Singapore tops the world in highly skilled workforce, but ranks 36th on retaining talent. - ST
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The world’s nations are fighting an intense battle for the best workers, and Singapore has yet again been ranked the second-best country to find them.
The country comes just behind Switzerland but ahead of 131 countries, according to the Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2022, which was published on Thursday.
It is the only Asian state to make the European-dominated top 20 in the list.
The report, published by business school Insead and Washington-based Portulans Institute, is sponsored by the Temasek-linked Human Capital Leadership Institute for this latest edition.
The 133 countries rated own 98 per cent of the world’s economic output and account for more than 93 per cent of its population, the authors wrote.
They added that they aim to help policymakers, investors and recruiters make sense of labour trends from a global perspective.
Singapore has clinched second place every year since the index’s first edition in 2013, except in 2020, when it slipped one spot.
Switzerland hogged first place from the start, and the United States had been the other podium companion since 2017 until this year, when it got nudged down by Denmark, which takes third place.
The study also carries a city ranking, where Singapore ranks sixth, behind American cities San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Switzerland’s Zurich and Lausanne. Again, it is the only Asian city to be in the top 20.
Do such rankings have any practical impact? Yes, said Mr Helmi Yusoff from global consultancy Mercer.
“While studies like these are broad, they offer useful insights to global workers who are looking to relocate to another country,” he said.
This year’s 336-page electronic volume draws on 69 macroeconomic and country-level variables, and rates how countries attract overseas talent and help local workers with regulatory and business environments, as well as how states groom workers through education and training, and retain them with living and sustainability practices.
The impact these efforts have on vocational and technical workers, as well as professional and managerial workers, is collated.
