical gloves segment requires a lot of manpower to support their manufacturing
activities, especially in the washing and packing of gloves. 58% of the companies in this segment
hired more than 500 employees and 33% engaged between 201 to 500 employees as of
December 2016. Of the 11,000 jobs created within the 12 surveyed companies in the segment,
98% of them were occupied by full time employees.
Within the 35 surveyed companies in other medical consumables segment, there were 7,800 jobs
as of December 2016. 87% of these jobs were fulfilled by full time employees. Around half of the
companies in thi s segment hired less than 75 employees and 28% of them employed more than
200 employees. 29% of the companies also engaged outsourced workers to assist in their
production.
The non-consumables segment has the lowest average number of full time employee per
company in the industry but the highest average number of outsourced production worker per
company. Most of the companies in this segment are small in terms of employment size, with
67% of them hired less than 75 employees as of December 2016. 34% of the surveyed companies
within this segment utilised outsourced workers in their production and 26% of the 3,200 jobs
available within the 21 surveyed companies were fulfilled by outsourced production workers.
The hiring of outsourced production worker is directly correlated with the revenue size of the
company, where companies with higher operating revenue tend to hire more outsourced
production workers.
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