Dr. Manasvi M. Kamat
The results of the annual IMD Global Talent Ranking results were released on Tuesday this week. As disruptions are a new normal globally, it need not be emphasised that the organisations need pool of talent to cope up with challenges of diversity and to remain competitive.
The talent rankings is now in its fifth edition, and is a global assessment of the success of countries to attract and retain the talent needed for their businesses to thrive.
These rankings are based on an extent to which a country attracts and retains talent and the quality of skills available in the talent pool. The results indicate India has slipped two places down to rank 53rd out of 63 countries surveyed.
The IMD Global Talent Rankings (GTR) study draws on an in-depth survey of over 6,000 executives from 63 economies and more than two decades of historical data. Rankings are based on an assessment country’s performance in education, apprenticeships, workplace training, language skills, cost of living, quality of life, remuneration and tax rates.
All these factors are classified into three indicators that capture the resources invested in developing local talent, the extent to which a country attracts and retains talent, and the quality of skills available in the talent pool.
In the GTR the top slot has been retained by Switzerland for the fifth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Norway, Austria and the Netherlands.
At 6th place, Canada is the only non-European nation in the top-ten, which also includes Finland (7th), Sweden (8th), Luxembourg (9th), and Germany (10th). The Slovak Republic (59th), Colombia (60th), Mexico (61st), Mongolia (62nd), and Venezuela (63rd) are the last countries in the ranking. Within Asia, Singapore has topped the charts with a global 13th place on the list.
China is ranked lower at 39th position.
Among other BRICS nations, Brazil is ranked 58th, South Africa at 50th and Russia 46th.
India has performed above the average in terms of the quality of its talent pool (Readiness factor, 30th position). This suggests that there is no dearth of talent in the country.
The difficulty however is in attracting foreign skilled workers and below average educational expenditure compared to economies. The quality of educational system and the lack of investments in public education heavily penalises the available talent potential of the country (Investment and Development factor, 63rd).
In the “Appeal” category we fail to attract foreign highly skilled personnel and also in retaining domestic talent.
My personal picks as two excellent performers for this year from the Global Talent Ranking list are Malaysia and Saudi. The worst performer is UK, sliding in its position to 23rd place this year from 17th in the past on account of its failure on fostering and attracting talent after Brexit.
The economics which slipped their ranks generally share low levels of investments in public education and quality of life, which has restricted their ability to develop local human capital and to attract highly-skilled professionals from abroad.
Malaysia has moved up 6 ranks to secure the 22nd position ahead of Japan and the UK while Saudi has made its debut in a global talent ranking and took the 26th spot, playing to its strengths as an expat destination with low tax benefits, employee security and above-average pay.
Saudi also scored highly in terms of educational investment, which now accounts for 8.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product which is the highest in the world. In comparison the overall spending on education in India was 2.7 percent of GDP for the financial year (FY) 2018, down from 3.1 percent in FY13.
The other ranking for global talent is the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI). This study was released in January 2018 by Adecco, Insead and Tata Communications and the list was developed by Yale and Columbia Universities along with the World Economic Forum.
In the GTCI rankings, India has been ranked 81st out of 119 countries and 90 cities, with an improvement of 11 ranks from 92nd position in the last year.
The 2018 report investigates the theme of ‘diversity for competitiveness’ and explored the benefits of diversity, such as how it can be leveraged for retention, talent development, innovation and sustainability.
Despite India improving its overall ranking in the GTCI 2018, the survey reveals that we remain at a serious risk of continuing to lose our best talent.
All the BRICS nations have seen an improvement compared to last year and India continues to rank the lowest among them. While we ranks high on the global knowledge skills India has a low rating in ‘Talent Retention’ and ‘Attraction’ rank with a ranking 99 and 98 respectively out of 119 countries surveyed.
Both the above referred global indices suggest that India is not doing enough to grow, attract and retain talent. Though the availability of local skills is not a pain India remains at risk of continuing to lose its best talent particularly in the context of high emigration rates of high-skilled people.
India seems to be at a serious risk of worsening its brain drain despite the connection with the diasporas working in the IT sector. The recent talent rankings only suggest our relative inability to globally compete for talent.
