The Executive Yuan approved the “Contact Taiwan Program” presented by the National Development Council on September 8, launching Taiwan’s all-out campaign to attract talent globally.
In light of the current trends for globalization and development of the knowledge economy, the movement of international talent can be regarded as the medium for global technological and knowledge exchange. However, in recent years, Taiwan has faced competition for talent from other countries and increasingly serious problem of enterprise headhunting and, after the working population reaches its peak in 2015, the working population will decline by an average of 180,000 people per annum.
To attract and retain outstanding executive talent to assist Taiwan’s economy transform and innovate and thus boost domestic employment, Premier Mao instructed that the Executive Yuan Talent Competiveness Strategy Promotion Group be set up during the 4th “Board of Talent Policy, Executive Yuan” he chaired on January 20 this year; through the four main strategies of attracting global talent —establishing a talent recruitment joint service center─Contact Taiwan, establishing an integrated overseas talent recruitment network, raising Taiwan’s talent competitiveness conditions and building a friendly environment for retaining talent, the effort to attract international talent will be redoubled.
With respect to attracting global talent, a joint virtual-real promotion method will be adopted; in terms of real services, the Executive Yuan Global Business Solicitation and Talent Recruitment Joint Services Center─Contact Taiwan was established on August 7 this year; the Center’s dedicated case managers will handle cases through a single service window and use the customized service method to provide global talent matching employment services; and provide consulting series to overseas talent with respect to pre-arrival assessment, entry application and life after entering Taiwan etc.; cases will be recorded and the results followed-up.
In addition, this program, for the first time establishes a national level Internet platform─Contact Taiwan, that will provide interactive matching services to bring global talent to Taiwan and also online life and work problem advice to overseas talent working in Taiwan. It is expected that Contact Taiwan will go live in December this year. Also, with respect to improving Taiwan’s talent competitiveness conditions and building a friendly environment for retaining talent, through flexible salaries, reform of the Scientific Research Funds Subsidies plan and deregulation with respect to recruiting and retaining of talent, enterprise talent competiveness conditions will be improved, creating a talent friendly living environment and enhancing enterprise talent retention incentives.
The duration of this program will be one year and rolling review will be carried out each quarter with the aim of achieving the objective of “attract talent to come, make talent stay” boosting Taiwan’s human resources capital and increase international competitiveness.
The key points of promotion in the first quarter will be: To make Taiwan’s efforts to attract international talent objective- oriented and directed and to meet the development needs of the country and industry, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has selected 10 key talent recruitment areas, systematically targeting industry 4.0”, smarter systems integrated applications (including: Big data/ Internet of Things/ cloud services), biotechnology, renewable energy, 5G & forward-looking communication technology, high-level manufacturing equipment, advanced electronic parts and components manufacturing (including IC design and semiconductors), product and user experience design, creative forward-looking research and development, global financial services. In combination with various industry associations, key talent in specific industries in target countries will be recruited.
To assist the aforementioned key industries attract international talent, the Contact Taiwan Center has successively visited mittelstand in various key industries and obtained an understanding of their pressing talent requirements and salary and benefits that can be provided; following up, the plan is to set up an overseas talent network using Taiwan’s overseas representative offices and, through simultaneous effort at home and overseas, widely propagating the Contact Taiwan brand and actually implementing the global talent attraction campaign.