Singapore tops Asia-Pacific in talent competitiveness
Singapore
FOR the sixth straight year, Singapore ranked first in the Asia-Pacific and second worldwide for attracting and developing talent, in the annual Global Talent Competitiveness Index released on Monday.
Second only to Switzerland, Singapore was the only Asia-Pacific country in the top 10 and the only non-European county besides the United States, which came in third.
Indeed, the report itself highlighted "the stability of talent champions" or perennially high-ranking countries in contrast to fluctuations among "talent laggards".
Compared to other cities, however, Singapore fared less well, ranking 17th in the accompanying Global City Talent Competitiveness Index.
The top three spots for cities were taken by Washington DC, Copenhagen and Oslo. The highest-ranking city in Asia-Pacific was Seoul in 10th place, with Taipei also ranking ahead of Singapore at 15th.
Both indices are published by Insead in partnership with the Adecco Group and Tata Communications.
At the country level, Singapore came top in three out of six "pillars" or categories of the index: enabling talent, attracting talent, and global knowledge skills.
In the enabling category, Singapore did particularly well for indicators related to the regulatory landscape, such as government effectiveness, business-government relations and regulatory quality.
In attracting talent, Singapore did better in external openness than internal openness. One exception to its good scores was in tolerance of immigrants, for which Singapore ranked 44th. It was also 26th for the gender earnings gap.
Yet despite ranking top overall in global knowledge skills, Singapore ranked a mere 54th for new product entrepreneurial activity, one of the indicators in the category.
This indicator, which measures not just new products and services, but those that are not readily available elsewhere, was highlighted in the report as being indicative of a country's strength in innovative entrepreneurship.
Nevertheless, new product entrepreneurial activity was just one of five variables in the broader talent impact measure, which the report said "provides a fuller picture on the impact of entrepreneurship and innovation in talent competitiveness".
Singapore ranked third for talent impact, pulled up by its performance in the other variables of innovation output (15th), high-value exports (1st), new business density (15th) and scientific journal articles (5th).
For the vocational and technical skills category, Singapore came seventh, despite poor rankings for the share of its workforce with secondary education, and the share of its population with secondary education.
In growth, which includes areas such as formal education and lifelong learning, Singapore ranked 11th. Singapore's performance was pulled down by poor rankings in vocational enrolment (58th), tertiary education expenditure (56th), and personal rights (70th) in particular.
The country's lowest pillar rank was 26th for retaining talent, where the report found "room for improvement" in the two areas of sustainability and lifestyle.
