RESEARCH REPORT
Re-focus your talent lens: Abundance awaits
Three strategic levers to expand access to highly skilled talent
10-minute read
September 22, 2023
In brief
- The importance of accessing highly skilled talent is amplified as multinational companies navigate intensifying disruptions on a global scale.
- The reality is that 62% of highly skilled workers live predominantly outside of the Global North in 19 countries across APAC, Africa and LATAM.
- To access talent, large multinational companies can activate three strategic levers to unlock the abundant potential talent pools in these regions.
The world needs talent—especially the highly skilled
Amid a permanent state of change, company leaders will continue to need highly skilled talent to meet their business needs.
Securing highly skilled talent
The world around us is changing fast. Generative AI is expected to affect millions of jobs and tasks, introducing a new dimension of human and AI collaboration.
More than 90% of CEOs globally report talent scarcity and a lack of relevant skills for the future of work in the top five global challenges affecting their business.
Only 30 countries account for 91% of the world’s highly skilled talent. Most of these workers (62%) live predominantly outside of the Global North in APAC, Africa and LATAM, including several of the fastest-growing economies globally.
The number of highly skilled workers in these regions is projected to grow to 67% by 2030.
Redefining talent supply
In the coming years, large multinational companies can redefine their talent supply to unlock abundant talent potential across countries in APAC, Africa, and LATAM.
606
million highly skilled workers are expected to live in 19 countries across APAC, Africa and LATAM by 2030
Challenges of attracting a highly skilled workforce
Competing for highly skilled talent pools in APAC, Africa and LATAM is strategically important—but difficult.
Skilled workers have intensifying demands
Some will leave jobs if demands are not met.
Between 2012 and 2021, domestic competitors more than doubled their revenues while multinational companies increased their revenues 1.5 times. In the past year, half (51%) of highly skilled workers considered moving jobs and 14% did, in fact, move. Why? For a variety of reasons. Among the top-ranked reasons were higher pay, to better use their full suite of skills, a lack of alignment with their long-term career plans and greater job security.
65%
of highly skilled workers who considered or moved jobs in the past 12 months did so for these reasons.
In spite of challenges, an abundance of talent awaits
While multinational companies have struggled with recruiting and retaining highly skilled workers, the future looks bright.
The new picture on preferred employers
Nearly half of the highly skilled workers who work for local companies today want to switch to a multinational employer over the next three years. Furthermore, our survey reveals that the preference to work for multinational companies is particularly prominent among younger generations, indicating a talent pool poised to grow over time.
To capture future growth opportunities that draw on the unique skills of rising talent, large multinational companies must act today.
56%
Highly skilled workers prefer multinational companies as future employers over the next three years.
Launch your Talent Reinvention journey
Activate three strategic levers to attract and deploy a diverse pool of highly skilled talent:
1. Rescale and reallocate
Create smaller, specialized teams in developing markets. More fluidity in where and how work is allocated enables companies to serve changing regional or global customers more responsively.
2. Get in early
Build new knowledge clusters that capture local talent advantage and future growth potential. These knowledge clusters will host new jobs that enable local solutions to be created and, ultimately, exported.
3. Re-task work
Redesign jobs to take advantage of emerging technologies. Automating mundane responsibilities frees up the workforce to spend time on tasks that require their unique skills and ingenuity.
Unlock future growth through your highly skilled talent supply
Assess which talent “Bright Spots” will enable a new performance frontier for your business.
Multinational companies that embark on a Talent Reinvention journey that considers the future role of more countries across APAC, Africa and LATAM will be poised to create long-lasting business and societal value.