Canada is Quickly Gaining Steam as a Worldwide Talent Destination

It’s amazing what a few years can do to improve the working climate for one country.

The IMD Business School has released their World Talent Ranking, and though Canada did not make it into the top three, the country is continuing to quickly climb the rankings, placing sixth overall after coming eleventh in 2017. That jump represents the greatest climb by any country in the top 10, and the biggest gain in the top 15 next to Australia, who jumped from 19 to 14.

IMD ranks countries based on three main categories: investment and development, appeal and readiness. Those categories assess exactly how a country performs in a wider range of areas, such as education, workplace training, language skills, cost of living, quality of life, and tax rates. Using these indicators, IMD collects hard data as well as responses from a survey to produce a ranking. This year, the survey recorded responses from over 6,000 executives in 63 countries. An interesting note to make is that according to the report, IMD does not have a partner institute in Canada, which could have led to a less-thorough understanding of the country’s talent landscape.

“Canada moves into the top of the ranking as a result in small improvements in all three factors,” the report reads. “These advancements arise from an upturn in executive perceptions about prioritizing talent retention, increasing worker motivation while reducing the impact of brain drain on the economy, and strengthening the effectiveness of its educational system.”

For the individual rankings, Canada came ranked nineteenth (out of 63) for investment and development, third for appeal, and fifth for readiness. The ranking for investment and development is interesting, as the country has been attracting massive international names and investments over the past two years, especially in AI.

In terms of who sits at the top of IMD’s ranks, Switzerland placed first overall, with Denmark and Norway following. The U.S. came in at number 12, while the U.K landed at 23 and China placed 39. The country with the largest jump from 2017 to 2018 was Ukraine, jumping from 59 to 48. The most drastic dip was Belgium, falling from third to eleventh.

“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.

It seems likely that a lot of the international talent looking to come to Canada would land in Toronto, as a large portion of companies are seeing massive increases in applications for other countries. The only problem might be that all of this international talent is coming to Canada only to work for other international brands.