Switzerland, Singapore, Denmark rank top three on global talent competitiveness index: Insead

SWITZERLAND and Singapore on Thursday (Nov 3) retained their leading position as the top two most talent-competitive countries, while being joined by Denmark in third place.

The US slipped into fourth place, while China has moved up a spot to 36th place, marking a new record position through “excellent performance in several pillars”, according to the latest Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) report by business school Insead.

The report, authored by Felipe Monteiro, academic director of the GTCI and Insead senior affiliate professor of strategy, and Bruno Lanvin, distinguished fellow at Insead and co-founder of Portulans Institute, predicted that the great divergence between richer and poorer economies will continue to grow in the coming years, particularly as recent crises have a greater effect on the talent situation of poorer economies.

Limitations to the circulation of goods, services and people may increase given rising international tensions and inflation, thus posing a “significant impact on labour markets”, wrote the authors.

“Government, business and talent are feeling the negative compounded effects of financial, food and energy shocks, particularly impacting the poor and emerging economies,” said Monteiro.

Within labour markets, Monteiro and Lanvin also found that there may be a rise in fragmentation even in higher-income economies, thereby generating “new types of inequalities”.

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They called for employers to come up with new ways to grow, attract and retain talent amid the rise of new work trends such as “quiet quitting” and a shifting attraction towards the gig and part-time job economy amongst the younger generation.

Post-pandemic, researchers also found that the recent progress in solving gender divides has been annihilated by the onset of Covid-19. Girls’ enrolment in education has once again become a challenge in many poor regions.

“Providing girls with equal opportunities to access school, and women with equal opportunities to access leading positions are now two critically important ways to reduce talent inequalities,” said Lanvin, who warned that a more unequal global talent landscape would significantly diminish the world’s ability to meet key sustainable development goal (SDG) targets.

He highlighted SDGs 4, 5, 8 and 10, which represents quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, and reduced inequalities, as goals that were most at risk of not being achieved.

In the report’s global city talent competitiveness index, San Francisco, Boston and Zurich were the top three, while Singapore came in sixth and was the only city to rank within the top 20.

Doris Sohmen-Pao, chief executive of the Human Capital Leadership Institute (HCLI), highlighted Asia’s particular lag in talent competitiveness, and called for more efforts to encourage growth in the region, which is home to more than 60 per cent of the world’s population.

“In order to drive recovery and accelerate growth in a sustainable and holistic manner, there is need for a more coordinated and collaborative approach between public and private sectors,” said Sohmen-Pao.

The report’s authors recommended that cities combine talent and investment attraction strategies to reduce talent inequalities and to better weather future economic and political storms.

The annual report, which is on its ninth edition, was published in partnership with Portulans Institute and HCLI. It covers 133 countries and 175 cities from 79 economies around the world across all income groups and measures how countries and cities grow, attract and retain talent.