We have the pleasure again of getting to bring you news of Bizkaia Talent and its “Be Basque” strategy that is promoting a network of business and highly qualified professionals in the Basque Country.
This strategy is based on the idea that we simply must highlight: the idea that the whole of all Basques makes up a truly coherent reality. It may seem to the Basques that the differences and distances between the different points of our country are “enormous,” but most people who observe us from outside, or who visit us, and who in many cases live in cities whose populations are larger than our country’s, do not have that perception. They see us for what we are: a single reality that is rich in details while still structured and unique.
This strategy, and it successful development, has meant that this Basque project, created to recover and attract talent to our country, has received numerous international awards, and has been used as a case study in many differen forums.
And, as we said at the beginning, we again have the pleasure of mentioning them, again for newly-received awards.
Bizkaia Talent Award of Excellence 2021, by South East Star magazine
The first was handed out last April by the British publication South East Star. They gave them their Award of Excellence 2021 for their “excellent work” in managing territorial talent.
South East Star, headquartered in London and a part of E2 Media, is an independent monthly publication that gives out its Award of Excellence annually to organizations that have somehow stood out in their particular fields.
The Basque association receives the award that highlights the talent strategy they have been following in Biscay in the last few years.
The second was awarded by British publishing house EMG Publishing, which included Bizkaia Talent on their Global 100 list in 2021 for considering them the “best talent management organization” in the world.
The publication praises them for their Be Basque strategy, an “innovative approach” working with SMEs that has had a “real impact on their success and the prosperity of the region.” They go on to highlight the strategy “to ‘Basqueise’ any professional living and working anywhere, no matter where they are from,” pointing out that this way of working has “been able to attract more talent to the region than ever before.”
This document reminds us that we, be it administrations, companies, workers, or society as a whole cannot afford to forget: talent is our only tool to ensure our future.
We are a small and fragmented country that has no more natural resources than its people, our people, and their ability to be good at what they do. And really, it’s not enough just to be good: we have to be the best, not because it’s a source of pride, true as that may be, but rather for the simple reason that otherwise, we can never be the country we want to be.
Our future can only be based on an extreme obsession for talent, and a push for it in our society, in developing the ability and the tools that would prevent us from being “bought off” or “taken away” to other locations every time we stand out at something, and in the construction of a cohesive society of solidarity.
