A shortage of talent is seen as a potential constraint on growth and a driver of wage inflation. However, according to Mark Hedley, vice president of talent recruiting with Globalization Partners, talent is out there, you just need to know where to look for it.
Hedley will speak at Talent Summit taking place in Dublin on Thursday, March 24th, where he will explore the recruitment challenges that companies face, which he contends, is that they are not looking in the right places for talent and they may be approaching the problem in the wrong ways.
“The talent shortage is somewhat of a myth,” says Hedley. “There might be shortages locally or in certain sectors, but if you take a global approach, there is talent out there. If a company is in a particular business and needs to have people physically based in certain locations, then that presents more of a challenge.
“However, if the company is in a knowledge-based industry, there is no shortage if they open up the aperture. There is talent everywhere, but you have to be comfortable hiring people in countries you haven’t had experience with previously. Thinking globally is not a new thing for certain businesses, or sectors, but it can be new in terms of their approach to talent search in many cases.”
A change in mindset and outlook is required if companies are to access that global talent pool, he explains. “Many companies are looking for talent in the wrong place. They are saying they want to fill the same chair in the same place with a different person. It’s a supply and demand equation. If you take that approach, you will be looking at a very limited pool of talent.”
Similarly, organisations’ attitudes to new ways of working will have an impact. “If you look at an organisation which says it is five days a week office based, the pool of available talent will be reduced and the number of people who will apply for jobs there will be less than before the pandemic. If it has a hybrid model with three days in office and two days working remotely, the available talent pool will be about the same as it was before the pandemic as employees still need to be within commuting distance of an office. But if you leverage our global employment platform that enables you to recruit from anywhere, the pool will be much larger. You can hire people in as many different countries as you like.”
The challenge there lies in accessing talent in locations with unfamiliar legal and tax systems and so on. That’s where Globalization Partners’ global employment platform comes in. As the originator of the employer of record industry (EOR), the company, which was founded in 2012, enables customers to find the right talent, anywhere in the world quickly, efficiently, and compliantly.
People no longer have to travel to other countries in search of opportunities. Work is now moving to people
In 2021, the company launched G-P Recruit, a recruitment product which leverages Globalization Partners’ extensive recruitment partner network to give customers access to an unprecedented selection of recruitment specialists in key markets around the world.
“For G-P Recruit, the customer provides the job specifications and so on and we work with our recruitment partners on the ground in the region,” says Hedley. “They have the credibility in the market as well as the local knowledge and expertise to attract the best talent, not just those that are actively applying for roles online. Many of our customers are not that well known in the countries where they are hiring but our recruitment partners have the reputation to get the best people for those roles. Having well-known local recruitment partners is very important in this day and age when you want to attract the best talent. In addition, given the best talent may have multiple opportunities, speed is critical. We can get the job offer and contracts into the candidate’s hands in minutes or hours and we can onboard people in a matter of days.”
So now the service goes much further than simply finding and recruiting the best talent. The Globalization Partners platform also deals with the legal, tax and other potential challenges which can represent a significant barrier to employing people in international markets.
“While companies may wish to hire people in other countries, they don’t always want to go to the trouble of setting up legal entities in those countries just in order to employ people,” Hedley points out. “And they don’t have the expertise to deal with very different employment law and tax systems. We look after all of that for our customers. Globalization Partners is their employer of record in each country. We have our own legal entities in over 100 countries, and we have HR, payroll, legal, tax compliance and other experts on the ground providing support and expertise in 187 countries. We don’t expect our customers to be expert in these things. We take on that responsibility for them.”
“Accessing the Globalization Partners’ global employment platform makes managing this highly dispersed workforce much simpler for our customers. A customer sitting in Dublin can manage a workforce in several different countries from their desk using our technology platform. They might have 10 people in 10 different countries and our AI-enabled platform ensures they all have the same experience. We have invested a lot of time and resources in creating that platform and the global infrastructure required to have a local presence in the countries where our customers want to recruit.”
What this means is that companies, regardless of their location, can overcome local shortages by accessing the global talent pool. “It’s about the democratisation of job opportunities,” Hedley concludes. “People no longer have to travel to other countries in search of opportunities. Work is now moving to people, and we are seeing companies become a lot more comfortable with that.”
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