Diverse workforce critical for companies in Hong Kong, EU business panel hears

“It’s massively important … Talent wants to work in diverse environments,” said Kasper Fangel, group CEO of facility management service company ISS. “[Companies also] need input from different angles and knowledge who can provide the right basis for making decisions.”

Others on the panel, which included business executives, chambers of commerce and a member of the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, largely agreed.

“Diversity is important in recruitment,” said Peter Burnett, the regional head of corporate finance for Northeast Asia at Standard Chartered. “It creates an environment where people are comfortable at work.”

Burnett described the current global competition for talent as an “arms race” but that Hong Kong benefited from having “diversity baked into its DNA”.

Many of CEOs at Hong Kong’s financial institutions were women, he noted, while also pointing to a recent ruling by the Court of Final Appeal that required the government to establish civil partnerships for same-sex couples, he said.

“It demonstrates [the city’s] international perspective and one of the attractive features for people to move here,” he added.

Hong Kong lost 210,000 workers between early 2019 and the end of 2022. A survey conducted in April by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce found that 74 per cent of local companies have been struggling with a shortage of labour.

Where are the expats? Hong Kong’s talent drive fails to bring back foreigners

The government responded by launching the Top Talent Pass Scheme last December, which offered a new two-year visa to those who earned at least HK$2.5 million (US$318,775) in the previous year and graduates of the world’s top 100 universities with at least three years of working experience in the last five years.

In the first half of the year, 25,961 applications were approved under the scheme, 95 per cent of whom were from the mainland.

Western expatriates, including those from Britain, the United States and Australia, have been slower to return, which has sparked concerns about Hong Kong’s status as an international financial hub.

Patrick Lau, deputy executive director at the Trade and Development Council, described geopolitical tensions between China and the West as the “elephant in the room” affecting the city’s international recruitment drive.

“There are different perceptions in different parts of the world about the situation in Hong Kong,” Lau said.

“It does require stakeholders, such as young people or businesspeople, from the European community, to come in person to Hong Kong to see for themselves that the opportunities are real.”

After Hong Kong’s expat exodus, talent search drives mainland Chinese influx

But Anita Vogel, chairman of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, was optimistic that as more overseas visitors returned to Hong Kong, its attractiveness to foreign talent would blossom again.

Vogel said one of the key challenges the city faced was attracting young talent, and she encouraged the government to expand its use of work-holiday visas as a means to introduce them to what the city had to offer.

“I do think the opportunities will prevail,” Vogel said.