Croatia moved up one spot in this year's World Talent Ranking, released by the Swiss-based International Institute for Development Management (IMD) on Monday, placing 53rd among 63 countries.
The IMD report assesses countries’ ability to develop, attract and retain talent in order to create a talent pool necessary for increasing the competitiveness and ensuring growth of their economies.
The report, carried by the Croatian National Competitiveness Council (NCC), the IMD’s partner, is based on three key factors: Investment and Development, Appeal and Readiness.
The Investment and Development factor measures the resources committed to cultivate homegrown human capital.
The Appeal factor evaluates the extent to which a country attracts foreign talent and retains professionals from the local talent pool, while the Readiness factor quantifies the quality of the skills and competencies available in the country.
The three factors include a total of 32 indicators, some of which are based on statistical data and some on an opinion survey of company executives.
Croatia placed highest in Investment and Development, ranking 36th. In this context its advantages are government expenditure on education per student (as a percentage of GDP per capita in secondary education) as well as the ratio of students to teaching staff in primary and secondary schools, where it ranked fourth and sixth respectively. On the other hand, Croatia fared poorly on employee training and apprenticeships, placing 63rd and 62nd respectively.
In respect of the Appeal factor, Croatia ranked 61st.
In this category it ranked highest on the cost-of-living index (15th) and lowest on attracting and retaining talents (63rd), brain drain (62nd), worker motivation (62nd) and attracting foreign highly-skilled personnel (62nd).
As regards the Readiness factor, Croatia ranked 60th. Its advantages in this regard are graduates in sciences, as a percentage of graduates in ICT, engineering, math and natural sciences.
On this indicator Croatia ranked 23rd, while on foreign language knowledge it ranked 35th. On the other hand, it ranked near the bottom on the availability of skilled labour (60th), finance skills (62nd), senior managers with international experience (62nd) and competent senior managers (61st).
NCC chairman Ivica Mudrinic said that the attitude of the Croatian society towards talent was particularly sensitive at a time when young people emigrating and in light of other demographic challenges faced by the country.
The ranking was topped by Switzerland, ahead of Denmark, Sweden , Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands and Singapore, while at the bottom were Mexico (60th), Brazil (61st), Venezuela (62nd) and Mongolia (63rd).
Among the new European Union member states, the highest placed was Estonia (27th), followed by Lithuania (28th), Slovenia (31st), Latvia (34th), Poland (37th), the Czech Republic (39th) and Hungary (45th).
