Provide family-centric measures to retain skilled workers, industries told
JOHOR BARU: Industries should find new ways, such as providing “family-centric incentives” to retain skilled workers and prevent them from leaving to work overseas, including to Singapore.
Johor Consumerism, Human Resources and Unity Committee chairman Dr S. Ramakrishnan said such incentives to enable employees to spend more quality time with their families would stem the outflow of skilled workers in the state.
“Who wants to wake up at 4am and spend hours stuck in traffic jams if there are options.
“I must say though that the present currency exchange is a huge pull factor for many skilled workers to go to Singapore,” he said during the launch of the National Occupation Skills Standard (NOSS) – Industry Engagement 2018 programme here.
Dr Ramakrishnan said among the sectors facing problems in retaining skilled workers included companies in the biotech industry, information technology, oil and gas and engineering.
He proposed that the Federal Government looks into providing these industries with some incentives so that industry players could invest and come up with family-centric programmes for their workers.
Dr Ramakrishnan said the four government-run training institutes in the state would now offer additional courses to prepare students physically and mentally.
“Our labour force must be more resilient to face the challenges in the working world.
“Look at the foreigners who take the risk to come here to earn a living,” he said, adding that locals were choosy when it came to employment and would rather be unemployed.
He said the four training institutes would also be required for all students to undergo internship before they graduate.
The four centres are in Pasir Gudang, Mersing, Muar and Batu Pahat.
“I hope for more private partnerships, especially for internship for all our students statewide,” he said, adding that this would help make students more marketable and also make them more confident.
Dr Ramakrishnan said they were not just looking at nurturing students’ skills but also other areas such as attitude towards work and entrepreneurship.
“Malaysia is very dependant on cheap unskilled foreign workers.
“We must change our mindset if we want to explore new highly skilled and knowledge-based industries,” he added.
He said the state’s Unit Swadaya Insan Johor was the state government’s entity tasked with coordinating and planning the development of human capital in the state.
“We are also presently carrying out a pilot programme under this unit using funds from the Johor Skills Training Fund to expand its activities,” he said, adding that the effectiveness of this project would be known soon.
Source: TheStar