office buzz. Offics Buzz:

Singapore is the leader in the Asia-Pacific when it comes to attracting talent. For the sixth consecutive year in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) 2019, the city state has topped the charts for the region, and is second globally. Produced in partnership with The Adecco Group and Tata Communications, the GTCI is an annual benchmarking report that measures the ability of 125 countries to compete for talent. The 2019 report themed on Entrepreneurial Talent and Global Competitiveness attempts to identify the ways in which companies, countries, and cities can foster entrepreneurial talent. Six Asia-Pacific countries rank in the top 30 in this year’s edition. While Singapore takes the lead in the region, New Zealand (11th globally), Australia (12th), Japan (22nd), Malaysia (27th) and South Korea (30th) do well.

India sadly lags behind, ranking only 80th globally. China (45th) fares better mainly as a result of having a world-class formal education. China also performs relatively well in the pillars related to enabling talent and global knowledge skills.

According to the report, top-ranking countries share several characteristics, including having talent growth and management as a central priority, openness to entrepreneurial talent, open socio-economic policies as well as strong and vibrant ecosystems around innovation.

The Society for Human Resources Management India has announced a Hackathon to create tech solutions for workplace problems. SHRM India’s Hackathon, which it will run with partners, aims to hand-pick WorkTech innovators and winners will be announced at its annual summit, SHRM HR Tech APAC 2019. Coders, start-ups, entrepreneurs, researchers, designers, makers, technologists, and everyone who is enthusiastic about WorkTech will come together to crack the code on workplace challenges. The broad themes on which the Hackathon is based are creating an engaged workforce, effective talent acquisition for employers, productivity and collaboration, enabling global organisations, learning and development. Short-listed teams will be given a ‘challenge’ to take on and have 24-48 hours to build some kind of a technology to respond to that challenge. Each team will have 5-10 minutes to demo their solution in a general session. One winner and one runner-up will be chosen through voting at the conference. The winner will take home ₹1.5 lakh.