By Christopher Van Mossevelde.

Due to a critical shortage of experienced staff, attrition is an “every-day hazard for companies operating in East Asia”, reports the FT.

In her article, “Aggressive hiring keeps the talent moving”, Elaine Moore, gives the example of RBS Coutts, which lost one third of its staff to its rival BSI.

According to her, the war for talent is not only affecting private banking and big corporations, but also small businesses where employees are known to switch jobs for minimal salary increases.

Michal Kalinowski, UNIVERSUM’s CEO, was quoted saying “In 2010, the first Chinese company entered Universum’s World’s Most Attractive Employers list (a global index of Employer attractiveness). An interesting sign of things to come is that for the first time ever there is a Chinese company in the top 50 – Lenovo at 44 among engineers”.

The report featured UNIVERSUM’s data on East Asian Students’ Career expectations and the ideal employers in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan.

Quoting various experts in the field, however, the article’s main arguments were: 1) salary increases do not guarantee retention and 2) employers should assess cultural & motivational fit between candidate and the organisation prior to employment.

As Japan’s demographics go from pyramid to kite (see The Economist graph here – from “Into the Unknown” article), companies will face an increased challenge for talent attraction.  In the five decades after the second world war, Japan’s working population grew by 37 million people.  This demographic growth, together with an increase in productivity, took Japan from ruins to become the second largest economy in the world (now third, after China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s).

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According to the institute of international education, more and more Asian students are moving to the US to study:
- 103 260 from India
- 98 510 from China
- 75 065 from South Korea
- 29 264 from Japan

In a recent study by Universum, we identified that around half of the Asian students in the US wanted to stay in the countries where they are currently studying an pursue an international career. For those working in the field of talent attraction and employer branding this represents a huge opportunity (for US companies) and a big headache (for the Asian companies needing this talent).

How should US companies use this opportunity? As imigration rules are being tightened, this can be a great opportunity to counter-balance the difficulties of hiring talent from abroad – internships might be a great solution.

How can Asian companies react? Something has to be done to avoid a bigger problem: understanding why students are pursuing an international career and not wanting to return home should be the first step; offering competitive opportunities to get them back wil be the natural second step.

Read more about the study here:
http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2009/2009-11-16-Open-Doors-2009-International-Students-in-the-US

On an unprecendent move in the talent management field, today Google announced a 10% raise for all employees worldwide, plus a 1000 USD Christmas bonus. The reasons? First to reward their employees for a fantastic year and a job well done; secondly to try to avoid losing talent to competitors. This salary increase has a cost of 1 billion USD… It’s clear that the war for talent in the IT industry is on and the price for employee retention is not cheap.

My question: is a payraise the best way to keep the top talent?

Read more about the raise here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-raise-2010-11
or here:
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/80323/20101110/google-gives-employees-1000-cash-bonus-10-salary-increase-in-2011.htm

If you’re working in the Employer Branding field or if you’re interested in talent attraction, here’s a must read story: imagine a country where only 60% of the female graduates aged between 25 and 64 are at work. Imagine that in this country, women earn on average 63% of what men do.

At the same time, also in this country, fertility rate is down to 1.15 children.

With this clear trend for a shrinking talent market and if female talent is undervalued and available, firms that hire more women should gain a competitive edge. A proper talent management strategy, based on an adequate employer value proposition that aims at this big gold nugget, can be your weapon of choice in the war for talent.

This is happening in South Korea. Read the full article “Profiting from sexism” in The Economist here:
http://www.economist.com/node/17311877