Last summer I was in New York and had a conversation
that had me thinking ever since. I met Mubarik Imam, one of the early engineers at WhatsApp, and what she told me
changed how I look at migration. She said to me, “Johann, I will never forget the first time I walked
into the office at WhatsApp. It felt like a mini United Nations." And she explained to me that it was
precisely that global diversity that made them design the app not just for the average
US college kid in mind, but for a truly global audience. And in that process, they asked
questions few others would. Like, does the app work
in the more rural parts of Africa, Asia and elsewhere, or will it work for a refugee on a boat sending a message
back home to their family? The rest is history. WhatsApp became a product
fit for the world, and chances are you, like me,
might be using it every single day. Of course, WhatsApp
is not just an outlier. Look at ChatGPT, Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, Google search, YouTube,
the iPhone, the list goes on. Each one of these
pretty remarkable products was built by teams
of immigrants and locals, working creatively side by side. And that's why leading companies today, they don't just outsource internationally
to save money on cheaper labor. They do that, but what they also do
is that they hire immigrants for their insights, experiences
and unique perspectives. There are 280 million international
migrants in the world today. And many more,
up to 750 million people, say that they would move
internationally if they could. I lead our research on global migration
here at BCG, a global consulting firm. And I also advise governments
and companies on innovation and migration strategy. Outside of work, I co-lead a team
of more than 100 volunteers. We are Imagine, and we're a community
of talent without borders. And every day we help skilled migrants
from places like Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria or elsewhere. We help them find a new job abroad, come here and integrate into a new life. And from these experiences,
I can tell you, these 280 million people, they aren't just statistics. They're real human beings with families, dreams and hopes of a better future. Yet, too often when they relocate,
they are met with fear, prejudice or even outright violence. Yet in my mind, migration
does not have to be a zero-sum, one game where one person wins
and the other person loses. No. If we look at it differently, it can actually be a source
of great strategic advantage, both for companies and entire countries. We looked at this recently
in a joint report with IOM, the International Organization
for Migration of the United Nations. And in that report, we published
two headline figures. One, migrants already today create a massive boost
to our local economies, totaling nine trillion
US dollars a year in 2020, and that impact will only increase
to 2050 to 20 trillion US dollars a year. And what's more, migrants can help us address
pretty acute labor shortages that we see in our economies, because it turns out,
we don't have a lack of jobs. In many countries, we tend to have a lack of workers. And that lack of workers,
it costs all of us dearly. Three billion US dollars,
not per year, but per day. And that is doctor
appointments not happening, packages not delivered
or flights back home being canceled. So how can we make migration
work better for everyone? That's exactly the question we looked at when we recently interviewed
800 executives in a recent BCG survey. And what they told us really surprised me, because 95 percent said, "Johann, we see the value
in hiring globally," but only five percent said, "And yes, we're already
doing it strategically and we're getting
the results to show for it." So companies seem to struggle big time to follow the lead of WhatsApp and others. And when we dug deeper and wondered why,
we initially thought it was a visa issue. But then we took a closer look
at the visa policies of more than 25 countries, and we found that with the exception
of the US and China, all the other countries actually give
a pretty direct path to entry for work. If you have a bachelor's degree, have a job offer and make just a little bit more
than the average salary in the country. All of these conditions
can be quite easily fulfilled by recent university graduates with just two or three years
of work experience. So the visa process,
could it be fast and easier at times? Absolutely, yes. But is it the show stopper
that keeps talent and opportunity away from each other? Clearly not. So what is it then, if it's not a visa
issue caused by government bureaucrats? In my view, the issue lies in the world
of business and within all of us. And that's actually the good news because it means
that we can all change it. Changing it starts with senior executives because like any other business priority, it must come from the top
or it ain't going to happen. Let's take a look at Rakuten, for example. Rakuten is a Japanese e-commerce company
that by now has expanded globally. But in 2010, the company
was totally lost in translation, translating documents across English
and Japanese and back on a daily basis, losing days of work, and also making it pretty hard
for global talent to join the company. So the founder and CEO, Mickey Mikitani, he stepped up and issued a decree. He basically said, from today on,
all meetings, presentations, down to the canteen menus, they must be in English. Sounds easy? Is not. So for the next few weeks,
absolute chaos ensued. And for sure, you can imagine
it was a pretty stressful transition for many executives not home in English
as their first language. But over time, the decision paid off and the company turned from
a formalistic, hierarchical one into one that is much flatter
and more decentralized. And if you visit their offices today, you will see people that migrated to Japan
from places like Bulgaria, France, Germany, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. And since then, the company
has expanded into 30 countries and is seen as the poster child
of a modern, digital and global Japan. Once senior executives are on board, human resource teams are next. In the past, these HR teams, they could afford to basically just write
a local language job description and hire from a talent pool
largely 50 miles around the headquarters. Today, not so much. And leading HR teams, for many positions,
they actively hire globally. Let's take a look at Douglas. Douglas is Europe's
number one beauty retailer with more than 1,800 stores across more than 15 countries. Yet in the pandemic,
they had to close many stores and they made a hard turn
towards e-commerce. And they knew that in order to do that,
they had to dial up their tech teams. Yet, they really couldn't find
the tech talent here at home in Germany. So to fix that, they did two things. One, they introduced a fully remote
digital hiring process complete with hard
and soft skill assessments, and they also launched
a new hiring campaign called "The Code Behind the Beauty"
in order to attract a more global, diverse set of applicants. Since then, they've hired a QA tester and product managers
from our Imagine pool, and they’re also broadly hiring
more globally and hire developers and for other roles
completely internationally. And as a result they managed something
pretty rare for an offline retailer, and that is translating
their offline strength into true online growth potential. And the cherry on top? Doing all of that by following the latest
and freshest HR best practices that benefit not just foreign workers, but all of their talent base. Finally, let's look at you and me and all of us who don't work in HR teams and don't lead global companies just yet. So the next time you're hiring
for one of your teams, ask your HR colleagues to maybe also
shortlist a couple of global candidates and when you interview them,
be ready to be surprised. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a group of female
developers from Afghanistan seeking a career abroad. And yet, despite the unimaginable
horrors of their daily lives and the injustice that they're facing, they actually brought a degree
of positive focus and skill and creativity to the conversations
I could only deeply admire. Yet, frankly, in other circumstances,
it turned out differently. And people were clearly not mentally
or culturally ready for a life abroad. Over time, I personally learned
to check my own biases at the door, and I'm still working on it. But let me give you an example. When people address me by email,
as "esteemed sir" or "doctor," I don't immediately cringe or think
that they might not be culturally ready. No, I learned over time that they only
mean it as a sign of respect. Yet, let's face it,
the culture gap is real and it can always help to get
some culture coaching. In fact, I'm a culture coach myself,
sometimes in my own family. So a couple of years ago, my brother Jonathan was applying
for a job in the US as a research scientist, and initially he was struggling
just a little bit. So I took a look at his emails
and I could tell he was writing them from a very German mindset. Let me give you an example. He wrote something like, "Dear Dr. Smith, I am writing to you in relation
to my previous letter from April 22. I haven't heard a reply from you since." True story. It's not just too formal, it's borderline rude
by American standards, even though in Germany, believe it or not,
you still might get away with it. So I told him to rewrite his emails
in a more global standard. Something like "Dear John,
I hope you had a great weekend. I'm following up on my blah blah blah." You get the message. And with that, and because
it’s great, he got the job. And what's so unique about this is he did not have to learn
a new skill, spending years on it. All that it took was somebody
pointing out to him the small but significant changes
in the way he presented himself. And now, after a couple of years,
he's a great culture coach himself. And in fact, I think that is something
we can all aspire to. Because migration is indeed one of the great possibilities
of our lifetimes. One that we can all contribute to and one that clearly has in business so-called "first mover advantage." And that's why I predict that companies
who embrace the most global, most educated generation ever, they will win in the marketplace, while others who still stand
on the sidelines, they won't. I call that global talent advantage, and it applies as much to companies
as it does to entire countries. I think it's time
that we change perspective and see migrants
not as a threat or as a burden, but as an opportunity. An opportunity to build more vibrant
and innovative nations, and also an opportunity
to do our little share to make the world a better place for all. Thank you.
