Singapore - Strategies to attract and retain talent for Asia has evolved along with the rapidly growing business complexities, reveal top global business leaders at the inaugural Singapore Human Capital Summit.

Speaking at the summit's first plenary discussion yesterday, President for Unilever Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Harish Manwani said the Asia talent hunt is no longer limited to sourcing people from mature markets to manage business here. "This is about creating truly global pool of talent that can really work anywhere in the world."

This is particularly important for businesses based in Asia as they need to recruit sufficient talent to sustain the high levels of growth expected in this region. Manwani said companies will need to "have an enormous rapport for talent in this part of the world" to be able to attract and retain adequate numbers to manage the growth.

For Manwani, high business performance and good organisational values are the two most vital criteria of attracting such talent. "If you want to excite people, you have to talk about growth and performance. [If] you don't have the performance, you can have one of the best HR strategies and they are not going to work."

However, Manwani cautioned that having good organisational values is not the same as practicing philanthropy. Instead, it is about how a company conducts its business in any parts of the world. "Do you have good business principles because people like working in organisations where they don't have to compromise on their values."

Besides having a clear set of organisational values, evaluating employees using meritocracy is also another successful talent retention strategy for Asia, says David Conner, CEO for OCBC Bank. "They respond to meritocracy and meritocracy is based on fact-based decision making, based on the right kinds of performance appraisals, honest feedback and coaching to employees."