The role of training and skills development in labour market

By Imtiaz Rastgar

A recent international workplace survey shows approximately nine out of ten respondents believe their current skills will be outdated within the next five years. It reveals more than a third of the respondents believe that the training currently provided by their employers will not meet their future career needs. The survey is based on the views of nearly 100,000 people in 34 countries.

In an increasingly competitive global economy, investing in human capital can prove to be a key advantage for firms. Training may not seem a priority in the present economic environment, but organizations that devote resources to this will be more likely to see higher productivity and profitability in future.

The survey also highlights the significance that employees across different age groups place training and skills development to sustain them in a rapidly changing labour market.

A continuous effort

Continued training and skills development is critical for both the employer and the employees, more so during current times. Organizations expect their employees to be multi-skilled so that they can be deployed at short notices in a new process with minimal training inputs.

The current economic environment has made people well aware of their skills and whether they will be sufficient to see through the recession and beyond, into a period of economic recovery. While organizations expect their employees to be multi-skilled, the level of training imparted to these employees should be adequate enough to up-grade their skills. Training as a function, should be given more importance than it has been given traditionally.

Creating relevant training programmes requires greater awareness and synchronization of issues impacting markets, industries, the company, technology as well as individuals’ job functions and employees.

Adding value

Keeping this in mind, most organizations these days are leaving no stone unturned in training their employees to be skilled and equipped on the job at hand. International organizations deploy a mixture of classroom training, coaching and e-learning based on different requirements and scenarios. They blend role-based, domain and functional training based on needs, adding an integrated set of learning and development programmes. They have a platform which allows participants from different groups and locations to learn from each other. Also, the annual learning plans of an employee to fulfill his/her individual needs are designed for 8 to 16 days of training per employee per year by these firms. Whatever the route, it is best that employees, who understand the organizations’ business and culture and have delivered results in the past, are assisted in upgrading their skills and competence levels. Needless to say, this reduces cost and productivity losses associated with hiring new talent.

The need of the domestic industry in the current scenario is limited to basic trade level workers, technicians and technologists. With further growth, the need for engineers would increase. Pakistan’s industry envisages an accelerated growth in its manufacturing activity to meet its export targets. Further investments in productive assets, technologies, etc are due to be made. To manage all this and to operate at optimum levels, a need assessment was done by a public sector organization for the additional manpower needs using the law of averages. By 2025-26, we will need 237,570 engineers, technologists, technicians and basic trade level workers. A number of universities and other institutions are clearing out graduates every year in thousands. The management skills set available with such manpower is usually not relevant to industry. Firstly, they are mostly taught theory which is not relevant to the work environment of Pakistan. Secondly, the designed exercises they conduct during their studies are not relevant to the work environment. Finally, they have no local knowledge, experience, especially that of different industries. To serve the needs of business units, it would be more prudent if educational institutions lay more stress on the practical side rather than theory.  The public sector training institutions need to have a lot of linkages with the industrial sector to design relevant curriculum and courses. It is, therefore, proposed that an advisory body be constituted for providing inputs to public sector training institutions regarding needs of the industrialized sector.

The existing state of skilled and trained human resources is not sufficient to work with present productive assets and technologies, and manufacturers feel deficient in this respect. With the increase in quality and quantity of productive assets and technologies, the situation may become desperate. It is, therefore, imperative to formulate a plan to fulfill the need for technical human resources.

The availability of the existing number of technical training institutes, colleges and universities have proved to be insufficient to meet the demands of industries. The situation does not appear to be improving in short to medium term and it might be too late to take an immediate step. Probably no quick fix would be available as establishment of technical training and skill building institutions with modern day curriculum does take quite a long time. The building up of demand during this period would create even more pressure. Pakistan appears to be at a take-off stage once again and if this take-off is aborted due to lack of trained and skilled manpower, the economy would severely crash land for a disaster. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find a solution now rather than wait for the last moment. The only option is to invite, motivate and attract private sector into technical training and skill building institutions. In fact, a few industrial houses, after having experienced the pain of human resource scarcity, have already started operating such institutions by themselves so that they can meet their own needs. A large number of industry players do not have resources to be employed in this direction. Moreover, academia and educated entrepreneurs should be operating such institutions and not the industry itself. But this is an interesting field for the private sector to walk in. In this situation, the government needs to incentivize entry of educational sector entrepreneurs to start such institutions. Skill Development Council has presented a model; pooling the resources of the industry. These councils are run and financed by the industry on a self-help basis. An expansion by covering all major cities of the country is required.