ManpowerGroup New Zealand's new 2011 Borderless Workforce research has found that 39 per cent of employers in New Zealand look outside the country's borders to address skills shortages, with foreign talent most important in 'engineers', 'technicians' and 'skilled manual trade' job categories, and primarily coming from the UK, South Africa and India.

The research findings were released in tandem with ManpowerGroup's new insight paper, "Borderless Solutions to Today's Talent Mismatch," advising employers worldwide on how to source the right talent across borders, and specifying the types of policies, public-private strategies and migration patterns that are driving greater sourcing opportunities across the world's talent corridors.

Other key findings from the Borderless Workforce research include:

43% of employers are concerned about the impact on the labour market from talent leaving New Zealand to work in another country.

Further, 68%of employers believe government and business are not doing enough to slow the outward migration of talent and attract these people back to New Zealand.

Employers from New Zealand who look abroad to help solve talent shortages indicate the biggest obstacles they encounter when recruiting foreign workers are visa and legal requirements (25%).

New Zealand employers named Australia (39%) and )the United Kingdom (16%) as the countries they believe provide the biggest threat to New Zealand's ability to compete economically.

According to ManpowerGroup Australia & New Zealand's Managing Director, Lincoln Crawley, the world's borderless workforce - the migration of talent across and within national boundaries - is growing rapidly in size.

"Employers need to take a sophisticated approach to managing their talent supply and demand challenges, in order to win the escalating war for talent. This means including a talent mobility strategy in their overall plan to combat skills shortages," said Mr Crawley.

Mr Crawley said employers today must collaborate with governments and educators in creating more dynamic sourcing opportunities, at least regionally. More work opportunities are surfacing across more global markets, but labour laws have traditionally been local. As a result, workers with the same shared skills tend to congregate in regional "talent corridors." Employers target these regional pools when seeking specific skill sets.

"Kiwi employers have grave concerns about losing valuable, talented workers to overseas opportunities. And the problem is, the skills gaps in New Zealand are very similar to the rest of the world - engineers and skilled tradespeople are in demand everywhere," said Mr Crawley.

"To remain competitive, employers need to fight fire with fire, creating a global talent strategy of their own to attract foreign workers and fill their skills gaps."

ManpowerGroup's new Insight paper, "Borderless Solutions to Today's Talent Mismatch," is available at www.manpowergroup.co.nz/research.cfm, along with The Borderless Workforce 2011 - Research Results Global and Australia and New Zealand "All three papers

offer employers, governments and educators the real-time context needed to locate talent with skills in demand - while overcoming regulatory and economic challenges in the process.