New Zealand is highest ranked country for contingent workforce engagement, followed closely by the United States and Canada. All three rank high for cost efficiency and flexible regulations. The United States has the added benefit of higher productivity, while Israel boasts the highest availability of talent of any market.
New Zealand jumped to the top position as a result of increased weighting on the quality of education and skill among its emerging workforce data points and recent initiatives to attract and retain skilled workers. A higher CWI ranking indicates countries that are likely to support higher volumes of contingent hiring with greater cost efficiency, based on quality and productivity.
Hong Kong remained among the highest ranked countries for contingent workforce operations, because of increased emphasis on English proficiency and the inclusion of total costs of doing business in these markets.
These findings were released by ManpowerGroup Solutions in its third Contingent Workforce Index (CWI), which tracks the relative ease of sourcing, hiring and retaining contingent workforce in 75 countries.
Demonstrating the most optimal characteristics for use of contingent labour: Availability, Cost Efficiency, Regulation and Productivity, New Zealand tops the CWI.
While China and India has moved down on this year’s rankings shifting from third to 21st position and from sixth to ninth, respectively. This downward trend in China and India is owing to the fact that employers consistently place more value on quality of the workforce over the volume of available workers.
Both China and India have been impacted by increased costs, tighter regulation and shifting productivity levels. In the case of China, productivity has been impacted by regulatory changes that have restricted work schedules and increased wage regulations that have resulted in less productive work schedules.
See: Workforce Enablement Makes Giant Leaps in 2015
Another fundamental shift in contingent opportunities within China has been recent legislation that restricts the number of contingent workers compared to salaried employees, adding to the complication of many incumbent employment strategies.
In India, productivity is impacted by an underdeveloped infrastructure in many parts of the country and by the disruption caused by attrition across skilled categories of labour.
“Business leaders are paying more attention to talent shortages, particularly the potential for a shrinking workforce due to an aging population. Rising in importance is a population’s English proficiency, given the increased costs that result when proficiency is low. These shifting priorities have resulted in major swings among the most optimal markets for businesses seeking to use a contingent workforce,” said Kate Donovan, senior vice president of ManpowerGroup Solutions.
Rankings by Region
APAC: China showed the biggest movement in the region, falling from second in 2014 to 10th this year. The key driver of this movement is the increased emphasis on English Proficiency and educational parameters.
The bottom three countries in the region are Macau (very small workforce, limited percentage of English speakers, few tertiary graduates and very low young age dependency ratio), Vietnam (highly agricultural, low English proficiency with limited educational attainment) and Japan (low English proficiency, high reliance on aging workers and comparatively low levels of young workers emerging.
With inexpensive labour, consistent English proficiency among its workers and a government investing in the professional skills development of its labour force, the Philippines has become a market that employers look to first when considering a change to their offshore strategy in Asia.
AMERICAS: The overall CWI rankings in the Americas region remained relatively constant from 2014 to 2015, with the U.S., Canada and Chile remaining in the top three positions for the region.
EMEA: There was significant movement in the EMEA rankings this year. Israel moved from fourth to first, Ireland from sixth to second, the UAE from first to third and the UK from second to fourth. South Africa, which was previously one of the top three countries, dropped to sixth place, driven by a drop in both the regulation and cost efficiency categories.
Also read: Prediction: The Workforce in 2020
