European economies are superior when it comes to attracting, developing and retaining top talent, according to a major new study by the World Competitiveness Center at global business school IMD.
The annual IMD World Talent Ranking assesses the methods countries use to attract and retain the talent their businesses need to thrive.
Europe continues to dominate the 2017 list, with 11 out of the 15 most talent competitive economies based on the continent, after a strong performance in 2016. Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium remain the most competitive countries in the 2017 IMD World Talent Ranking.
Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Sweden and Luxembourg make up the top-ten.
South Africa is ranked 48th out of 63 countries and must increase its investment in developing local talent if it is to deliver the high-quality workforce its businesses need to thrive, according to the report.
Among the BRICS countries, South Africa ranks in the middle position — 48th — performing better than India (51st) and Brazil (52nd) but lagging behind both China (40th) and Russia (43rd).
South Africa’s strengths are in total expenditure on education (4th), cost-of-living index (1st), personal income tax rate (2nd) and labour force growth (7th).
Its main weaknesses are in the pupil-teacher ratio (primary education, 61st), implementation of apprenticeships (61st), availability of skilled labour (60th), capacity of the educational system to meet the talent needs of the economy (60th) and emphasis assigned to science in schools (60th).
“Beyond the above weaknesses, other indicators that may also help us understand the country’s low ranks are health infrastructure (52nd), worker motivation (57th), brain drain (58th), attracting foreign highly skilled personnel (52nd) and availability of competent senior managers (50th),” according to the report.
The study draws on an in-depth survey of thousands of executives from 63 different economies, and more than two decades of data from the IMD World Competitiveness Center.
The IMD World Talent Ranking is based on countries’ performance in three main categories — investment and development, appeal and readiness. The three categories assess how countries perform in a wide range of areas. These include education, apprenticeships, workplace training, language skills, cost of living, quality of life, remuneration and tax rates.
Occupying the last two positions are Mongolia and Venezuela, while the lower places are dominated by Eastern European countries like Croatia, Romania, and the Ukraine. The decline in the latter is due to the investment and development of domestic talent in addition to the political crises that characterise the area, Croatia and Romania’s decline is partially explained by the decrease in the appeal and readiness factors.
