Q&A: The talent shortage is a myth

The pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed a par­a­digm shift in the way we work, and numer­ous ana­lysts and com­men­ta­tors have not­ed its role in giv­ing rise to the so-called ‘great attri­tion’. In a recent study by Man­pow­er Group, sev­en in ten com­pa­nies report­ed tal­ent short­ages and dif­fi­cul­ties in hir­ing.

There is no doubt, organ­i­sa­tions are fac­ing a much tighter labour mar­ket in many coun­tries, but con­trary to con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, posi­tions aren’t vacant because there is a short­age of tal­ent­ed peo­ple – there is tal­ent every­where. So what’s real­ly going on and what’s the solu­tion to these chal­lenges? We ask Mark Hed­ley, vice-pres­i­dent of tal­ent recruit­ing at Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners, the world’s lead­ing glob­al employ­ment plat­form whose recent­ly announced fund­ing val­ued the com­pa­ny at $4.2bn.

Mark, we’ve heard a lot about the ‘great attri­tion’ or ‘great res­ig­na­tion’. Is there real­ly a tal­ent short­age at the moment?

It’s a some­what con­tro­ver­sial view­point but, in our opin­ion, there is tal­ent avail­able, but com­pa­nies just need to start think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly — glob­al­ly. What we’re actu­al­ly see­ing are local tal­ent short­ages in loca­tion-spe­cif­ic roles or cer­tain indus­tries like retail, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and man­u­fac­tur­ing. There is a clear demand and sup­ply imbal­ance because those roles are loca­tion-depen­dent. But if you look at it from a glob­al per­spec­tive and knowl­edge work­er per­spec­tive, the tal­ent is out there.

What does this tell us about how com­pa­nies should be chang­ing their approach to work?

Organ­i­sa­tions that have returned to a pre-pan­dem­ic work­force mod­el have run into a lot of hir­ing chal­lenges over the last 12 months. They almost draw a perime­ter around their office loca­tions and when some­body leaves, they look to replace the same chair with a dif­fer­ent per­son. In these instances, the tal­ent pool has cer­tain­ly shrunk because employ­ee behav­iours and pref­er­ences have changed and a lot of peo­ple are not inter­est­ed in office-based roles any­more. For com­pa­nies adopt­ing a hybrid mod­el, which is two or three days in the office and two or three at home, we’re see­ing that the tal­ent pool has rough­ly remained the same. But com­pa­nies that are thriv­ing in the tal­ent mar­ket – and there are plen­ty out there – are those that have com­plete­ly embraced remote work­ing. For them, the tal­ent pool has sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed. That tells us that issues find­ing peo­ple are not because of sup­ply, they are because the work­force mod­el you are deploy­ing is restrict­ing you from access­ing the biggest and best tal­ent pool.

For com­pa­nies that do want to unlock tal­ent in new juris­dic­tions, what are the com­mon obsta­cles they face?

There are a few bar­ri­ers to over­come. The biggest is a lack of under­stand­ing around their options. For over 10 years at Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners we’ve been edu­cat­ing peo­ple that you don’t have to invest in enti­ties, infra­struc­ture, offices or even exper­tise in a par­tic­u­lar region in order to hire peo­ple there. Now, the pan­dem­ic and the rise of remote work­ing as a result, has proven that remote work­ing can be very suc­cess­ful. Most peo­ple don’t need con­vinc­ing of that any­more, but they do need more aware­ness that through a com­pa­ny like Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners they can hire 10 peo­ple in 10 dif­fer­ent coun­tries seam­less­ly.

Once you’re past that, it’s real­ly about under­stand­ing where you want to hire and the costs. If you’re look­ing for a spe­cif­ic skill set, where is the best place to look? What is the sup­ply and com­peti­tor activ­i­ty in that area, and what’s the total cost of com­pen­sa­tion and statu­to­ry ben­e­fits? If the num­bers work out, the next chal­lenge is not hav­ing a brand in that loca­tion. Often a com­pa­ny is very well-known in its home region and has the back­ing to expand inter­na­tion­al­ly, but its brand equi­ty is much low­er else­where. Final­ly, your recruit­ment team might be great domes­ti­cal­ly but not expe­ri­enced with inter­na­tion­al hir­ing and don’t know local mar­ket nuances.

How is Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners help­ing organ­i­sa­tions over­come these chal­lenges?

Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners makes it fast and easy for employ­ers to hire any­one, any­where, with­out hav­ing to set up inter­na­tion­al branch offices or sub­sidiaries. By using Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners’ pro­pri­etary, AI-enabled and com­pli­ant plat­form, com­pa­nies can improve their access to glob­al tal­ent while min­imis­ing risk. Users enjoy around-the-clock access to the industry’s largest and most expe­ri­enced team of glob­al HR experts who can assist with ques­tions about hir­ing tal­ent in over 187 coun­tries.

We’ve been doing this for over 10 years now, and recent­ly we ele­vat­ed our offer­ing fur­ther through the launch of G‑P Recruit, which lever­ages Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners’ exten­sive recruit­ment part­ner net­work to give cus­tomers access to an unprece­dent­ed selec­tion of recruit­ing spe­cial­ists in key mar­kets around the world. With G‑P Recruit, com­pa­nies can find the per­fect fit based on their unique com­bi­na­tion of require­ments includ­ing hir­ing loca­tion, indus­try sec­tor, func­tion­al area, exper­tise or pri­or roles, all through Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners’ indus­try-lead­ing glob­al employ­ment tech­nol­o­gy plat­form.

What role will tech­nol­o­gy play in the future of tal­ent?

The future of tal­ent is remote and dis­persed around the world, and tech­nol­o­gy is the enabler. We’ve already seen that the move to glob­al remote work­ing has been dri­ven by the democ­ra­ti­sa­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools. Now com­pa­nies need to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to expand their tal­ent pool. That’s where Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners comes in because our glob­al employ­ment plat­form pro­vides end-to-end tech­nol­o­gy enable­ment for all of the process­es required to tap into glob­al tal­ent pools.

How­ev­er, we are also aware that recruit­ment can be a per­son­al and sen­si­tive activ­i­ty which is where our peo­ple on the ground come in. We use tech­nol­o­gy to enable organ­i­sa­tions, their can­di­dates and recruit­ing agency part­ners to spend more time on their con­ver­sa­tions and rela­tion­ships rather than oner­ous back­ground work. If a com­pa­ny decides to hire a busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ag­er in Sin­ga­pore, with­in five min­utes they can go onto our plat­form, com­plete the infor­ma­tion and it’s auto­mat­i­cal­ly sent across to our recruit­ment agency part­ners with expert local knowl­edge. A HR man­ag­er or busi­ness leader sit­ting in Lon­don, with teams in six dif­fer­ent loca­tions and time zones, has every­thing in the plat­form to be com­pli­ant. It’s total­ly seam­less and how com­pa­nies will attract and retain thriv­ing work­forces in the future.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it globalization-partners.com

Pro­mot­ed by Glob­al­iza­tion Part­ners