The Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) 2021, was published in October, 2021. It is published annually by INSEAD Business School for the World, in partnership with Portulans Institute, and knowledge partner, Accenture. This GTCI 2021 edition is titled, ‘Talent Competitiveness in Times of COVID’, and is the eighth edition of the GTCI report. The GTCI gives a clear idea of how countries and cities have grown, attracted and retained their talents. It is a unique resource for decision makers to understand the global talent competitiveness picture and develop strategies to boost their competitiveness. The GTCI ranks 134 countries on the basis of how they grow, attract, and retain talent. The report also ranks 155 cities from 75 economies around the world under the Global City Talent Competitiveness Index (GCTCI)
Some Findings
The pandemic has shaken organisations in ways that may become permanent features of tomorrow’s workplace. The swift assuming of inter-professional tools has redefined the ways in which individuals and teams could bring value to private business and public entities. This has led to redefining hierarchies, identifying sources of value and often adjusting strategic objectives, from an organisational view point. In an attempt to experiment with novel ways of attracting talents, many opportunities have been offered to countries and cities.
The pandemic has generated a series of shockwaves across the global talent landscape, which would have long-term effects on labour markets. The pandemic has redefined international mobility of talents to a large extent. As online tools have brought avenues of working from anywhere, leading a better work-life balance for employees, new inequalities too have surfaced between those who could contribute online and those who had to be physically present at the workplace. Individuals are now rethinking their careers, their location choices, and the ways in which they would prefer to work. With the advent of new business models based on virtual or hybrid cooperation, international ventures have started to respond to these new limitations on travel and trade.
Governments are back on centre stage and recovery packages would have a significant importance in shaping labour markets and talent competition in the coming years. By designing specific legal and regulatory measures to protect the health and social cohesion of their citizens, governments are called to re-take centre stage both by injecting financial resources to prevent a massive collapse of businesses and employment. Depending upon the national economies and businesses they operate, and how different talents would be renumerated in the future, the packages are shaped differently to suit the economy’s needs.
In the post-pandemic new normal, inequalities may grow among workers, depending on their sector of activity and their level of qualification. In the post-pandemic new normal, a K-shaped recovery is likely to happen in a few years. The resumption of growth and employment would not be even across socioeconomic categories, sectors, or levels of qualification. In the absence of massive re-skilling and up-skilling efforts, there may be too much of recruitment which may lead to slow recovery efforts. Also, a growing share of the population might feel helpless as their qualifications would lose relevance. Educational systems and training institutions would be required to adapt quickly to their new objectives and requirements, and start giving additional attention to lifelong learning and apprenticeship, among others.
In the emerging post-pandemic economy, international inequalities have started to widen again. Emerging economies are still lacking the digital skills which would allow them to fully participate in digital transformation of the world economy. The importance of this digital skill gap has been emphasised by the pandemic. Digitisation has become an imperative tool in many sectors and areas of activity. If economies are not able to quickly adapt and transform to digitisation, they would be left behind.
Currently, middle-income economies have been showing significant progress and dynamism on the global talent competitiveness scene. Talent movers of 2020, Russia and China, have joined the league of ‘talent champions’ in 2021. A country from the Latin America and the Caribbean region (Chile) have positioned themselves in the top quartile of the GTCI rankings. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been the strongest talent champion and it has been offering innovative ways to attract and retain talents.
Cities took on new responsibilities during the pandemic and large cities are back on the talent scene. In many parts of the world, when central governments were unable to take quick action, cities took the initiative to limit or mitigate the effects of the pandemic. This resulted in a variety of measures combining creativity, agility, and responsiveness to citizens’ needs. Due to their higher level of resources, large cities adapted better to the pandemic-related challenges than the smaller cities. However, larger cities had to suffer economically due to lockdowns and downturns.
The GTCI model The GTCI is an input-output model which combines an assessment of what countries do to produce and acquire talents (input) and the kind of skills that are available to them as a result (output). The Input pillars of the GTCI are inspired by the Attract-Grow-Retain framework used by corporations to steer talent management. Multinational corporations frame talent management in these terms, defining talent management as an organisation’s efforts to attract, select, develop, and retain talented employees to meet their strategic needs. ‘Attracting’ talent, in the context of national competitiveness, is viewed as (i) a draw towards external productive businesses, and (ii) an internal attraction that is focused on removing barriers to entering the talent pool for underprivileged background groups. ‘Growing’ talent means education which also includes apprenticeships, training, and access to growth opportunities. ‘Retaining’ talent is necessary since the more talented the person is, the wider the global opportunities that person could find elsewhere. The key components of retention are sustainability and quality of life. The GTCI has classified these elements as parts of the ‘Enable’ pillar. Together, ‘enable’, ‘attract’, ‘grow’, and ‘retain’ are the four input pillars of the GTCI model.
Regarding output skills, the GTCI differentiates between two levels of talent—mid-level and high-level skills. Mid-level skills are labelled vocational and technical skills (VT skills) and high-level skills are labelled global knowledge skills (GK skills). Together, VT skills and GK skills constitute the two output pillars of GTCI model.
The GTCI is computed as the simple arithmetic average of the scores registered on each of the six pillars described above.
Rankings The countries were divided into four groups based on their income levels; the high-income group, upper-middle income group, lower-middle income group, and the low-income group. There is a high correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the GTCI scores. The top positions in the overall ranking of the GTCI 2021 scores were dominated by developed and high-income countries. Seventeen out of the top 25 countries in the GTCI 2021 are European countries. Switzerland, with a score of 82.09, has maintained its top position in the GTCI 2021, followed by Singapore (79.38), and the USA (78.81). The fourth to tenth ranks were held by Denmark (77.98), Sweden (77.98), Netherlands (77.31), Finland (77.07), Luxembourg (76.96), Norway (75.84), and Iceland (75.21), respectively. France (69.18) ranked 19, has entered the top 20 list this year. The other non-European countries that made into the top 25 rankings are Australia (75.06), Canada (74.77), New Zealand (73.86), Japan (68.68), Israel (68.65), and the UAE (63.38). For the first time in 2021, the region of Latin America and the Caribbean is represented by Chile in the top quartile of the index. China, with a score of 57.17, was ranked 37th and broke into the top 40.
Effect of pandemic on existing talent gaps The gap between most talent-competitive countries and rest of the countries is widening. The GTCI scores in the higher-income countries have increased while they have decreased in the lower-income countries. The contrast between upper-middle-income countries and lower-middle-income countries remained much smaller. The greatest growth in the GTCI scores has taken place in the three highest scoring regions: Eastern, South-eastern Asia, and Oceania. A growing gap also seems to be occurring within regions, which implies that the less talent-competitive countries in most regions that have seen scores either improve at a lower rate or even worsen. However, it is too early to say what effect the pandemic might have on talent competitiveness in the long run. Whatever may be the case, the GTCI 2021 has suggested that stakeholders should take steps to ensure that the underlying dimensions of talent competitiveness are strengthened.
Findings of the Global Cities Talent Competitiveness Index 2021 (GCTCI 2021) The geographical distribution of top 10 GCTCI 2021 cities remains dominated by the US and Europe. The most talent-competitive city is San Francisco. Two other US cities, Boston and Seattle are in the top 10. Out of the seven remaining cities, six are in Europe: Geneva, Zurich, Luxembourg, Dublin, London and Helsinki; and one in Asia: Singapore.
A comparison between the GTCI rankings and GCTCI rankings confirmed the clear (and expected) link between talent competitiveness at the country level and at the city level.
Cities have the power to influence their talent competitiveness with social, cultural, and economic tools. In many cases, cities outperformed the countries they belong to. For instance, Bengaluru has been successful in creating strong innovation linkages among public-private-academic actors, which has had a positive impact on the city’s talent pool and the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI).
Quality of life has been a strong advantage for medium-sized cities like Geneva, Dublin, etc. They have been benefitted from their high scores in areas such as environment, safety, and social-professional binding.
International connectivity has been an even stronger advantage for cities competing for highly mobile talents. Ubiquitous broadband and good availability of international transport hubs are the main factors behind the productivity of local and foreign talents.
A growing ability to develop innovative solutions to grow, attract, and retain talents is seen in small cities. This ability gets globally increased as exchanges of experiences and meetings continue to grow in number among such cities. In many countries, ‘secondary cities’ have taken advantage of this additional agility to outperform their larger competitors, sometimes by grabbing ‘niche talent’.
GCTCI 2021 reveals that the pandemic has strengthened the talent advantages of lager cities. It has also increased the importance of national policies at the city level. Pandemic-related challenges have also spilled over into the talent arena. For instance, as many international meetings and conferences were being switched from face-to-face to virtual, smaller cities had the opportunity to attract high-level events. It is becoming apparent that in the post-pandemic new normal, those organisations and cities that managed to get a head start in digital transformation will be running ahead in terms of talents. The ability of a city to become smarter will, therefore, continue to be a strong advantage in terms of talent competitiveness.
India’s position in Global Competitive Index 2021
India is ranked at 88th position among the 134 countries. India belongs to the lower-middle income group in the Central and Southern Asia regional group. With a population of around 1,380 million, the GDP per capita of India is PPP US$ 6,454.35. India’s GTCI 2021 score is 39.57. India’s rank and score in the input pillars: Enable—69th rank (48.2 score); Attract—121st (36.23); Grow—71st (35.39); and Retain—95th (39.80).
India’s rank and score in output pillars: VT skills—99th (37.32), and GK skills—58th (40.26).
As for GTCI score, India earned 34.34.
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