Project News

TALENTAS project concludes with recommendations on talent attraction for Lithuania

12 April 2021

Lithuania

With Lithuania increasingly looking to international talent to drive growth, the TALENTAS project helped the government work towards its goal of attracting and retaining more international students, highly skilled migrants, and Lithuanians living abroad.

As part of its analytical and capacity building support to the Government of Lithuania, ICMPD’s Policy Unit has published How can Lithuania harness international talent to drive growth? This policy paper examines the growing urgency to recruit talent to Lithuania, takes stock of efforts to date, and offers priority recommendations for attracting and retaining global talent. It places special emphasis on three key groups of global talent for Lithuania: (highly) skilled workers, international students, and members of the diaspora.

Accompanying this is Attracting international talent to Lithuania: International best practices and approaches, a guide based on practical experience in place-based talent attraction and retention. This guide presents key lessons learned that are relevant for Lithuania and other places currently developing or optimising their talent policy and practice.

These publications represent the culmination of the Developing a strategy for the implementation of talent policy in Lithuania (TALENTAS) project, funded by the European Union via the Structural Reform Support Programme and in cooperation with the Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) of the European Commission. This project, which ran from 2019-2021, aimed to contribute to institutional, administrative, and growth-sustaining structural reforms in Lithuania to help the country attract and retain global talent. It was implemented in cooperation with the Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Ministry of Economy and Innovation and the Government Agency Invest Lithuania, as well as Future Place Leadership. The field research in Lithuania was coordinated jointly with Diversity Development Group.

Context

How to attract, develop, and retain talent has become a key issue for countries competing for their share of the global talent pool, due to a growing understanding that not only will securing international talent be key to addressing negative demographic changes, it will also prove crucial to driving innovation and economic development. The case for talent attraction is particularly striking in Lithuania due to its demographic and economic situation, linked mostly to a history of emigration that has affected the country’s competitiveness and growth.

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