Upgrading skills to keep one's job

By Hamisah HamidPublished: 2009/05/02

FEWER Malaysians would be out of jobs if they were productive and had higher skills before the global economic downturn hit the country.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are not trigger-happy when it comes to closing down their subsidiaries at the sound of an economic crisis.

While worldwide demand is falling, MNCs are guided by commercial consideration and chances are that they will maintain subsidiaries which have a productive and adaptable workforce.

This is where workers' productivity and ability to create future value contribute to the decision-making, a management consultant said.

Hay Group Southeast Asia managing director Tharuma Rajah said that if workers had upgraded their skills before the economic slowdown, fewer of them would have been retrenched.

"When the MNCs consider which plant to close, they take into account which factory has high productivity and can generate long-term value.

"So, if the plant is competitive and productive, it can cushion the effect of closure," he said in an interview with Business Times in Petaling Jaya.

Tharuma noted that Malaysia has a highly productive force.

"In our study globally, Malaysia has the most productive factories," he said.

However, more should be done to ensure that Malaysian workers are highly skilled. Currently, over half of the country's 10 million workers have secondary education only.

Although Malaysian professionals are similar to those in other developing and developed nations, their innovation level is lacking, Tharuma observed.

He said that retrenchment could be reduced if companies re-skilled their workers, implemented job enrichment and moved them up the value chain.

"I believe the government should give incentives for companies, especially the smaller ones, to re-skill workers.

"In the long term, it should be the private-sector initiative to upgrade skills of the workers," he said, citing Penang Skill Development Centre (PSDC) as the best model.

PSDC, set up 20 years ago, is an industry-led skills training centre involving the efforts of government, academia and industry.

Asked if the government was on track in upgrading workers' skills, Tharuma said that some of the measures appeared to be ad hoc.

"What we need is a more holistic approach. There should be more coordination, for instance, convergence of policies among government departments and ministries," he said.

The efforts require a lot of out-of-the-box thinking, he added.