The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) has lowered Taiwan’s ranking in terms of its ability to retain, attract and develop talent by four notches to the 27th in the world, according to a report released yesterday.
The ranking was the nation’s lowest performance among 60 economies around the world since 2005 because of a brain drain, the Lausanne, Switzerland-based institute said in its World Talent Report 2014.
Looking at just the Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan was ranked fifth, trailing Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia, but it still outperformed Japan, Thailand, South Korea and China, the institute said.
The overall ranking is constructed by adding up scores for three factors — “investment and development,” “appeal” and “readiness,” IMD said.
Although Taiwan only moved down one notch to 27th in investment and development, which measures the nation’s effort to nurture home-grown talents, the nation’s overall ranking was dragged down by appeal factor and readiness factor, the report said.
Taiwan’s ranking on the appeal factor, which measures the ability to attract overseas professionals, dropped by four notches to 30th because of brain drain and its waning attractiveness to high-skilled people, the report said.
National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quey (高仙桂) yesterday said that brain drain was a growing problem because of low salaries and the increasing competition between Taiwan and China for high-skilled employees.
“The stagnant salary level is a common problem faced by developed countries, including the US, especially for those countries with multinational corporations that are able to hire people from abroad,” she said.
South Korea is one of the places where salary levels continue to rise after it became a developed country, which was partly because of its strong labor unions, Kao said.
Taiwan also moved four notches down to 25th in terms of readiness, which examines the quality of a nation’s labor force, because of a lack of finance skills for employees in general and a lack of international experience for senior managers, the report said.
Kao said the readiness factor was based on survey conducted in spring, and the result was affected by social phenomenon at that time, an apparent reference to the Sunflower movement that occupied the main chamber of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei for part of March and April.
The institute said its survey “targets executives, nationals or expatriates who are working for domestic and foreign enterprises,” and the results were weighted based on GDP breakdown for a country’s economic sectors: primary, manufacturing and service.
The council will use the report as a reference for future policies, Kao said.
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