European economies best at recruiting and retaining top talent; what about Thailand?

  • Post published:27/12/2017
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium top the World Talent Ranking in IMD’s prestigious annual report that assesses the methods countries are using to attract and keep the talent that their businesses need to succeed. 11 out of the top 15 economies are European countries.

The ranking of 63 countries, including Thailand, is based on how countries perform in areas of education, apprenticeships, workplace training, language skills, cost of living, quality of life, remuneration and tax rates.

IMD is Institute for Management Development in Switzerland. For almost thirty years, the IMD World Competitiveness Center has pioneered research on how countries compete to lay the foundations for sustainable value creation. For the result on Thailand, IMD has worked with TMA, Thai Management Association.

Countries in Asia including Thailand tend to invest less in public education but some countries enhance their local talent pool by attracting highly-qualified foreign professionals. This is particularly successful for a country like Singapore.

Thailand has chosen the least favourable on both accounts, years of neglect in proper education and language training is one huge banana skin for the country. There is no temptation from the powers to open up for more foreign experts who instead continue to be hampered by red tape in the immigration and labour departments. Thailand is ranked 62 out of 63 countries on the ratio pupils to teachers.

Thailand’s overall ranking is 42 of the 63 participants. This is the lowest in five years for Thailand who have dropped from 36 in 2013 to its place 42 in 2017.

  • Get the free download through the link further down,
  • then scroll to page 92 and see how Thailand is doing. Not doing!

Denmark is the highest-ranking Nordic country overall at 2nd in the IMD World Talent Ranking. It is ranked 1st in the investment and development category, with a strong performance in expenditure on education (5th). The country ranks 10th in appeal, mostly because of its effective implementation of apprenticeships and the prioritization of employee training. Denmark is also ranked second for language skills.

Finland comes in the 5th position, largely as a result of its performance in the investment and development, and readiness categories. Norway (7th) and Sweden (9th) perform strongly in investment and development, and they also perform well in appeal. Elsewhere, Iceland ranks 18th in the IMD World Talent Ranking.

While the Nordic countries perform well in some areas, they slightly lag behind other economies in terms of their appeal to foreign workers.

Arturo Bris, said: “Fundamentally, the Nordic economies have a very high quality of life, extremely good educational systems, and massive investment by the public sector in education.

“At the same time, the Nordic countries remain difficult for foreign talent, mainly due to the high cost of living.”

via European economies best at recruiting and retaining top talent, says IMD study

Tom Sorensen

Tom Sorensen is an executive search veteran with over 25 years of experience recruiting in Asia, Europe, and Africa. He has worked in executive search in Thailand since 2003 and is recognized as one of the country’s top recruiters and most profiled headhunters.