Women make up 70% of public university enrollments in Malaysia, but there is a high drop-out rate of working women in the corporate sector as companies are unwilling to accommodate working mothers. – The Malaysian Insider file pic, June 14, 2015.
Improving the employability of local graduates and tapping into the female workforce have become a key approach to address the country’s shortage of skilled workers, said TalentCorp, the agency tasked with wooing back Malaysian talents overseas.
TalentCorp CEO, Johan Mahmood Merican, said as Malaysia moves towards becoming a developed nation, key industries face a shortage of talent in value-added services.
“Clearly one of the issues we face is that, to sustain such high growth and to move up the value chain, talent is obviously a key enabler and also potential constraint,” Johan said in an interview with The Malaysian Insider recently.
TalentCorp was established in 2011 to look at short and medium term efforts to meet the country’s talent requirements, he said.
While brain drain was undoubtedly the most high-profile problem the agency faces, Johan said TalentCorp also works in other areas to plug talent shortage, such as encouraging the participation of women in the corporate workforce.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak recently revealed that women only made up 16% of the boards of public companies, far behind Putrajaya’s target of 30%.
Johan Mahmood Merican of TalentCorp says there are benefits of creating more flexible work arrangements for female employees. – The Malaysian Insider pic, June 14, 2015.
Given that women made up 70% of public university enrolments in Malaysia, getting them to stay on, or return to, the workforce was key to accessing the country’s talent pool, he said.
TalentCorp’s Career Comeback Programme is one such effort to lure women on a career break back into the workforce, by connecting these professionals to employers offering flexible working arrangements.
Johan said while many companies were still hesitant to make policy changes to accommodate working mothers, a growing number of larger corporations have come to see the benefits of encouraging greater diversity in the workplace.
“One of our biggest challenges is changing mindsets, both in the government and the private sector,” he said.
“Corporate Malaysia needs to embrace our agenda, and they will see the benefits of creating more flexible work arrangements,” he said.
Another area of focus TalentCorp is working on is addressing the relatively high unemployment rate among young graduates.
A World Bank report in June last year said there were 161,000 Malaysians aged between 20 and 24 years who remained unemployed for more than 6 months upon graduation.
The report quoted a Ministry of Higher Education poll in 2012, that found nearly one in five degree holders under the age of 25 remained unemployed.
“Of special concern is the concentration of the unemployed among 20 to 24-year-olds, as this cohort of workers is relatively well-educated,” it said.
The World Bank report also said that more than 60% of Malaysian firms had difficulty in finding skilled workers, while 48% identified a lack of talent as a constraint for future growth.
Johan said that feedback from industry was that there was a “mismatch” in skills formation, and that many graduates were not properly equipped to face the working world.
“Companies are not doing enough, they are not collaborating with universities.
“At the same time, universities also need to train students for employability,” he said.
Tapping into this large pool of educated Malaysians, and channelling them into the key industries hungry for talent, was what drove TalentCorp to revise the Graduate Employability Scheme.
The programme places graduates who have been unemployed for more than 6 months at selected companies for a minimum 1-year contract, where they receive full training and exposure.
How it differs from a shorter-term industry experience is that graduates will get paid, and will be able to fully contribute to the company.
In Johan’s words, they would be “doing more than just making coffee”.
Some 15,000 unemployed graduates have so far gone through this industry training scheme, with many successfully being retained as full-time staff at the end of the programme period.
“We are not in want of jobs, and interesting jobs at that, in Malaysia,” said Johan.
“The challenge is to build that bridge between industry and the graduates.”
- TMI
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