Can human capital capacities keep pace with economic growth?
This year’s first working breakfast was held at the Metropol Hotel for managers of foreign and domestic companies operating in Serbia, together with representatives of the economic departments of numerous embassies in Serbia. The Business Intelligence Club event was organized in cooperation with the Institute for European Affairs in partnership with ProCredit Bank Serbia.
Global and regional mobility of human capital is becoming more frequent. These demographic transformations are becoming so fast, that it is not easy for legal regulations to follow them from the aspect of tax and labor law. The workforce deficit in Serbia has existed for several years, but it is becoming more drastic – both employers and economists agree.
It seems that there is a phenomenon happening on the market, which is that there is an excess of capital, and on the other hand, a lack of ideas and quality executors. So another important question arises: can human capital capacities keep pace with economic growth?
When we talk about solutions related to human capital, remote workers, the form of digital nomads, the import of labor, and automation are emerging as more and more practical solutions.
These topics, which are both regional and global problems, were discussed by:
Dennis Kaiser, Head of Economic Department, Embassy of the Republic of Germany
Ivanka Novaković, director of the HR sector, Delta hodling
Svetislav Kostić, associate professor, Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade
Radoš Gazdić, Acting Director, Development Agency of Serbia
The moderator of the panel was our well-known journalist Suzana Trninić.
Germany is a good example and a country that has a strategy of attracting the workforce, as well as planning the structure of the population according to the real needs of personnel profiles. Why is this strategy important and what tools are available to the state and employers to successfully implement the labor force attraction strategy. Dennis Kaiser, head of the economic department of the embassy of the Republic of Germany, the country that is our largest and most important foreign trade partner and from which the largest companies came and invested in Serbia, spoke about this topic and practice in Germany on the panel.
How has the tax incentive for attracting highly qualified personnel turned out in practice? What is the feedback from the targeted personnel and which foreign countries are the most attractive for Serbian businessmen to live and work were the topics answered by Svetislav Kostić, associate professor, Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade.
Our guests had the opportunity to learn from the panel participants what Delta Holding’s experience is in the matter of importing labor, what are the problems and shortcomings, especially in terms of legal regulations, what everyone who wants to apply this model should know, but also what their experiences are. regarding the employment of highly educated workers from foreign developed countries. Ivanka Novaković, director of the HR sector, Delta Hodling, gave her opinion on all this and many other questions.
Radoš Gazdić, acting the director of the Development Agency of Serbia talked about the availability of labor force, since one of the most important reasons why investors choose Serbia was precisely that availability as well as price competitiveness. How the less and less available labor force and wage growth will affect this trend and what are the trends in the structure of investments, what is the situation today, is it possible to generally maintain this level of investments in the coming period are just some of the topics we started with today’s panel.
After the panel, many distinguished guests had the opportunity and were interested to deepen today’s topic with their questions and find out from the panelists what the expectations are and at the same time share their experiences regarding the availability of labor, recruitment, employment of foreigners and generally what happens in practice.
