How Your Company Can Gain a Global Talent Advantage | Johann Daniel Harnoss | TED

Last summer I was in New York

and had a conversation that had me thinking ever since.

I met Mubarik Imam,

one of the early engineers at WhatsApp,

and what she told me changed how I look at migration.

She said to me,

“Johann, I will never forget

the first time I walked into the office at WhatsApp.

It felt like a mini United Nations."

And she explained to me that it was precisely that global diversity

that made them design the app

not just for the average US college kid in mind,

but for a truly global audience.

And in that process, they asked questions few others would.

Like, does the app work in the more rural parts of Africa,

Asia and elsewhere,

or will it work for a refugee on a boat

sending a message back home to their family?

The rest is history.

WhatsApp became a product fit for the world,

and chances are you, like me, might be using it every single day.

Of course, WhatsApp is not just an outlier.

Look at ChatGPT, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines,

Google search, YouTube, the iPhone, the list goes on.

Each one of these pretty remarkable products

was built by teams of immigrants and locals,

working creatively side by side.

And that's why leading companies today,

they don't just outsource internationally to save money on cheaper labor.

They do that,

but what they also do is that they hire immigrants

for their insights, experiences and unique perspectives.

There are 280 million international migrants in the world today.

And many more, up to 750 million people,

say that they would move internationally if they could.

I lead our research on global migration here at BCG, a global consulting firm.

And I also advise governments and companies on innovation

and migration strategy.

Outside of work, I co-lead a team of more than 100 volunteers.

We are Imagine,

and we're a community of talent without borders.

And every day we help skilled migrants from places like Afghanistan, Syria,

Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria or elsewhere.

We help them find a new job abroad,

come here and integrate into a new life.

And from these experiences, I can tell you,

these 280 million people,

they aren't just statistics.

They're real human beings with families,

dreams and hopes of a better future.

Yet, too often when they relocate, they are met with fear,

prejudice or even outright violence.

Yet in my mind, migration does not have to be a zero-sum,

one game where one person wins and the other person loses.

No.

If we look at it differently,

it can actually be a source of great strategic advantage,

both for companies and entire countries.

We looked at this recently in a joint report with IOM,

the International Organization for Migration of the United Nations.

And in that report, we published two headline figures.

One, migrants already today

create a massive boost to our local economies,

totaling nine trillion US dollars a year in 2020,

and that impact will only increase to 2050 to 20 trillion US dollars a year.

And what's more,

migrants can help us address pretty acute labor shortages

that we see in our economies,

because it turns out, we don't have a lack of jobs.

In many countries,

we tend to have a lack of workers.

And that lack of workers, it costs all of us dearly.

Three billion US dollars, not per year, but per day.

And that is doctor appointments not happening,

packages not delivered or flights back home being canceled.

So how can we make migration work better for everyone?

That's exactly the question we looked at

when we recently interviewed 800 executives in a recent BCG survey.

And what they told us really surprised me,

because 95 percent said,

"Johann, we see the value in hiring globally,"

but only five percent said,

"And yes, we're already doing it strategically

and we're getting the results to show for it."

So companies seem to struggle big time

to follow the lead of WhatsApp and others.

And when we dug deeper and wondered why, we initially thought it was a visa issue.

But then we took a closer look at the visa policies

of more than 25 countries,

and we found that with the exception of the US and China,

all the other countries actually give a pretty direct path to entry for work.

If you have a bachelor's degree,

have a job offer

and make just a little bit more than the average salary in the country.

All of these conditions can be quite easily fulfilled

by recent university graduates

with just two or three years of work experience.

So the visa process, could it be fast and easier at times?

Absolutely, yes.

But is it the show stopper that keeps talent and opportunity

away from each other?

Clearly not.

So what is it then, if it's not a visa issue caused by government bureaucrats?

In my view,

the issue lies in the world of business and within all of us.

And that's actually the good news

because it means that we can all change it.

Changing it starts with senior executives

because like any other business priority,

it must come from the top or it ain't going to happen.

Let's take a look at Rakuten, for example.

Rakuten is a Japanese e-commerce company that by now has expanded globally.

But in 2010, the company was totally lost in translation,

translating documents across English and Japanese and back on a daily basis,

losing days of work,

and also making it pretty hard for global talent to join the company.

So the founder and CEO, Mickey Mikitani,

he stepped up and issued a decree.

He basically said, from today on, all meetings, presentations,

down to the canteen menus,

they must be in English.

Sounds easy? Is not.

So for the next few weeks, absolute chaos ensued.

And for sure, you can imagine it was a pretty stressful transition

for many executives not home in English as their first language.

But over time, the decision paid off

and the company turned from a formalistic, hierarchical one

into one that is much flatter and more decentralized.

And if you visit their offices today,

you will see people that migrated to Japan from places like Bulgaria, France,

Germany, India, Indonesia and elsewhere.

And since then, the company has expanded into 30 countries

and is seen as the poster child of a modern, digital and global Japan.

Once senior executives are on board,

human resource teams are next.

In the past, these HR teams,

they could afford to basically just write a local language job description

and hire from a talent pool largely 50 miles around the headquarters.

Today, not so much.

And leading HR teams, for many positions, they actively hire globally.

Let's take a look at Douglas.

Douglas is Europe's number one beauty retailer

with more than 1,800 stores

across more than 15 countries.

Yet in the pandemic, they had to close many stores

and they made a hard turn towards e-commerce.

And they knew that in order to do that, they had to dial up their tech teams.

Yet, they really couldn't find the tech talent here at home in Germany.

So to fix that, they did two things.

One, they introduced a fully remote digital hiring process

complete with hard and soft skill assessments,

and they also launched a new hiring campaign

called "The Code Behind the Beauty" in order to attract a more global,

diverse set of applicants.

Since then, they've hired a QA tester

and product managers from our Imagine pool,

and they’re also broadly hiring more globally and hire developers

and for other roles completely internationally.

And as a result they managed something pretty rare for an offline retailer,

and that is translating their offline strength

into true online growth potential.

And the cherry on top?

Doing all of that by following the latest and freshest HR best practices

that benefit not just foreign workers,

but all of their talent base.

Finally, let's look at you and me

and all of us who don't work in HR teams

and don't lead global companies just yet.

So the next time you're hiring for one of your teams,

ask your HR colleagues to maybe also shortlist a couple of global candidates

and when you interview them, be ready to be surprised.

A couple of months ago,

I spoke to a group of female developers from Afghanistan

seeking a career abroad.

And yet, despite the unimaginable horrors of their daily lives

and the injustice that they're facing,

they actually brought a degree of positive focus and skill and creativity

to the conversations I could only deeply admire.

Yet, frankly, in other circumstances, it turned out differently.

And people were clearly not mentally or culturally ready for a life abroad.

Over time, I personally learned to check my own biases at the door,

and I'm still working on it.

But let me give you an example.

When people address me by email, as "esteemed sir" or "doctor,"

I don't immediately cringe or think that they might not be culturally ready.

No, I learned over time that they only mean it as a sign of respect.

Yet, let's face it, the culture gap is real

and it can always help to get some culture coaching.

In fact, I'm a culture coach myself, sometimes in my own family.

So a couple of years ago,

my brother Jonathan was applying for a job in the US

as a research scientist,

and initially he was struggling just a little bit.

So I took a look at his emails and I could tell he was writing them

from a very German mindset.

Let me give you an example.

He wrote something like, "Dear Dr. Smith,

I am writing to you in relation to my previous letter from April 22.

I haven't heard a reply from you since."

True story.

It's not just too formal,

it's borderline rude by American standards,

even though in Germany, believe it or not, you still might get away with it.

So I told him to rewrite his emails in a more global standard.

Something like "Dear John, I hope you had a great weekend.

I'm following up on my blah blah blah."

You get the message.

And with that, and because it’s great, he got the job.

And what's so unique about this

is he did not have to learn a new skill, spending years on it.

All that it took was somebody pointing out to him

the small but significant changes in the way he presented himself.

And now, after a couple of years, he's a great culture coach himself.

And in fact, I think that is something we can all aspire to.

Because migration is indeed one

of the great possibilities of our lifetimes.

One that we can all contribute to

and one that clearly has in business

so-called "first mover advantage."

And that's why I predict that companies who embrace the most global,

most educated generation ever,

they will win in the marketplace,

while others who still stand on the sidelines, they won't.

I call that global talent advantage,

and it applies as much to companies as it does to entire countries.

I think it's time that we change perspective

and see migrants not as a threat or as a burden,

but as an opportunity.

An opportunity to build more vibrant and innovative nations,

and also an opportunity to do our little share

to make the world a better place for all.

Thank you.