Published on the 25/11/2022 | Written by Heather Wright
New talent solution offers opportunities, and challenges…
Neha Kumar had a client call her this week to report that they had had 230 applications for the role of head of IT. A few months ago, like so many Australian and New Zealand businesses, they had been struggling to find people.
Kumar, senior director, advisory in Gartner’s CIO research group, asked what had changed.
“It is more than just solving for the talent shortage but also the quality of outcome companies are able to achieve.”
“They had decided to decouple the role from the location,” she says.
The company is part of a growing trend of borderless recruitment – recruiting staff internationally and allowing them to remain in their own country.
“Organisations might have already had international recruiting in place for years, but what’s changed is that they used to expect people to relocate. Now we’re seeing them allowing people to live in different countries – or different regions,” she says.
“Most organisations I am speaking to in Australia and New Zealand are in the early stages of planning for that,” she told iStart.
Globally, Gartner surveys show 58 percent of organisations are already employing borderless technology talent.
Kumar doesn’t have local figures but says it’s becoming a key discussion point for many of her clients who, tired of acute talent shortages locally, are looking further afield for talent.
Across APAC the top locations of interest according to Gartner are India, China and Australia, followed by the Philippines. As to the roles companies are willing to hire borderless workers for, in APAC it’s primarily data and analytics followed, in an interesting twist at odds with much of the rest of the world, by leadership roles.
“A lot of organisations are willing to go beyond Australia for hiring their IT leader as well, which is different from what we see in North America and Europe where it is primarily the developers and delivery roles.”
Leading the way across A/NZ is the financial sector and IT services, Kumar says.
But Kumar is keen to stress that it’s not just about finding talent. While that might have been the simple goal for many companies initially, in recruiting borderlessly, they’ve discovered another benefit: Improved outcomes and meaningful business impacts because of increased diversity.
“The ones that go through the process are sharing that it is more than just solving for the talent shortage but also the quality of outcome they are able to achieve,” she says.
“We’re encouraging clients to look beyond this as just a stop gap solution solving for the talent shortage, and to also link the diversity of thought that comes from people with different backgrounds.
“Find that line of sight from what kind of diversity impact it is creating on the business outcomes, on the quality of decisions your teams are making, the quality of business products or innovation coming out of your team. Draw that so you are able to sustain this, rather than it being a point in time solution to a talent problem.”
There are, however, plenty of challenges to borderless recruitment.
Kumar says she’s fielding large quantities of questions from local organisations, keen to embrace the concept, but struggling with policy.
“They have not done borderless recruiting intentionally before so they are looking to understand what are the security implications, corporate policies, tax implications, what is the recruiting strategy known to be effective for it? Those are the questions we are getting more of.”
She’s open that there’s no easy answer.
“There is no one size fits all recommendation that we can provide, because in this area in particular that one size fits no one.”
Companies with subsidiaries have somewhat of a head start, with the subsidiary able to handle the admin and payroll work while others outsource via specialist companies or even crowdsourcing.
Before they even get to that though, many companies will face the challenge of getting management on board.
“Getting the executive buy in from your own internal stakeholders to build that compelling case to justify borderless is where most conversations focus on because you need to cross that hurdle first.”
That comes down to the correlation between the scarcity of local talent and the time to hire and the business impact.
“Amplify those hiring difficulties and have data around the potential of talent availability in the targeted countries you want to expand to. Show the global distribution of the IT workforce using data that is available. Then also define the correlation between the diversity in your team and the innovation impact it can create for your business,” she says.
There’s also the issue of impact on your brand as an employer. For some, wanting to emphasis their local presence, borderless could create friction for the brand.
“You need to be very intentional with the brand you want to have by going borderless. What do you want people to take away? Being very intentional rather than the brand just developing organically is something we are starting to get conversations on as well.”
And how does an Australian or New Zealand company compete with global big brands for talent?
Kumar has good news there.
“All of our talent surveys show people care about flexibility and work life balance.
“With all those cost of living pressures, and the fact flexibility is non-negotiable for a lot of people, this is where if you are able to offer that flexibility, if you’re able to appreciate and tap into it and give people the flexibility to work from different regions where life is more affordable, that’s great.
“Companies are then able to tap in outside the main hubs in countries and be appealing as an employer of choice to these people.”
She notes that almost 10 percent of all technology jobs globally are now proactively advertised as remote.
“There are a lot of potential benefits particularly in terms of the diversity of thought you get, which creates meaningful business impact.
“That’s where we see the real, longer-term benefits.”
