WEF: Skills gap threatens Brazil growth

The lack of skilled manpower seen across key industry sectors in Brazil is one of the main deterrents for the country’s economic growth, delegates heard at the World Economic Forum on Latin America this morning.

The Brazil chapter of the Annual Global CEO Survey undertaken by PwC outlined the market perceptions and concerns of the local business community in comparison to their counterparts in other countries.

According to the study, Brazilian CEOs are optimistic about growth prospects in 2011, with 58% claiming to be positive in comparison to 48% of executives elsewhere. However, the share of executives that claim to be “very positive” about business in Brazil in the next three years decreases to 50%, against 51% of respondents in other countries who expressed a similar opinion.

This mood swing, according to the study, is due to concerns such as the lack of qualified labor (cited by 76% per cent of Brazilian CEOs polled), along with the country’s overregulation (mentioned by 68%) and protectionism from the nations it exports to (raised by 60% of respondents).

The main challenges in relation to talent management are the actual lack of professionals with necessary skills (cited by 76%), followed by development of attractive career plans (74%) and recruiting, as well as integrating young people to the workforce (66%).

The PwC research mentions that key actions driven by companies to tackle these issues are the increase of non-financial benefits such as training overseas, cited by 74%, followed by attraction and talent retention strategies (60%) and partnerships with the government to enhance competence areas (60%).

Photo by Christian Senger licensed under Creative Commons