By Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat

The Philippines ranking in the 2018 world ranking on the quality of workers plummeted to 55 from 45 in 2017 among 63 countries on worsening concerns on employment and the country’s education system.

The IMD World Talent Ranking 2018, which has just been released from the Singapore edition of IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP), evaluates the capability of 63 countries in developing, attracting and retaining talent. The assessment is based on three factors:

Investment and Development, Appeal, and Readiness. These factors include indicators that capture the resources invested in developing local talent, the extent to which a country attracts and retains talent, and the quality of skills available in the talent pool.

The report noted the Philippines for having the most significant decline in the Asia region. The reasons for such a drop include a decline in tourism and employment, the worsening of public finances and a surge in concerns about the education system.

Asia shows mixed results. Hong Kong and Singapore lead the region. On the one hand, Japan (25th), Republic of Korea (27th), Malaysia (22nd) and India (44th) all see slight improvements. On the other, Taiwan (17th), Thailand (30th) and Indonesia (43rd) drop a few places. Australia (19th) improves its rank by two positions and New Zealand (23rd) drops 7 places.

Countries from the region that experience declines this year, with the exception of Taiwan, all show signs of a need to improve their tangible and scientific infrastructure.

The 2018 edition of one of the world’s foremost reports on the quality of international workforces has been released, with Western Europe dominating the top-10 with Switzerland leading for the fifth consecutive year.

Canada is the only non-European nation in the top 10.

Denmark finished second followed by Norway, Austria and the Netherlands. Norway joins the top three, advancing four places up from last year, thanks to an improvement in public expenditure on education and the readiness of its talent pool. Canada (6th), Finland (7th), Sweden (8th), Luxembourg (9th), and Germany (10th) complete the top 10.

The Slovak Republic (59th), Colombia (60th), Mexico (61st), Mongolia (62nd), and Venezuela (63rd) are the last countries in the ranking.

“Since 2014, the Talent Ranking assesses how the 63 economies we study develop, attract and retain highly-skilled professionals. Cultivating a skilled and educated workforce is crucial to strengthening competitiveness and achieving long-term prosperity, particularly in the current dynamic landscape where artificial intelligence, robotics and other new technologies constantly redefine the challenges that governments, businesses and society in general will have to face in the future,” said Arturo Bris, Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center. “This year the most successful countries in talent competitiveness are mainly European, mid-size economies. Moreover, these countries share high levels of investment in education and quality of life,” concludes Arturo Bris.

Hard data and responses to the IMD Executive Opinion Survey are used to produce the ranking. The latter annual survey compiles input from over six thousand executives based in 63 different economies.

This year, Switzerland once again confirms its role as an important global talent hub. It ranks 4th in Investment and Development, and 1st in both the Appeal and Readiness factors. In addition, several European countries fall within the 25 most competitive with respect to talent. Belgium (11th), Cyprus (15th), Portugal (17th), Ireland (21st), United Kingdom (23rd), and France (25th) complete this list.

With the exception of Estonia (28th), Slovenia (30th), and Latvia (33rd) Eastern European countries generally place in the lower part of the ranking. For instance, the Slovak Republic (59th), Bulgaria (57th), and Romania (56th) underperform in attracting highly skilled workers from abroad and they also face problems in retaining their locally-grown talent.

Canada (6th) is the only non-European country in the top ten, rising from 11th place, lifted by an improvement in the quality of its talent pool. The USA (12th) also moves up with respect to last year showing advancements in all three talent factors.

In Asia, Singapore (13th), Hong Kong SAR (18th) and Malaysia (22nd) achieve the best placements in terms of talent competitiveness. While the two city-states continue to excel in tapping into the international talent pool, Malaysia instead focuses on investments in education to develop its homegrown skilled workforce. Taiwan (27th) prioritizes the attraction and retention of talent, Japan improves (29th) due to the availability of skilled labor and the effectiveness of its education system and South Korea advances (33rd).