Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s infrastructure and transport industry faces external threats such as increasing competition from alternative gateways into China, including Shenzen and Guangzhou. At the same time, the industry must conquer human capital challenges such as the drain of highly skilled workers and a surplus of unskilled employees. This industry in Hong Kong must compete with cities in the region such as Singapore and Shanghai for highly skilled workers. Problems with pollution, high rental costs and a poor living environment are deterring many skilled expatriate and home-grown workers from living in Hong Kong. There is also a surplus of low-qualified or unskilled workers across the city state. Executives must now pursue a more comprehensive human capital strategy across these interrelated dimensions—talent, leadership, culture and organization structures. A human capital strategy helps put in place the right leaders to source, develop and direct the right workforce talent, supported by the right culture, organization and operating model. We believe they should: Create a more strategic HR organization. New success factors for HR have arisen in recent years. Managing talent across national borders is especially important, given the global nature of most large companies today; this includes enabling the businesses to operate consistently around the world, while also satisfying the legal requirements of individual nations. It’s also essential to have better metrics, which now means more than simply monitoring administrative costs. To be industry leaders, executives now must understand and measure the value of human capital itself—the total costs and investments in people.