 Good afternoon. Let's get started. My name is Ricardo Hausmann. I'm the director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University. And it's a pleasure for me to be here moderating this panel on Latin America's demographic dividend and the opportunities to invest in in our people, which is our greatest asset. Latin America is benefiting from the demographic bonus. That means that fertility rates have declined precipitously over the last 20 years, which means that the rate of growth of the working-age population today is significantly higher than the rate of growth of the total population. That means that there's more people of working-age relative to children. And that means that out of the labor force there are more people of working-age and that out of the total population there's more people of working-age and because there are fewer children there's also much higher female labor force participation. So that means that there are potentially many many more people working and fewer children. That means more work per capita, but it also means the capacity to invest more in the children because now we have two parents earning salaries to support fewer children and consequently better able to invest in the education of their children and what's true at the family level, it's true at the national level, there are more taxpayers per student. So we can invest more in the education of our students. Now, the truth is that this has been true for over two decades and we have benefited from that demographic bonus in whatever measure we have. Okay, I'm not going to qualify it whether we've done great or not in the last two decades, but it is what it is. It's not a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that will only be here for maybe two more decades and after that we will get older and things will get much much harder. But there is a fundamental puzzle in Latin America that I would like to illustrate by comparing Brazil in today with the UK in 1960. Brazil today is more urbanized than the UK in 1960. Brazil today has a labor force with more years of schooling, 7.2 relative to the UK in 1960, which had only six years of schooling on average. Brazil today has more university graduates, more than twice, two and a half times more university graduates as a share of the total labor force, than did the UK in 1960. So it's significantly more professionals. 5.7% of the labor force in Brazil are people with university education. Brazil today can operate with a technology that is 50 years more advanced than the technology of the UK in 1960. So Brazil should be doing marvelously. And today GDP in Brazil, GDP per capita, income per capita in the UK in 1960 was 140% higher than it is in Brazil today. So with more urbanization, more education, more university graduates, and 50 years more technology, the UK was able to achieve 140% more of income than Brazil is able to achieve today. So that is an important, and this is not about Brazil because I can do the same calculations with Mexico or Argentina. It's a general phenomenon. It's a big puzzle. Why is it that we have invested in all of these things? We have gone through all these transformations and we don't see the effects in terms of productivity per worker or income per capita. In fact, at the global level, in 1960, the countries that had six years of schooling of their labor force had an average income per capita of $10,000. Today, the countries that have six years of schooling of their labor force have an average income per capita of $1,000. So everybody has become more educated. People are not getting richer. So that's the puzzle we have in front of us. What it is that allows countries to progress, to make their people more productive, and what is the relationship of that to things we're doing which might or might not involve schooling. So to help us understand these issues and to set the stage, it is my very honor to present to you President Laura Tinchilla, who's a president of a country that is highly admired by all of Latin America and the rest of the world, because they have seemed to be doing things marvelously well in a context where it is very easy to mess things. So without further ado, President Tinchilla. Good afternoon, and thank you very much Ricardo for that generous introduction. In reality, talking about the panel, I have no doubts that we will find, many of us will find the answer to the dilemmas that Ricardo has introduced to us, and I don't really want to add, but just few key words about the big topics that we have to answer in our region that it will ask a question, and it's how Latin America could get the best of their demographic bonus. Obviously, a lot has to do with experience, Costa Rica, for example, and also with some of the challenges that we have, that we still have to solve. We have five minutes, only, and I have to summarize this. Without a doubt, Latin America, as I always said, it is a very rich continent, and in certain areas, natural resources, productivity, and the land, the climate is very favorable, but when I am talking about the richness of Latin America, I am talking about that is a continent of young people, and there is no more wealth than precisely the human capital. We have the possibility to lose that wealth, and we will never be able to replace it. If we don't invest in the human capital, and we forget about it, and that great potential of young people is lost, that doesn't mean that results are going to be neutral, but it's going to be, we will get behind in our development, unemployment, poverty, violence, that it has been part of the drama of Latin America, that it is one of the worst in the world, and all this is contemplated in the lack of opportunities of younger people that are part of the criminal problems of our region. And the other option is to decide to do something with that wealth that we have that is our younger people, and there is where the challenges are of how to invest in that human capital, that without a doubt it is, it has a great potential in Latin America to grow and to develop, and beyond that, beyond the political issues that has to do with the generation of human capital, and that's the key word is education. We have to recognize that we have had improvement in this area, particularly in education, and to help our kids not to leave the schools at the investment, thank you to programs as transference, and that the children would stay at school, and we also see a more determination in Latin America to invest in education. In Costa Rica's case is a very good example, we have reached 7.2 percent of the GDP in public education. That's not enough, and that's what Ricardo was talking about, if we are investing more, why the results are not the best, and why we are not generating the wealth that we should be finding. In our case, for example, there are two important issues to take care of, one is how this education is not enough to say how many kids are graduating, and it is also from what areas are graduating children, and there is where the discussion is how to give incentive to the children in certain areas where Latin America has great challenges to improve the productivity of the economies and innovation, that is a negotiation and a discussion with universities, but also we can do something if we can introduce reforms from the high school education, implementing more better effective methods through math, through learning the Spanish language, how to improve, how to make it more attractive, the sciences for example, how to implement the curriculum, the academic curriculum to introduce the technical formation of the learning of the third diversified cycle. So if we are making those changes from the high school, what we're going to get as a goal is a new generation of younger people that it would go to the universities to reformat their offer, and we have students from the university that they would continue offering careers that they are not according to the development that Latin America is looking for. The second point is the quality of that education, and I do not have any doubts that Latin America, if it doesn't decide to graduate the best ones, we are in a position that the education in Latin America is not the best one. Eight or seven nations that we have been evaluated in the PISA approvals, we have found that those are the things that we have to maintain, and when we see those qualifications in areas like math, reading, sciences, all those topics where in reality we make the difference, within 20 countries, we are behind five years in schooling when we compare ourselves with the education in Shanghai, for example, two years behind two years when we see the average in OCD countries, and we have to look for mechanisms of evaluation that can tell the government and to tell the populations if we are improving or not, and to end beyond the challenges that we have in education to invest more and when we talk about more quality, we would like to talk as a positive issue, that revolution that we can do introducing digital technologies in order to improve the education, such as the connectivity, the infrastructure, the quality of internet, it is also the content and the digital revolution can allow us, the countries, to be closer, faster, and to reach the development that we would like to get, and to finish as I was saying, basically we have also two challenges, post-education, and one is to retain the professionals that has a lot to do with the labor market, and with the formation where also we can introduce the topic us in a way that the graduates not only would have the possibilities to find the employment but also to generate through systems of innovation and businesses to improve the productivity, so all those resources that we have invested, we come back as a wealth to our countries. So we heard relevance, quality of education, retention of talent, very important messages. Thank you, Mrs. President. So now we'll move to our panel, I'll present each one of them as we go along. I'll start with Monica Flores. Monica Flores is the Regional Managing Director for Latin America of the Manpower Group based in Mexico, and the Manpower Group is very well known for the fact that it does surveys about manpower needs, and it helps companies sort their manpower needs. So in some sense, it's an excellent observatory of the problem we are addressing, the skills gaps, the skills needs, the ability of corporations to find the talent that they need. So why don't you share with us what you've learned through your surveys about the nature of the skills problem in Latin America. Okay, gracias. We do look for talent for the organizations. This experience gives us from the first hand the needs, the abilities or competencies that the clients require from different sectors in all of the regions, and different size companies or enterprises. Every year, we carry out a survey to look for talent. We define talent as the person that knows how to do something, that can do something and wants to do something. We call this people, of course, but not with the adjective talent. Now seeking for talent, that is those that can and want to, considering also this difficulty where we have thousands of vacancies per month where we don't cover with the sufficient speed that we want to these vacancies, we conducted this survey, and we asked 60,000 decision makers in Latin America, 25,000 of them were from Latin America, and we asked if they had difficulties. For example, Brazil, 68% said that they do have problems to fill in their vacancies, and then Argentina with 41%, Costa Rica with 40%, Mexico and Panama, 38%, Guatemala, 30% and Peru, 28%. If we compare this with hiring expectations where we have a different survey, it's actually the exact opposite. The higher the difficulty for covering vacancies, there is less hiring expectancy. And so what we have is perfectly clear a lack of balance between offer and demand. In some forums, for example, they say that's false because there's a lot of talent available. No, what we have is a lot of people trying to find a job, but those people do not have the skills and competencies that the world requires. And so that's the challenge. How do we tie these together? And it doesn't just have to do with a university degree. Every time it's less important for recruiters if you have two PhDs or if you graduated with honors or the name of your school. What matters today is for you to have the required competencies to be able to send the rhythm of technology, as Madam President mentioned, or the rhythm of the enterprise that is in a very competitive world that has to respond to its customers quicker and be innovative. And at the end, create revenues in the case of the private sector. Thank you very much. And thank you for managing time appropriately. Secondly, Javier is the Chief Economist of Corporacion America. Corporacion America is an organization that builds and manages a bunch of airports throughout Latin America and the world, and is engaged in building this important tunnel, railway tunnel between Argentina and Chile, and is a very significant organization that manages extremely complex things for which they need a lot of talent, a lot of people who are able to perform the complex services that that company needs. Javier is also an academic, a researcher with over 50 papers published, and so I would like for you to share your thoughts as to what are the skills gaps or what are the difficulties that you face in terms of the potential for growing your firm or the rest of the society. Where are the skill shortages? In general, when one talks about the Argentinian case, what one finds is that there are very capable people, people that when they go out of the country are very successful. But however, locally speaking, they might fail. And so there are some issues. For example, the first one has to do with the role of public education. For example, when one sees the result, you find that every time the formation or the training from the private sector is most important. For example, the first myth that needs to be corrected is for the public sector to say that's not true. That's false. For example, the private sector in education generates what the market demands. However, the public sector, as its sustainability and results, do not depend on how successful they are in the placing of professionals in the market. They dedicate to the formation of professionals that leave outside of the scheme of reality. A good example, for example, for instance, in the case of Argentina, we can say it's of our minister of economy. We have an economist who has graduated with honors, with all of the honors, but with a Marxist profile. And four years ago, the economy has not launched out with the best performances in its history or with the best exchange history. An economy that has to have been growing at seven, eight or nine percent is currently debating on if it's not or if it is in crisis. So depending on the needs of the market and what the market dictates, well, clearly it's satisfied by the private sector. And so there is an issue of how this system generates the signals and how it internalizes it and produces what the market wants. And so I think that it's an interesting point, especially regardless of when you were talking about the case in Brazil and the comparison with what England was and its equivalent, we have to consider if the education that we are generating is an education of quality because you can have many years of schooling and nonetheless you don't have good output. Why? Because the trainers are not good and you also have to consider the assessment of who the trainers are because you can generate a great university full of Marxists. And when you prepare a minister of economy, then it's going to have a different impact to the economy in the country. And in my country, that happens in different levels. Because of the labor force, it's the skills of the policy makers. That's where we are having trouble in Argentina. So thank you very much. Now let's move to Humberto Luis Ribeiro, who's the secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Services of Brazil. Let me ask you, Brazil has made enormous efforts over the last 20 years in trying to improve its educational system starting from a very low base. But Brazil has been much more exemplary in terms of labor training. And it has very, very sophisticated labor training institutions that fall under your mandate. How is the system of labor training able to generate or not the kinds of skills that the economy is demanding, that the economy is needing? And to what extent it can compensate or complement whatever is done with the educational system? Thank you, Ricardo. Thank you, everyone. Well, first of all, let me come to the point comparing England and Brazil, which also refers to all other countries in the world. I think we're living on a running belt right now in terms of competitiveness. So by doing the same thing you did yesterday is not enough to keep your status quo today. So that creates for us a sense of urgency, but also in case of Presidenta Dilma in Brazil, a sense of ambition. And in that sense I would like to talk a little bit on how we're doing that regarding labor skills, but also some other initiatives. But coming to one point, which was very remarkable to myself in my personal life when I was like a teenager, I come from a family of farmers in the Midwest part of Brazil. And I saw my grandfather and my uncle having a discussion regarding one of the employees at the farm that he did not want to engage in all kinds of work, all kinds of tasks at the farm, because he was already trained on bovine fertility. So he could not take the risk of scratching or hurting his hands because of that. He was like a lab worker. And the decision both of them took at that time was to train all the employees from the farm. So it was like 45 to 50 people being trained. Today three of them are veterinarians. So they went all the way up to a graduate level. And even one of them is providing services to Africa today on that expertise. This is like 30 years ago. So we saw the revolution of productivity in Brazilian protein, not only in cattle, in beef, but also soybeans and other sources of protein. But this was just to refer that that specific thing in my personal experience, and I'm sure everybody has many other cases similar to this, provided me the faith on education, on how can education transform not only the region, not only the supply chain, but also the life of each specific individual. So this is how we believe that we should have the provision of opportunity to everybody and share the results based on the merit of each individual. So that are some of the pillars in our, the values that were employed today in our day-to-day activities. Brazilian government has decided to do, to tackle the challenges of labor skills together with the private sector of the country. And that is embedded, that is one of the pillars of the Plano Brasil Maior, where myself, I'm in charge of one of the blocks of the Plano Brasil Maior, where we have direct relationship with 67 national associations. So representing businesses and also labor forces, asociações laborais, so they represent the employees also. And together with them, and of course the Ministry of Education and Science and Technology of Brazil, we're providing different opportunities coming from the basic technical skills training, which is called the PRONATEC program, where we ramped up from 1.3 million people being trained per year in Brazil. We reached now more than 3 million people already being trained. And specifically on resources provided with the new program, we have reached 5.6 million people inside the Plano Brasil Maior, trained in the last three years. So this means that people trained directly under the requirements of the competitiveness of our private sector. So we must reach 8 million people. That's our goal for this year. We have a problem with retention even with that, because employment rate is very low in Brazil, and I mean business must be doing a good job, but they're even hiring people before they finish the program. So right now we're even worried, I mean it was too successful I would say in that sense, because even before finishing the program, the companies are already hiring the students. But not to stop on the technical skills. President Dilma also addressed one key point for us in the strategy of the country, which is the relationship with very high-level skilled professionals, mostly on the technical layer, IT, engineering, and the new economy, let's say, profiles, but also the integration of the country to other cultures, other nations. So our president designed this, the Ciencias Sin Fronteras, Science Without Borders program. Harvard University is also part of that program. We're very happy to do that. But many others, 40 countries, I'd like also to thank President Atintila Costa Rica is one of our great partners on that program, also hosting Brazilian students that can develop their postgraduate studies in foreign countries and then come back, not only with the skills, the hard skills, but also of course with all the cultural and the friendship developed in a few years spent abroad. So in that sense, it's a little bit of the programs in place. Brazil, total numbers in education on primary level, Educação Básica in Brazil is around 50 million people enrolled today, and in graduate level studies, Educação Superior, we have around 8 million people, both public and private sector providing the education. But one point I would like to mention to close this initial remarks, which is related also to the burden and the taxation on labor. This was a key issue for us when we started the Brazil Major Program, and this was addressed with a labor, I would say, a tax reduction. In fact, it was a change in the way that we taxed labor force in Brazil. So we have changed it from 48 industries, different sectors in Brazil, different supply chains in the country. We have changed the taxation from payroll to revenues. So mostly those that are labor-intensive segments. So this would, before, prevent entrepreneurs from hiring more people. Now, I mean, that is not an issue anymore. If they need people, they will not think about what is the tax burden on that. They will bring in the talent. If their revenues are not growing, they will pay the same amount of tax on those supply chains. I mean, this is just to provide an overview of what is happening together with us. Thank you. Thank you very much. Peter Beshar is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of MMC. MMC is a corporation that owns several of the most important companies that help large corporations manage their labor force, among them Mercer, which helps them find talent, manage pensions, manage health and so on. We have talked a little bit about education. We've talked a little bit about labor training and other things. But I would like to ask you about another aspect of managing human capital, which is the issue of health and well-being. Is this something that companies should do because of corporate social responsibility, or is there a business case for worrying and managing health care issues? Thank you, Ricardo, and good evening to all. It is a couple of metaphors to just speak about the demographic profile of Latin America. First, a Christmas tree. Second, a lollipop. And then third, a pear. You're wondering how I can possibly bring these three concepts together. The traditional view about demographic profiles was that the best was really a Christmas tree at the outset, that you had the greatest number of people, the greatest number of workers throughout the society, supporting a relatively small band of older individuals at the top. And what's happened, as many folks know in the United States, in Western Europe, and interestingly in countries like China, is that Christmas tree is becoming more like a lollipop, where there are many more older workers and a much smaller base of younger workers to support that. When Ricardo spoke about the demographic dividend that exists in Latin America, it's really because the Christmas tree has become something of a pair, where with declining birth rates at the base, you have fewer younger people, children essentially, and then a relatively smaller group of senior citizens at the top. And really the vast bulk of the population are in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and your 50s. So that is an incredible opportunity for Latin America. The median age in Latin America is 34. By contrast, in the U.S. and Western Europe, it's a good bit over 40. So that's the opportunity. And the question is, what does the region do with that opportunity? The other speakers have been quite eloquent in talking about the importance of education, obviously experience, to address the skills gap. And our company, Mercer, which is really in the talent business and delighted that we have some of our colleagues here from Mercer, they've done extensive research together with the World Economic Forum, and it's in the fairly fat book that is on a number of your seats. And one of the main takeaways was that those countries like Costa Rica and companies that focus on health and wellness together with these other elements that are critical are actually the ones that are thriving, and that they're not simply reducing their health care costs, an important component, to free up funds to put into education and some of the programs that Umberto spoke about. But it's also tangible progress in improving your productivity, so that if your workers are, have more energy, they have greater concentration, they have greater resilience when lousy things happen, these are the ones that are really able to seize the great benefits of this demographic dividend. Thank you very much. So let's, I'm going to respond a little bit to some of your comments. So I'll start with Monica. Monica, President Chinchilla said that one of the problems with our educational system is that we are training people in activities that are not very relevant, not very pertinent. Now, you have information about what are the positions that companies have trouble filling. And I'm sure that me as a parent, and many parents in the audience would like to know what to tell their children about what are the skills that are in great demand that companies are having trouble with. Where should they focus their attention if we want to have education that is pertinent? What are the jobs that are hard to fill? Let me answer the question in two parts. We have to promote certain careers or studies and un- incentivize others. But we have to develop competencies like autonomy, teamwork, and different skills that all of the people here present to know about, because these are the ones that are going to allow you to relearn and to unlearn so that you're at the rhythm of the day-to-day world in technology. Even if you study nowadays the degree that is most damaging and what is most convenient to you, it's going to be obsolete in two years. So you have to keep yourself abreast and learn throughout your entire life and also unlearn. But also it has to do with the parent's culture because we have been educated, especially in Latin America, to think that a university degree is what you have to do and that university degree is going to be hanging in the living room and the lawyer, for example, in the informal economy is going to be frustrated and looking for other things to do because they can't find a good position. Now to call this I wonder what the people here present says that your daughter is going to study nursing or when your son says he's going to study plumbing. When your son says I don't want a degree, I want to have a specialized technical degree, I don't want a bachelor degree. For some of us it would be difficult to support our children in these decisions but it's the most accurate because in the positions that are more difficult to cover, according to the survey that we have which are 10 different ones, it varies per country in Latin America but they're the same 10 for second third place but they're always the same 10. The most difficult ones to cover is the technical areas. The second is sales representative speaking about even beauty products all the way to financial services but in our culture sales is something that I do in the meantime as I find a significant job and sales is not something that you're taught in a specific school. The third point is engineering and nowadays in Mexico we produce more more engineering than ever before but they don't speak English, they don't know how to work in teams and they don't know how to solve social problems and so as we are able to remove that myth that we have to have a university bachelor degree and we're able to promote the study of technical degrees and to have a value of educational institutions not by the number of students that they have but the number of formal employees that their graduates have and also how much money do your alumni make or in what field of science or world sphere are they in are they in a formal economy or an informal economy because in the end this issue of investing in human capital yes we can seek to have the position of everyone having a job but look at the word formal. Latin America needs formal employment to make this engine push forward and generate richness. I also want to mention that we still have positions in manpower that are being demanded and we don't have careers that exist for them for example plumbing or internet flow administrator, content administrator that didn't exist. Now the important thing is for you to develop the capacity in the young ones in order for them to learn different things things that they're not going to learn from teachers or from parents or they're not going to be able to go to a training course in an institution for that and when we break the schemes of the traditional education systems and we promote the capacity of cooperation innovation and questioning asking the right questions in Latin America we're very obedient what the teacher says then that's what it's what it is and so when we actually have this new scenario we're going to have a society that is focused on knowledge and innovation thank you very much. Pardon me because I actually skipped Claudia. Let me just go for a second with Claudia. Claudia is the director for social innovation and president of Belcor. Belcor is a company that through direct marketing through direct sales sells beauty products the product of a belleza so I founded that company she's called Belmont and bell bell bell bell core belleza so it was in the name it was in the name I can see but you do it with so you have a massive labor force of direct employees about 15,000 I understand but you have hundreds of thousands of women that are selling door-to-door your products so for you the management of human resources must be the core the core of your business so why don't we share with us what does it mean to manage talent in Latin America and manage female talent in Latin America. Belcor in reality feels that their strength is their people and to invest in to develop the capacity of their people we have this development we have a question in every year with new collaborators with the development and that means the success of Belcor and how are they ready how do they feel that they have a space where they can develop themselves and to grow on a personal basis and professional basis and through the years we have over 90% that is shown in the last years we have been gaining that replacing to work in the Latin America and on individual basis in Belcor we have more than 10,000 people that we have the administrative we have the sales force and operators and we make our manufacture our own products in the administrative part we have two years ago the university corporate university Belcor than in reality more than to be a school and innovation and the capacities and training and give marketing courses what we focus mostly is the leadership and culture for us the most important in a collaborator is to that their values are similar to the company it goes hand by hand as we were saying that an employee feels that he that we are concerned of their well-being and that in reality that is the most important for Belcor and in reality we focus in that leadership company and in 15 countries that we are for the sales force we have more than 2,000 women that are in charge of that million of women that sell our products and due to them that we are developing them and we have a sales school that we put into practice in the 15 countries and we get to it three times a year in order to promote their what are the best sales practices and we also have in reality a very innovative method and to certify them and the operators we have about 1600 operators that were 60 percent are women for us it is very important to develop those women and to create a we created a program that is an internal beauty where we have topics that go beyond the day-to-day operations as they said they are very domestic violence and we also touch family problems and we are very concerned about their well-being and the consulting group that there are more than a million women that thank you to Belcorp we that they have their own business and due to their beauty products they get an income and today thank you to internet we can reach at least we hope to train all these people and we have a platform that we are developing to 300,000 and we are concerned about their personal development of those women and we do that day today and so that they can be motivated that they are concerned and we also have psychological services and through the internet and digitally we really hope to reach them and lastly we have a foundation that is also focused in them provide technical help to the girls of our consulting women group and lastly we have a program that is called great women and alliances with universities in different countries to develop a course of three months where our consulting group could take that course for three months and we talk about self-esteem about training and sales and they are 18,400 graduated in the 15 countries that we are. Thank you very much. This is a question for Mr. Ribeiro. In 2006 I was asked by the South African government to lead a team of Harvard and MIT professors that would help them with their economic policy strategy and we took a picture of the team with the cabinet and President Tawain Becky at the time and when I saw the picture I realized of all the Harvard and MIT team there wasn't one professor who was born in the United States of America. There was not one and then let me to think that Harvard and MIT think that you cannot create an excellent institution with a talent that is born in a country of 300 plus million people that they need to source themselves globally. Now in Monica said that the country in Latin America that has the toughest time filling vacancies is Brazil and you know right now you have an economic catastrophe in Portugal and in Spain and so on there's plenty of talent in the world that are looking for jobs. Is it too controversial for Latin America to think that a very aggressive immigration policy is a way to solve the talent and the skills constraint? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by restricting and regulating immigration and the number of foreign-born that companies can have? I don't think so. The point is that this should be looked not this should be looked as you're mentioning right now as a long-term strategy as a structural alignment between countries. We have had this discussion before in many different supply chains in Brazil and for many of them the level of flexibility is very strong but some of those the risk provided not by the government. This was in deep research and in alignment with the local private sector in Brazil the risk was that a systemic competitiveness would be put you know somehow at risk. I would mention for example engineering so I'm a civil engineer and in that sense what we were looking for and the countries mentioned are some of the you know traditional partners from Brazil like Portugal and Spain was that we had the reciprocity guaranteed in the long term also for Brazilian civil engineers also to provide services you know when needed to those countries. This was not you know on the table at that time there was no condition for them to to accept that. Nevertheless foreign companies are operating you know in a free environment in Brazil we were in charge of transforming even the regulations for Brazil for companies to operate in Brazil and in Brazil we have foreign companies registered in the country with equal conditions to Brazilian originated companies so there's no difference between both of them and including for example engineering we have many major companies both from Portugal and Spain operating in Brazil so regarding professional certification recognition from one country to the other there are these kinds of still misunderstanding between the countries which should be taken you know in my personal opinion the approach should be in a long term not in a short term you know just to solve these or that specific opportunities or crisis in some places. Brazil similar to all the Latin American countries Brazil was formed our culture was formed through immigration America was like that so there's no reason for us to neglect this this history that we have we only must take care of all the professional developments that we have achieved up to today if it's both hands both both ways it's good for us another just to to set another example right now even with an initial I would say an alignment with the local professionals we decided to import I would say like that on the services trade nomenclature to import the talent from foreign doctors to Brazil so thousands and thousands of doctors are coming to Brazil from 40 different countries despite what the media say sometimes which is basically from Cuba that's not true they're coming from including Spain and Portugal they're coming from everywhere to help us you know achieve better health care in the in the Brazilian system so I mean it's a case by case and if it's on a long term approach then we're we're happy to partner with with other countries thank you very much Javier let me ask you you mentioned in your first presentation that Argentines abroad sometimes perform very well but they have trouble performing well in the country because of skills in other parts of the society but let me ask you about the migration question your group is a multinational group and and you have to operate in different countries and in different environments how different do you find the different environment in terms of the skills a requirement and how easy it is for you to source those skills needs globally we are in many countries we are in Argentina Brazil we have the project of the train we are also in Italy and Armenia in some cases basically we work with experts that have worked appropriately in the country or in certain business areas and the strategic aspects are worked by those that have had good performance and on the other hand some tasks are outsourced so you have a mix there are some tasks that are very very strategic and perhaps you keep those within your core group those are the people that understand how the business works and they're the ones that set the business in different locations and so it's almost like you're exporting the model and then some tasks that are not strategic ones then you can outsource them or hire them and in some cases in the interaction you develop important partnerships and the partners also support because we don't go by ourselves in every location in a lot of locations we develop partnerships with local companies and that allows you to multiply talent so you have an advantage in a scale an economy of scale but also in scope so you have a synergy and you take your experience as well as the local people and you put it together and you get to a new level of knowledge that allows you to generate more productivity and therefore better results Peter in a Mercer is a an MMC is a global company and you have you're looking at overall management of all aspects of human resources in many many different dimensions you have many customers in Latin America how are your Latin American customers different from your customers elsewhere what are the headaches that they have that others don't have and what are the blessings that they don't are not even aware that they have thank you Ricardo we are in about 130 countries around the world and so it's a fascinating management challenge to try to adjust the HR practices based on whether you're in Africa the Middle East Asia or Latin America just a couple of quick examples because I think Monica and Claudia were quite articulate in talking about the skills gap and how you can do some training within the workplace to try to build those skills up so for example in Saudi Arabia there's something called saudiization the Saudi government very much wants a company like ours to hire a greater percentage of Saudi nationals at the same time the population base doesn't necessarily have the skills that we need in our employment so we started something called the marsh academy within Saudi Arabia where people will come to us at the age of 18 years old typically not going to college Monica and spend 18 months with us at very very low pay but learning basically the skills of what the in this case the insurance business actually occurs and the government's been very supportive of that because they think that that helps solve an issue for them in China we've done something very similar again an 18 month program umberto if you'll indulge me to give a quick story about Brazil the labor laws in Brazil for abundantly good reasons are pretty strong pretty protective of the workforce because the government is trying to do right by the people in Brazil which is perfectly appropriate when we try to have dialogues however Ricardo about bringing people on at a very low wage rate and not necessarily giving them all the benefits that a full-time employee who has perhaps a college degree has it's a little bit more challenging in some areas including in Brazil okay thank you and Monica in you told us what you do for your labor force for your workforce but you didn't tell us exactly how would you rate the quality of the workforce before you start improving their skills how would you say is what is in in your experience how appropriate is the set of skills and and learnings that people have when you hire them before you improve them well i i i i meant i meant claudia sorry i meant claudia i was looking at claudia okay what happened with claudia is exhibiting tremendous patience here Ricardo well what it's required for us at least in belgour the basic that we look for and from there we can start working is passion i think that without passion it's very hard to to train to motivate and at least what i found in in latin america and especially with women because for us we have 74 percent of our workforce is women there's a lot of passion and i'm willing to to learn to work to put so much effort into making things possible and if we go to capabilities i i do think there is a gap and and we've heard it throughout our panelists that definitely education in in most of the countries that we're in it's not up to par to education around the world and what we're trying to do with universidad del corp that that we've is together with universities in in latin america try to teach and bring training experience into belgour but definitely if you start with what we call la materia prima that people really want to do good and and try to learn and are motivated to keep learning and to develop i think from there you have a lot to work with thank you very much well with that i'm going to open it up for the audience to have some questions if if you don't raise your hand quickly i'll ask my own question so yes please in front here can you can you briefly just state your name and where you come from my name is patricia more and with american or lines nexus magazine and my question goes for mornica floris because you first opened talking about the salary the what the salary the how you pay your employees can you please explain to us of those people that you cannot find has that something to do with the salaries that you were offering to them okay so so we'll we'll we'll answer later when we have a final session so we'll collect some questions and then we'll go out so remember the question okay um other question from the audience right from here there sir okay back there okay good okay a question for the brazilian representative mr riveiro who mismo salaria y también somente una cosa también gostaria de saber a su opinión sobre a medida provisoria que un lobby da luisa trasiano quiere introducir para copa del mundo para ahora en brasil donde parece que parece que quiere introducir una una medida para que los trabajadores posa intercontratos de at 14 días en cartera sin nada voltando para o que sería un século de previo a ley aurea en un brasil muchas gracias aquí adelante Ricardo you gave the example of harvard and miti sourcing from much beyond everyone is of course in favor of innovation and entrepreneurship that one's going to be against it but what are the soft skills and the policies that would allow countries chile has done some of this to actually be places where you could convene even beyond the identified needs now and actually be complimentary and if any of you have actually worked on that of thinking how you bring entrepreneurship and innovation pulling broader than latin america okay there's a question back there hi i'm gina bedenok i'm a young global leader and i wanted to ask all of you if you've thought about the way the recruitment system is working now are you asking the right questions to find the talent very good aim we have chance for one more question here up front here from india okay so husband you talked about the immigration of talent and you spoke about the fact that brasil can bring talent you know easily uh one of the questions i had is across latin america if you look at the talent pool especially for knowledge services you don't have to import people but you can actually export work but brasil i don't know what brasil is doing about it but obviously has a huge import uh tax if you actually export source services outside brasil now if you look at therefore the largest opportunity that exists today just like us has outsourced to india and to philippines and what have you what are we doing about across latin american countries look at the knowledge services space look at what talent exists and how do you therefore leverage talent where they are and create employment for them for the countries which require it or the you know businesses that require it where were they are located thank you very much so we now have five minutes left and we have five people in the panel so i'm going to ask for one minute interventions where you are free to answer the question that was asked to you or uh you know the ones that are too difficult uh you don't so i'll start with um monica i'll do my best uh it doesn't necessarily have to do with the salary we offer market salaries it's more expensive to have an opening than and that you cannot fill instead of not paying a salary now recruitment before you used to ask how um what did you study what are your plans the next five years now you have to look in the social media what reputation they have what contents they have created for the social media their results in previous experiences and if they have professional practices and so it's a lot harder to find an appropriate candidate with the soft skills that are required because not all of the evaluations are perfect and now not only are you interviewing the candidate the candidate is also interviewing you and they're also researching you in the social media what you said if you're congruent if you have social corporate responsibility if the ceo is congruent between what they do and what they say and looking for transparency you know i just want to close with the topic of the this panel the topic is to invest in human capital and it's good for us to speak about education and to think about the youth but for us to create um substantial leadership change and uh train the next generation leaders we have to invest in our own training because we are not understanding how to speak to the youth and to teach them what they need to know in order to be able to generate an important talent strategy okay well first regarding the the the doctors from Cuba i'm not the expert on that topic it's not my my duty at the government but what i know is that as far as i know is that the program in brazil defines specific conditions that each and every country of origin from the professionals they have the same total cost for the brazilian government and the brazilian government does not retain any part of that it it in case of cuba i think there's another institution uh related to the global health uh uh structure that hosts that payment for cuba this uh based on cuban government uh requirement this is not a brazilian government requirement at all uh but of course uh we're hosting our cuban uh brothers and uh i mean they're being treated in brazil as far as we can brazilian people are hosting them uh as friends and as uh uh dear friends uh the second part of your question uh just yes okay regarding the retail yeah so uh these these are ideas they come across us every day we have over almost 600 congress people in brazil so ideas come through the congress of the country representing the people of the country every day when they report something related to retail final services uh i mean services overall they will address this to our ministry so we're we're gonna analyze that uh to our technical extent uh the point is that uh what we're really discussing with the retail uh companies from the country is how to modernize our labor requirements uh to to become a little bit more flexible for uh non-traditional working hours because in brazil uh we mentioned that it's uh horario comercial is the the local tradition uh translation for working hours but for the retail services uh working hours does not mean from 8 to 12 from 2 to 6 monday to friday we go to bars and restaurants we go to shopping malls to supermarkets out of that so-called working hours so some kind of special attention to those services that are providing services to us as citizens on a day-to-day life this should be addressed uh in my point of view as soon as we can regarding offshoring uh our friend uh which country are you from sir india okay uh we'll be hosting the the bricks uh president duma is is this year she is the the head of the bricks uh meeting and we're hosting the bricks meeting uh this june uh i'm sorry july in fortaleza city in brazil we're very happy to host uh all the delegations uh to brazil but uh the point regarding exporting services is on my direct uh interest also in the country so uh in brazil the tradition is to have uh agriculture policy and manufacturing policy i'm sorry for the time but i'm closed this very soon uh and manufacturing policies uh what we have changed structurally with plano brazil maior is that we now have also the services policy in brazil so before that uh the the incentives to import services are even higher than to export services from brazil so this prevented the country from becoming an offshore platform uh i don't know which company or or institution you you come come from but uh you may uh be acquainted to that in brazil uh so right now we're in the middle of this transformation this initial structure for services exports from brazil and the relationship to other export platforms of services uh was presented to wto this last september uh and india was one of the countries that we we have a structured relationship from that point on thank you thank you very much unfortunately our our time is up in i would like to summarize by saying that that in america as we started saying has a great opportunity it's had it for a while it hasn't done as much as it could have there are many issues on the table uh peter basher mentioned the idea that training people in in company is a great way of addressing labor force issues our current labor laws don't facilitate it we don't need necessarily to change the labor laws we may need to subsidize that training by compensating for these extra costs that the labor law generates i think that there's excellent opportunities in migration that we are not seizing we have a very cumbersome process of immigration into latin america go to a university and ask what percentage of the professors are foreign born and you'll see what how small that percentage is and that's because we are not trying to source ourselves globally in that area and that's just one example because it's my area we we have done a lot and we're doing a lot with education but education is a solution for the next generation there are plenty of people who are too old to be in school and who have many many years of school of labor ahead of them and there's a lot we can do in that respect with training and we don't have world-class efforts on the training front and we don't incorporate a the corporate sector enough in that training effort and with the right fiscal incentives to see the business community as a partner in the generation of jobs so with that i would like to close our our session thank the panelists with a great applause and let's move on thank you very much