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TOPLINE REPORT

THE GLOBAL TALENT COMPETITIVENESS INDEX (GTCI) 2015-2016

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1.This new edition of the GTCI report includes several innovations. The model

itself, which has proved to be robust, has not been significantly modified; its data

and country coverage have continued to improve, allowing the report to cover

109 countries, and some variables have been redistributed across pillars and

sub-pillars of the model in order to increase their impact on the overall GTCI.

1.2.The theme of this year’s GTCI report, ‘Talent Attraction and International

Mobility’, focuses the attention of readers on key dimensions of talent

competitiveness that are critical for the ability of countries to chart a sustainable

course between economic, social and political imperatives.

1.3.As in previous years, GTCI has continued to benefit from the precious support of

its partners and sponsors in government, business and academia. This year, the

third Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI), produced jointly by INSEAD,

Adecco and Singapore’s Human Capital Leadership Institute, shows the key role

of openness for talent attraction. So appropriately at a time of dramatic images of

human masses in transit, the latest GTCI focuses above all on talent mobility.

And mobility, it stresses, today does not just mean human flows, but a wealth of

new opportunities, often enabled by the latest technology, alongside developing

management practices.

1.4.As underlined in the previous two editions of the GTCI, countries are competing

globally to grow better talents, attract the talents they need, and retain those that

contribute to competitiveness; innovation and growth.

1.5.Unsurprisingly, the non-European leaders of the GTCI rankings can be broadly

classified into two groups: economies which have long had favourable

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immigration policies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel), and

economies that have a clear focus on becoming ‘talent hubs’ (Singapore, the

UAE and Qatar), attracting external know-how to a greater or lesser extent.

1.6. In general, countries within the top 15 in the overall GTCI index also dominate

each of the six pillars, with the exception of vocational skills. The top three

countries on talent competitiveness remain the same in 2015–16 as they were in

2014: Switzerland, Singapore and Luxembourg. And there is little change in the

top 20 ranking, although the Czech Republic enters this group and New

Zealand’s talent competitiveness strengthens – contrasted with modest declines

in the talent capabilities of Ireland and Canada. Since there were few

methodological changes in the Index, the changes in ranking from last to this

year can be reliably interpreted

1.7.Switzerland (1st) is at the top by virtue of its strong performance across all six

pillars of the GTCI model. Switzerland performs consistently well across the

Enable (1st), Retain (1st) and Grow (5th) pillars and their constituent sub-pillars.

Performance in the Attract pillar (7th) is good in terms of the External openness

(5th) sub-pillar, with the country showing an excellent capacity to attract and retain

global talent (despite a negative referendum on immigration 18 months ago),

while this pillar shows a relatively poorer performance in the Internal openness

sub-pillar (22nd) – there is good social mobility (2nd), but gender equality indicators

such as Female graduates (76th) and Gender earnings gap (36th) lag behind.

1.8.Through analyses and comparisons of the scores registered by individual

countries on each of the six pillars, and each of the 61 variables of the GTCI

model for 2015–16, a number of patterns, differences and similarities emerge,

which converge towards eight key messages. Although it is too early to start

comparing country data across time, these key messages emerge from insights

gathered throughout the two previous GTCI editions (2013 and 2014) and from

the current 2015–16 edition. Many of these messages concern the External

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Openness sub-pillar of the GTCI model, focused on international mobility and

talent attraction, which is our theme this year.

a) Mobility has become a key ingredient of talent development;

b) The migration debate needs to move from emotions to solutions;

c) Management practices make a difference in attracting talent;

d) While people continue to move to jobs and opportunities, jobs are now

moving to where the talent is;

e) New ‘talent magnets’ are emerging;

f) In a world of talent circulation, cities and regions are becoming critical

players in the competition for global talent; and

g) Scarce vocational skills continue to handicap emerging countries.

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2. OVERALL PERFORMANCE

2.1.European countries continue to dominate the GTCI rankings, with 16 of them in

the top 25. Switzerland maintains its position at the top, and this year sees three

non-European countries make up the top 10, led by Singapore (2nd), the US (4th) and Canada (9th). If we consider the top 25, six additional non-European

countries make the grade: New Zealand (11th), Australia (13th), Japan (19th), the UAE (23rd), Qatar (24th) and Israel (25th).

2.2.Talent within Northern and Western Europe appears to be more competitive in

comparison to other parts of the region. Luxembourg (3rd), Denmark (5th), Sweden (6th), the UK (7th), Norway (8th), Finland (10th), Netherlands (12th), Germany (14th), Austria (15th), Ireland (16th), Iceland (17th) and Belgium (18th), are all ranked higher than France (22nd), which rounds out the top 25.

2.3.Unsurprisingly, the non-European leaders of the GTCI rankings can be broadly

classified into two groups: economies which have long had favourable

immigration policies (the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel), and

economies that have a clear focus on becoming ‘talent hubs’ (Singapore, the

UAE and Qatar), attracting external know-how to a greater or lesser extent.

3. MALAYSIA’S PERFORMANCE

3.1.Malaysia (30th) is the top-ranked country in the group of upper-middle income countries. It falls just short of the fourth quartile of top performing

countries but it is ranked above many high-income countries such as Portugal

(33rd), Spain (36th), South Korea (37th), Italy (41st) and Greece (49th). Malaysia

performs particularly well in the Enable pillar (21st) and in the Grow pillar (24 th),

both of which are part of the top quartile.

3.2.As a consequence, the pillar of Global Knowledge Skills (39 th) and particularly the

pillar of Labour and Vocational Skills (24 th) show good performance – although

still below the performance of many developed countries. The Attract pillar (37 th)

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is held back by relatively poor performance in terms of Internal openness (82nd) –

there is ample room for improvement in terms of tolerance towards migrants and

also in terms of gender issues.

3.3.By contrast, Malaysia does well on External openness (21st), positioned in the top

quartile of countries. The stock of migrants is not yet large relative to the total

population, though the country has been able to attract some foreign talent and

receive an attractive brain gain rating. Part of the attraction of talent is due to the

excellent performance of the country in terms of variables related to management

practices: Employee development (4th), Relationship of pay to productivity (1st)

and Delegation of authority (10th).

3.4. The details are as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Malaysia in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2015-2016

Malaysia in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index

GTCI 2015-2016(n=109)

GTCI 2014(n=93)

Rank Score Rank Score

Global Talent Competitiveness Index 30 54.039 35 49.86

1. ENABLE 21 72.10 22 69.20

1.1 Regulatory Landscape 33 66.48 25 68.97

1.2Market Landscape 26 65.28 31 55.29

1.3 Business-Labour Landscape 8 84.53 10 83.34

2. ATTRACT 37 53.00 44 47.42

2.1 External Openness 21 53.75 21 46.83

2.2 Internal Openness 82 52.26 75 48.01

3. GROW 24 54.10 38 46.26

3.1 Formal Education 47 34.11 51 27.68

3.2 Lifelong Learning 19 67.61 23 64.27

3.3 Access to growth opportunities 21 60.60 53 46.85

4. RETAIN 49 54.28 52 46.40

4.1 Sustainability 34 58.82 42 42.92

4.2 Lifestyle 77 49.74 59 49.88

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Malaysia in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index

GTCI 2015-2016(n=109)

GTCI 2014(n=93)

Rank Score Rank Score

5. LABOUR & VOCATIONAL SKILLS 24 53.57 26 52.97

5.1 Employable Skills 20 63.56 15 63.11

5.2 Labour Productivity 45 43.57 41 42.83

6. GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE SKILLS 39 37.18 38 36.90

6.1 Higher Skills and Competencies 48 33.48 42 31.74

6.2 Talent Impact 32 40.88 24 42.06

3.5. In year 2015-2016, a total of 109 countries are involved. The top ten countries in

the GTCI 2015-16 are dominated by high-income economies. There are obvious

similarities on the surface between all top 10 countries such as effective

governments, positive regulatory and business landscapes, strong focus on

formal education and socially mobile societies that help countries to identify and

consolidate their strengths as well as develop targeted strategies.

3.6. Switzerland maintained its position at the top of the list and this year sees four

non-European countries making up the top 10, led by Singapore (2nd), the US (4th), Canada (5th) and Australia (9th). The top ten countries and Malaysia’s

position is shown in Table 2 and Asia Pacific countries in Table 3.

Table 2: The GTCI 2015-2016 Rankings: Malaysia and Top Ten Performers

Country / EconomyGTCI 2015-16 GTCI 2014

Rank Score Rank Score

Switzerland 1 72.648 1 71.46

Singapore 2 71.456 2 70.72

Luxembourg 3 68.978 3 70.15

United States 4 67.902 4 68.32

Denmark 5 67.865 8 64.13

Sweden 6 66.621 6 65.71

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Country / EconomyGTCI 2015-16 GTCI 2014

Rank Score Rank Score

United Kingdom 7 66.597 7 64.72

Norway 8 66.339 11 53.55

Canada 9 65.346 5 66.49

Finland 10 65.333 13 52.18

Malaysia 30 54.039 35 49.86

Table 3: Asia Pacific Countries in the GTCI 2015-2016

CountryGTCI 2015-2016 GTCII 2014

Rank Score Rank Score

Singapore 1 72.648 1 71.46

New Zealand 2 65.264 3 60.58

Australia 3 65.080 2 64.03

Japan 4 60.978 4 58.01

Malaysia 5 54.039 6 49.86

Korea, Rep. 6 52.448 5 52.21

China 7 46.600 8 45.21

Philippines 8 44.229 10 41.57

Kazakhstan 9 43.200 7 45.59

Thailand 10 40.985 11 40.23

Mongolia 11 40.254 9 41.85

Kyrgyzstan 12 37.977 12 36.55

Vietnam 13 37.728 13 36.45

Sri Lanka 14 37.313 14 36.09

India 15 34.374 15 34.12

Indonesia 16 34.365 17 31.13

Cambodia 17 33.082 16 31.84

Bangladesh 18 30.895 19 28.31

Pakistan 19 29.045 18 28.56

3.7. Among ASEAN countries, Malaysia ranks at 2nd position ahead of six other

countries namely Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia as

shown in Table 4.

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Table 4: ASEAN Countries in GTCI 2015-2016

CountryGTCI 2015-2016 GTCI 2014

Rank Score Rank Score

Singapore 1 71.456 1 71.46

Malaysia 2 54.039 2 49.86

Philippines 3 44.229 3 41.57

Thailand 4 40.985 4 40.23

Vietnam 5 37.728 5 36.45

Indonesia 6 34.365 7 31.13

Cambodia 7 33.082 6 31.84

4. METHODOLOGY

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4.1. The GTCI framework builds on six pillars: Enablers, Attract, Grow, Retain, Labor

and Vocational, and Global Knowledge. Each pillar consists of two to three sub-

pillars. Each sub-pillar is composed of two to six variables. Each sub-pillar score

is derived as a weighted average of its individual variables. The successive

arithmetic aggregation continues at pillar-level.

4.2. Overall, the GTCI consists of three indices:

1. The Talent Competitiveness Input Sub-Index is the simple average of the first four pillars.

2. The Talent Competitiveness Output Sub-Index is the simple average of the last two pillars.

3. The Global Talent Competitiveness Index is the simple average of the six pillars.

4.3. The GTCI 2015-2016 model includes 61 indicators, which fall within the following

categories:

i. Hard/Quantitative data (27 indicators),ii. Index/Composite indicators data (10 indicators), andiii. Survey/Qualitative data (24 indicators).

4.4. The 27 hard data series were drawn from a variety of public sources, such as the

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO),

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), International

Labour Organisation (ILO), World Bank, OECD and The Conference Board. Most

indicators were already scaled at source and therefore did not need to be scaled

for this exercise.

4.5. The 10 indices came from the World Bank, INSEAD and the World Intellectual

Property Organisation (WIPO), the Fraser Institute, the QS Intelligence Unit, Yale

University and Columbia University, and the International Telecommunication

Union. There were two main concerns about using “indices within an index”:

a) Doubts over its methodology to derive a single score; and

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b) The risk of duplicating variables.

4.6. The 24 survey data series were extracted from the World Economic Forum’s

Executive Opinion Survey and the Legatum Institute’s Legatum Prosperity Index,

which draws on the Gallup World Poll. Qualitative information tends to provide

the most current assessment of certain areas related to talent competitiveness

for which hard data either do not exist or have low country coverage.

4.7. The 109 economies covered in GTCI 2015–16 were selected based on an

aggregate data availability threshold of at least 80% (49 out of 61 indicators) and

a sub-pillar level data availability threshold of at least 40%. The most recent data

points for each economy were considered in the calculation, with 2005 as the cut-

off year. Meanwhile, each indicator had to pass a country-based availability

threshold of 50% (55 out of 109 economies). In order to provide transparency

and replicability, there was no imputation effort to fill in missing values in the data

set. Missing values were noted with ‘na’ and were not considered in the

calculation of sub-pillar scores.

4.8. Inclusion of series with outliers can be problematic and potentially bias the

rankings. Outliers were detected based on an absolute value of skewness

greater than two and kurtosis greater than 3.5.4 In the data set, there were five

indicators with outliers. As a general rule, for indicators with one to five outliers,

the Winsorisation method should be applied. The values distorting the indicator

distribution were assigned the next highest value until the reported skewness

and/or kurtosis fell within the ranges specified above. For indicators with five

outliers and above, transformation by natural logarithms, with the following

formula, was used:

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4.9. To adjust for differences in units of measurement and ranges of variation, all 61

indicators were normalised into the [0, 100] range, with higher scores

representing better outcomes. A min-max normalisation method was adopted,

given the minimum and maximum values of each indicator respectively, except

for the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey questions, where the

original range of [1, 7] was kept as minimum and maximum values.

For the indicators where higher values indicate worse outcomes, the following

reverse normalization formula was applied:

4.10. The GTCI framework is as in Figure 1.

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Figure1: The GTCI Framework

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