The Professional Services community at the Forum includes accounting, consulting, law and human capital companies. Industry Partners are select member companies of the World Economic Forum which are actively involved in the Forum's mission at the industry level.

Unlike our other industry partnerships, the professional services programme focuses not on the industry specific challenges but on integrating services companies into other sectors' undertakings. This allows professional services firms to share their unparalleled expertise and benefit from unique opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership.

Exploring Talent Challenges

Human capital is an indispensable driver of economies. Talent capable to ensure success of organizations in turbulent times, handle the political, social agenda and boost science to fuel economies is a scarce resource. The crisis highlights imbalances on the human capital market and confronts key stakeholders with challenges that need to be overcome collectively.
The Forum has created an on-line community of people passionate about talent so that participants of our events can stay connected and keep exploring the challenges of talent landscape in the XXI Century.

Areas of Focus

• Projects and Project Advising 
• Professional Services Partners are entitled to take part in the selection process to become an Advisor to industry/cross-industry project(s), having a prominent role in building the Governors programme at the Annual Meetings in Davos-Klosters.
• Project Advisor selection process is transparent and merit based
• Project Advisors support projects with senior industry expertise and/or secondees
• In return for the in-kind resources, Project Advisors participate in all project relevant industry sessions, including the Governors Meetings sessions and receive acknowledgement in project-related publications.

Note that participation in the Advisors selection process does not guarantee an award.

Stimulating Economies through Fostering Talent Mobility
The project on Stimulating Economies through Fostering Talent Mobility aims to engage academia, governments and businesses from various sectors in the development of recommendations on facilitating talent mobility across geographical and industrial boundaries and to share these with governments. Not only does the project highlight the impact of talent mobility on countries’ economies, growth opportunities and competitiveness, but it also assesses talent shortages in an innovative way, combining country perspectives with industry perspectives and building a matrix of the most pressing skills gaps.

Draft recommendations have been developed through discussions carried out since June 2008, including at the Forum’s Industry Partnership Strategy Meeting in New York on 1 October 2009, where preliminary findings were shared. Recommendations for the project developed during the New York session addressed short-term talent mobility, improvement of workforce employability, building inclusive working environments and strengthening the dialogue between stakeholders involved in designing the talent landscape.

Recommendations for Stimulating Economies through Fostering Talent Mobility were finalized and shared with policy-makers at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland and showcased in a groundbreaking report entitled, “Stimulating Economies through Fostering Talent Mobility.”

The release of the report Talent Mobility Good Practices – Collaboration at the Core of Driving Economic Growth in 2012 follows on from this work. It highlights 55 case studies from around the world and shows concrete actions that organizations – including companies, governments, academic institutions, and non-profit entities – have implemented to address talent challenges. The report concludes with recommendations on how individual stakeholders can advance successful collaborative talent mobility practices. For an overview of the cases studies and issues addressed, see the report matrix.

Responsible Capitalism

The Professional Services Governors have stressed the importance of responsible approaches to business activities to prevent economic crises and ensure sustainable business growth. To promote responsible capitalism, it is necessary to strengthen values and ethics in business through education, training and incentives systems, and to revise regulatory systems to generate and stimulate long-term, responsible business strategies.

The dialogue allows the industry address issues that no company can tackle individually and leave a legacy to future business environment.

The first Industry Partnership Strategy Meeting for Professional Services was held on 30 September 2009 in New York. The meeting focused on “Post-Crisis Professional Services Landscape” and followed up on the discussion on ethics and business initiated by professional services industry leaders at the Governors Meeting for Professional Services 2009 in Davos-Klosters.

Both projects are open-door undertakings: Professional Services Partners choose to contribute according to expertise; Industry Partners from all other sectors can participate; special guests are invited as relevant to the topic.

Governors Meetings for Professional Services
The Governors Meeting of the Professional Services Industry gathers chief executives and chairpersons from the top global consulting, accounting, human capital and law firms who shape the future of the industry. The meeting is confidential and deliberations do not interfere with the competitive relations of companies. The meeting agenda is based on suggestions from the Governors. Governors can start projects or take any appropriate action under the Forum’s auspices to follow up on specific issues.