Employers worry as talented staff eye jobs abroad
By Andrew Taylor in London
 
Employers are worried that an emerging global jobs market will cost them valuable staff as employees reveal an unparalleled willingness to travel abroad to find work.

Almost a third of 28,000 employers surveyed in 27 countries expressed concern that talented workers would go and work in another country, says Manpower, one of the world's largest recruitment companies, in its "Borderless Workforce Survey".

More than a third of 31,000 employees questioned said that they would be prepared "to relocate anywhere in the world for a job". Pay was the main motivation for moving. Other reasons included learning a foreign language and, for executives, the opportunity to add "worked abroad" to their CVs. Only 15 per cent of employers believed that governments and businesses were "doing enough to slow the outward migration of talent".

Manpower, however, is more concerned that governments are ill-prepared to deal with the rising tide of migrant workers that would become increasingly necessary to keep economies running smoothly as workforces aged in many developed countries.

The emergence of a "new nationalism with the policy pendulum swinging towards preventing immigration rather than managing it strategically" is a real cause for concern for employers faced with increasing skills shortages, it says.

According to the inter-governmental International Organisation for Migration, more than 190m people currently live outside their home country, about one in 35 people, and the number is growing at the rate of 3 per cent a year.

Jeffrey A. Joerres, Manpower's chairman and chief executive, said: "Individuals are now increasingly willing and able to find employment far from their homes. More people are living and working away from their home countries than at any other point in history.

"These are not the one-way migrations of yesteryear. Talent goes where talent is needed, and we are truly becoming a global, borderless workforce." This represents a vast shift "that is accelerating and for which few employers or government authorities are truly prepared", says Manpower.

Propelling labour mobility over the next few decades will be huge demographic changes, in particular the ageing and stagnation of populations in developed countries. According to the United Nations, Italy's population is expected to decline from 57m to 41m by 2050 while Japan's the population is projected to fall by 17 per cent to 105m by 2080.

Workers are also becoming more aware of their worth with the internet providing much greater information on job opportunities at home and abroad, says Manpower.Many businesses regard increased labour mobility "as a threat to their hold on their best talent", it says.

Others chafed "against inward-looking government immigration policies that make visa applications extremely time-consuming to the point where many foreign candidates go elsewhere".

National immigration policies have concentrated on raising barriers to the unskilled while trying to encourage highly skilled professionals, engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs to come and work, and even stay.

But as Manpower points out, "blue-collar" workers are also in short supply "to the dismay of many policymakers who, for years, have focused attention on increasing the proportion of youth that attain university degrees and become knowledge workers only to discover a vast talent shortage of blue-collar workers now upon them."

The result is an almost universal shortage of carpenters, decorators, bricklayers and plumbers in developed countries - jobs which increasingly may have to be filled by migrant workers.

(source : http://www.ft.com)