Availability of the right people, increasing labor costs and the need for changing skills set are key issues for many companies. Finding optimal locations for new (production, distribution, service) operations in the US, Europe and Asia is becoming more and more talent driven. But how to identify locations which are future proof from a labor market perspective?
Clients of BCI Global all over the world have to address labor challenges. Availability of the right talent at reasonable costs is a headache for many companies when expansion is on top of the company’s agenda. Johan Beukema, partner at BCI Global: “There are less ‘easy solutions’. Labor scarcity and labor costs in for example Central and Eastern Europe, Mexico and the East Coast of China are rapidly increasing. Finding the right locations for new or consolidated operations asks for in-depth labor market assessments.” In the BCI Global approach three levels of talent factors are identified: the individual person; the regional labor market; cities/regions as working and living environment.
“We always have placed a lot of emphasis on talent factors and the developments in the last 4 years show that we were right, as talent is becoming mandatory in many location decisions”, explains Josefien Glaudemans, partner at BCI Global with a focus on support centers/office operations.
From a footprint and HR perspective, BCI developed a framework with 5 different strategies:
Source: BCI Global, 2018
Reviewing the current footprint of plants, DCs or support centers can lead to a need to find a new location for your company’s activities in Europe, the US/Mexico/LatAm or AsiaPac.
Interested to know more about our footprint optimization frameworks and/or site selection methodology? Contact Johan Beukema or Josefien Glaudemans.
