Talent mobility, or the free movement of skilled labour across national borders, is a central tenet of ASEAN’s drive toward regional economic integration. The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Vision 2025 includes facilitating the movement of investments, skilled labour, business professionals, and capital. To this end, the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint 2025 outlines initiatives such as implementing mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) for skilled professionals, strengthening commitments under the ASEAN Agreement on the Movement of Natural Persons, and reducing regulatory barriers by standardising hiring requirements and documentation.
Furthermore, the ongoing negotiations on the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) include digital talent mobility as one of its nine key pillars.
These commitments recognise the importance of developing, attracting, and retaining talent in accelerating ASEAN’s economic growth. As technology-driven digital transformation is reshaping the region, human expertise is more essential than ever. Skill gaps will limit the region’s ability to maximise digital opportunities. For instance, a shortage of skilled ICT professionals, including cybersecurity experts, hampers our ability to address increasingly complex cybersecurity threats.
ASEAN Member States have negotiated past agreements to facilitate cross-border professional practice. Mutual recognition agreements were signed between 2005 and 2012 for sectors including engineering, nursing, architecture, medicine, dentistry, and tourism. In 2012, the Member States signed an agreement on the movement of natural persons, establishing a framework for the temporary cross-border movement of workers. ASEAN Member States also signed the ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement (ACIA), which includes provisions to streamline business visa procedures for citizens within the ASEAN. These are important first steps to foster talent mobility.
Digitalisation redefines cross-border work
Digitalisation of work has enabled a global shift in work modalities, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Location-based, hybrid and remote work are now viable options, especially for highly skilled workers, with a range of formal and informal setups.
Digital tools now enable remote work, particularly for roles that can be performed independently or with minimal physical presence. These include software development, graphic design, digital marketing, customer support, and content creation, among others. Virtual private networks can secure work environments, while cloud storage services, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, provide easy access to shared documents and files. Project management tools like Wrike, Trello and Asana keep projects on track, while video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams allow for real-time face-to-face meetings.
Companies take advantage of running remote teams to reduce costs and increase efficiency with “follow the sun” global workflows. Recognising the potential of remote work, several ASEAN Member States, including Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, have introduced digital nomad visas to attract skilled global talent. While they may not be working for local companies, they support the local economy by directly supporting local businesses and services, such as co-working spaces, cafes, and restaurants. Such digital nomads also seek, contribute to and build communities that can foster knowledge and cultural exchange, potentially catalysing local innovation. Conversely, remote work has the potential to create an “invisible brain drain” as local firms find themselves in competition for talent with overseas companies, making it challenging to attract and retain top talent. Those working remotely for international companies may also not be contributing to the local tax base or social security programmes.
Another facet of digitally-enabled work is multi-platform work, where talent and labour are exchanged for payment for short-term, task-based engagements. Multi-platform work, also called talent-on-demand or gig work, offers flexibility to workers and allows firms to source talent from all over the world.
Both remote work and multi-platform work allow global outsourcing to continue growing at the corporate and individual levels. At the corporate level, new models of talent management reduce fixed costs. At the personal level, workers need to continually upskill to meet the changing needs of clients.
Talent mobility for regional integration and economic growth
Amid this backdrop, talent mobility remains important, not only for economic growth but also to foster people-to-people connections that build a competitive, resilient, and equitable region for all its citizens. ASEAN Member States can take concrete steps to further advance talent mobility that benefits both local and regional development.
First, ASEAN Member States can improve the implementation of existing agreements, particularly those on mutual recognition of qualifications and the movement of natural persons. These frameworks have strong objectives: effective follow-through at national levels and closer cooperation amongst ASEAN Member States in areas such as qualifications recognition will enable workers and firms to realise the potential of these agreements.
Second, while MRAs are useful for professional talent mobility, consider going upstream to foster intra-ASEAN talent networks. The ASEAN University Network, for example, is a useful platform for quality assurance, curriculum development, collaborative research, and student and academic mobility.
Third, ASEAN Member States can work together to build skills frameworks for competency-job matching to increase the supply of talent locally and across the region. In addition to qualifications, equipping employers to recognise skills and competencies will help firms recruit effectively, especially in emerging areas where talent is limited. For example, Github, the global software development platform, reported in October the surge in global developer communities, especially in linguistically diverse and non-English populations. This correlates to the proliferation of generative AI tools, which increasingly enable developers to engage with code and communities, regardless of their preferred spoken language.
Fourth, governments should evolve their tax and social security schemes to account for a greater range of work modalities, ranging from traditional employment to independent workers. For example, Singapore’s Central Provident Fund provides guidelines for self-employed persons who are also employees, so that their contributions to the social security savings scheme reduce tax payable. Increasing awareness, transparency and ease can integrate more workers into the formal economy, ensuring they contribute fairly while also benefiting from social protections and ultimately supporting a fair and sustainable economic system.
Fifth, the demand for talent will continue to exceed supply. Hence, ASEAN Member States that aim to attract talent from all over the world will benefit the region. Companies of all sizes benefit from cross-border knowledge sharing and collaboration with partners, investors, clients and team members across geographies. ASEAN Member States can take advantage of increasing international remote work and multi-platform work to attract talent who can contribute to the local economy and the vibrancy of the local tech ecosystems. ASEAN cities with the sweet spot of affordable cost of living and excellent digital infrastructure will benefit.
Innovation is never ringfenced within national boundaries. Moreover, like data and compute power, no single ASEAN Member State has the talent or market to realise innovation at a scale that defines the global digital economy. Yet, by promoting talent mobility from university to professional levels, focusing on competency and skills gaps, and attracting talent from across the world, we can expand opportunities for ASEAN citizens while supporting ASEAN firms for a thriving integrated production base for digital products and services.
Tech for Good was ASEAN’s knowledge partner for the 10th ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Dialogue on the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) held in November 2023.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of ASEAN.
