The Global Talent Competitiveness Index is produced each year by the Switzerland-based management school INSEAD, with support from the leading human resource group ADECCO, joined this year by TATA Communications.
The Report analyses the performance of 119 countries and 90 cities worldwide. Of the 119 selected countries included in the Index, high income countries represented 46 countries, upper middle income countries 34 countries, lower middle income countries 27 countries, and low income countries only 12 countries. Geographically, 38 countries are in Europe, 37 countries in Africa and the Middle East (19 in North Africa and 18 in Sub-Saharan Africa), 23 in Eastern Asia (14 in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, and 9 in Central and South Asia), and 21 in the Americas (19 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 2 in North America).
Competitive Analysis Basis
Analysis for each country and city was based on six factors: enabling, attracting, growth, retaining, vocational & technical skills, and global knowledge skills. For each of these primary factors there were ranges of sub-factors. Thus enabling, sub-factors included regional landscape, market landscape and labour market. For attracting, sub-factors were: attract business and social inclusion. For growth sub-factors were formal education, lifelong learning and access to growth opportunities. For retaining, sub-factors were: sustainability and lifestyle. For vocational and technical skills, sub-factors were: mid-level skills and employability. For global knowledge skills, sub-factors were: high level skills and talent impact.
Ranking: top to bottom
The overall analysis creates a scoring system rating from zero to 100 points for each factor and sub-factor, resulting in a final score for each country and city. This enables countries and cities to be rated on the index, ranking from Switzerland (79.90 points) at top rank, down to Yemen (16.10 points) at 119 position among countries. For cities, Zurich (71.00 points) was at top city rank, down to Delhi, with 15.50 points, at 90 position.
INSEAD itself is located in Switzerland and evaluates its own country as good as it can get. Likewise Zurich gets top rank; paradise on earth, although hardly everybody’s dreamland. Thailand (39.96 points) is rated at 70 position, and Bangkok (33.8 points) is at 78 position. However many people from Switzerland, including not a few from Zurich, much prefer to be based in Thailand than in Switzerland, and particularly not in Zurich. This suggests that an element of “Gross National Happiness” might merit inclusion in the Global Talent Competitiveness index, although there is little doubt that when it comes to pure competitiveness, the Index clearly points the way.
Moving down the Table
Among the top-ranking countries, 13 out of the 20 league leaders are European, together with the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Two East Asian countries make the grade: Singapore rates No 2, while Japan scrapes in at No 20. A surprise contender, the United Arab Emirates romps in at No 7. Altogether 20 East Asian countries were included in the survey, including Singapore and Japan. Within ASEAN, apart from Singapore, Malaysia performed well (27), Philippines (54), Thailand (70), Indonesia (77). Predictable stragglers Laos (95) and Cambodia (108) join the rear-guard.
Among the cities, only Tokyo (12) and Seoul (18) ranked high. Even Singapore, a winner as a country, failed to outperform other major world cities, ranking at 33. Bangkok (78) was behind Kuala Lumpur (67) but outpaced Hanoi (85), Mumbai (89) and Delhi (90).
Thailand’s Competitiveness Rating
Thailand ranks at 70 in this year’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index with a points rating of 39.96, as compared to top ranking Switzerland with 79.90. Bangkok, ranked at 78 (33.8 points). In terms of country ranking, Thailand was fairly strong in “enabling” (48) and “attracting” (55) factors, but weaker in “growth” (69), “retaining” (71), “vocational and Technical skills” (69), and “global knowledge skills” (68). Among weak “growth” factors for Thailand, the survey evaluated “tertiary education expenditures” (14.07 points), “prevalence of training in firms” (19.26 points) and “use of virtual professional networks” (2.97 points). Among weak factors in Thailand “Vocational and Technical Skills” were listed: “workforce with secondary education” (16.48 points), “population with secondary education” (19.12 points) “technical and associate professionals” (19.73 points) and “labour productivity per employee” (17.02 points). Among weak global knowledge skills were: “workforce with tertiary education” (18.03 points), “professionals” (12.72 points), “researchers” (10.46 points), “new business density” (5.05 points), and “scientific journal articles” (14.49 points).
The Theme of Diversity: “Many flowers make a bouquet”
The INSEAD Report places great emphasis on the value of diversity to enhance performance and consequent competitiveness, citing the Arab proverb “many different flowers make a bouquet”. Diversity is considered the key value for individual personal experience, teams, organisations, cities and nations.
The INSEAD Report proposes seven strategies to benefit from diversity, as follows:
- Talent diversity is still a largely untapped resource for innovation. Organisations are slowly learning how to leverage it;
- Cognitive diversity: knowledge, experience, perspectives, leads to outstanding performance through teamwork;
- Inclusion and diversity strategies work together;
- Formal education systems from kindergarten to tertiary education, have crucial responsibility to build competences for a more inclusive world;
- Capacities to leverage diversity require visionary leadership;
- Cities will continue to change the global talent scene;
- Cities are perfect environments to promote diversity.
The message of the Global Talent Competitiveness Index is that it is diversity that promotes competitiveness but that there are virtues in diversity beyond economic advantages, extending to social, cultural, and intellectual fields. Diversity itself is conceived as the opposite of uniformity and homogeneity. Diversity is defined as having three types:
- cognitive diversity: knowledge, experience and perspectives;
- identity diversity: gender, ethnic background; religious belief, nationality, age;
- preference and value diversity: fundamental interests and values.
According to the Report, empirical research has found that teams based on diversity perform better than those based on uniformity and homogeneity. However, teams based on diversity need to be managed with particularly inspired skills. Otherwise they can be unproductive and prone to conflict.
Conclusions
Overall, the Global Talent Competitiveness Index encompasses a massive amount of research and meaningful conclusions in its 342 information-packed pages. However, such a compendium can only be as valid as its base data, which is largely derived from World Bank and World Economic Forum Indices, dating from the period of 2015-2016. In the current stage of knowledge, this represents history rather than actuality, since more recent surveys are readily available. Hopefully, the next edition will be based on the most-up-to-date data available.
Series editor: Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult’s Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to guide business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.