Philippines drops in world talent rankings

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines ranks among the lowest in global talent rankings, dropping six spots to 60th place in this year’s World Talent Rankings (WTR) by the International Institute of Management Development (IMD), and it has seen declines in both readiness and appeal factors.

Based on the WTR, the Philippines registered a total score of 35.81 as it ranked 60th among 64 countries covered by the report.

Last year, the Philippines ranked 54th in the WTR.

The country registered the largest decline in the readiness category, falling to 51st  from last year’s 35th rank.

Similarly, it also fell in the appeal category landing on the 55th spot from last year’s 43rd.

In contrast, the Philippines maintained its 62nd rank in the investment and development category.

Switzerland continued its worldwide talent competitiveness dominance, remaining in the top position of the WTR since its inception in 2014.

This was followed by Luxembourg, which  ranked second and Iceland grabbing the third spot.

“Adapting education systems to the needs of economic systems remains one of the big challenges of talent competitiveness. The ‘winners’ in our ranking are also the countries that emphasize professional training and apprenticeships over general academic subjects. We do not recommend one versus the other, but the economic trade-offs of either choice are relevant,” IMD’s World Competitiveness Center (WCC) director Arturo Bris said.

The 2023 WTR studied 64 economies – including Kuwait for the first time – by quantifying 31 criteria that involve both hard data and survey responses from executives.

Each criterion was then organized into three factors: Investment and Development, which considers the domestic resources committed to cultivating homegrown talent; Appeal, which evaluates the ability to attract and retain talent from both international and domestic markets; and Readiness, which quantifies the quality of the available skills and competencies in the talent pool.

The IMD emphasized that this year’s WTR results indicate that the long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are playing a determining role in the talent competitiveness landscape.

It emphasized that the widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work has implications for how career progression is perceived as 27 percent of the more than 4,000 executives surveyed for the WTR assert that remote work, whether full-time or part-time, is detrimental to career development in their company.

IMD added that the economies in which remote work is considered less harmful for career development are, on average, also those that excel in the attraction and retention of highly skilled professionals as well as in the levels of female participation in the job market.

“This year’s rankings also show that as economies become more service-oriented – a transformation process that has also reached China (41st) and India (56th) – the physical presence of employees in the country of their employers is no longer needed. All in all, we observe the emergence of a new type of employee that has been educated in one country, lives in another, and works for a company located in a third country,” Bris explained.