Skills Sri Lanka needs to rev up
We all know that a skilled workforce is essential for growth and innovation. Then unlike before the Internet unlocks new models to access knowledge, increasing the supply of skills in the global labour market, and also knowledge is everywhere and connected. The Government’s knowledge hub concept is aimed at ensuring the education system is better able to equip Sri Lankan businesses and individuals with the skills they need to prosper in a rapidly changing economy and to drive growth in a high participation and more productive economy. Sri Lanka’s total remittance (labour export) in 2013 from abroad is expected to be in excess of US$6.5 billion and the CB road map estimates that remittances would increase to $9 billion (9 per cent of the GDP) by 2016 and $10 billion by 2017.
One of the reasons attributed to this increase and projected increase is due to the increase in the skilled and professional labour migration, 28 per cent in 2013 and the movement of labour into new markets like South Korea. Many of our young unskilled people want to go oversees to mainly improve their earning capacity. Therefore, if we are serious about exporting semi skilled labour to the world, it would make perfect sense for the Foreign Employment Bureau to study the opportunities available in those markets and make our people ready through targeted HRD interventions. The challenge for Sri Lanka to grow to a $100 billion economy is to invest to improve the productivity of our labour force. We should look to improve our labour productivity levels to be in line with the Tiger economies. That would help us to build export industries with the large pool of labour we have and also to capitalize on off shoring and outsourcing. Furthermore, with Asia opening up for business, the economic opportunity for us to reform education and training with a bias for technological, scientific, service and industrial skills is now. Like the Middle East, we cannot rely on rich natural resource endowments to generate foreign exchange or opportunities for our people, therefore as a country, growing technological, technical and commercial skills would help us to attract emerging MNCs looking to set up locations in Asia.
Labour Productivity
To improve the labour productivity for a start, we need to focus our education and training investment primarily to deliver the skills to leverage FDI and local, regional manpower opportunities. Slowing levels of FDI growth together with increased competition, especially from China and India for that FDI, has put pressure on small countries like Sri Lanka to move up the ladder of skills sophistication very fast. However, without a strong general education and training system, it is virtually impossible to leverage MNCs for skills formation beyond the immediate needs of the firm. If young people who have worked hard to graduate from school and university cannot secure decent jobs and the sense of respect that comes with them, society will have to be prepared for outbreaks of anger or even violence. In order to address this issue, two fundamentals need to be in place: skills development and job creation.Therefore, we need to have a standard level of skills in the work force on which to build a system in which to incorporate the participation of the private actor. Whether primarily public or private, there must be some overarching coordination and management knitting together to generate new energy within the education and training system. But as much as the structure of the general education and training system influences levels of private sector participation and public-private cooperation, its focus determines, to a large extent, the type and orientation of the skills and knowledge that will be most prevalent in the local labour force. Therefore, the Government and the private sector should continue to reform the education and training system to match the needs of industry, especially targeting manufacturing for export and MNCs looking to outsource.
Dire need: Powerful apex Skills Agency
One area in which Sri Lanka can make some headway in the short term is in the business services outsourcing area. The global BPO and IT related business services is estimated to be around $952 billion (IT services $648 and BPO $304) in 2013, with India exporting some $69 billion worth in 2012, greater than our GDP. With many global giants in a sea of trouble, they are desperately looking to reduce their cost of operations by moving into low cost destinations. Many of them in desperation to remain competitive are spreading operations globally and cherry-picking countries for a particular skills set. Therefore, the industry and the Government should look to leverage on the available opportunities by investing heavily to get our work force ready. We have still a long way to develop our own management standards and there is an urgent need to invest more into developing the human resource necessary to create a knowledge hub. In addition, we would need to showcase Sri Lanka as a business-friendly, energy-efficient, and IT networked knowledge-hub in South Asia. Our goal must be to gain greater access to the regional education market especially from China, and the Middle East. In addition, we need to position Sri Lanka as an attractive destination for accessing top academic institutions, global companies and delivery excellence in services. Therefore the Government’s vision to convert the country into a knowledge hub and also investing to develop the human capital to create and sustain the knowledge hub is a step in the right direction, which would however require greater private –public collaboration, greater investment and also well-honed policy interventions. The country also needs a very powerful apex Skills Agency to drive greater collaboration among industry, providers, and Government on all workforce- development issues and to expand skills, to provide independent advice to the Government on workforce planning, industry skill requirements, build collaboration mechanisms and also tighter linkages.
(The writer is a thought leader in HR)