The Predicament
Try to succeed at a 'role-person fit' and you will find yourself looking for a needle in a hay stack. HR and line managers in organizations have a very big problem with their manpower planning system owing to the lack of required skills in the employment market. This has become so critical that certain vacancies take so long to fill, having to be advertised several times or, at worst, organizations invariably select the second or third level lower to the expected standard. This is done because of line pressure to fill the vacancy fast. The climate for aggressive head hunting is on the rise.
Nalin Jayasuriya Managing Director & CEO McQuire Rens Consulting (Pvt) Ltd. |
This puts pressure on organizations to study market hiring conditions with pay and perks so that a slightly above industry average can be established to attract and retain talent. The challenge of managements is to find ways and strategies to retain their talent. We know well that the standards of English among most applicants are perilous.
There is little value that comes from degrees such as 'Bachelor of Arts', 'Bachelor of Commerce', etc., if the content of such degrees is not geared for value addition to businesses or other organizations. Above all, do these undergraduates receive business orientation that will help them to understand business requirements that go far beyond the syllabus of their degree, i.e., the areas that would make them employable. Some of such areas would be flexibility, positive attitude, human relations, humility, adaptation to corporate culture, creativity / innovative thinking, team work and sharing and above all, loyalty to the organization.
Possible Causes
Our educational Institutions and universities must assess continually, the curricula of the diploma and degree programmes. The content development must begin from the business-end in order to understand the required skills, knowledge and attitudes and then see how best the study agenda can be worked in to the degree/diploma programme. Do the persons appointed to the positions of Minister of Education/Higher education/tertiary & Vocational education do research and understand where the businesses in Sri Lanka are going? Have they undergone any form of orientation of private sector strategies for operational excellence, leave alone the public sector.
For instance, how valuable is the BA to a student leaving the university? How far can he/she go with that degree in securing gainful and 'meaningful' employment? Even more thought-provoking (to me, at least) was the realization that some unknown number of College/Educational Institutional operators don't actually hold the qualifications and required track records that allow them to run an educational institution. For better or worse, in these situations the relationship between the authorizing body and the operator is less direct and weak.
Home-Grown Timber
Some organizations take on graduates and/or candidates possessing professional qualifications as management trainees and develop them for employable skills whilst infusing required job knowledge. In the process their attitudes are shaped and mended to merge or blend with the corporate culture of the organization. This is only possible if companies can spare the time and effort to keep these trainees long enough on the learning curve. The cold and aggressive winds of competition generally act against the desire to keep candidates long enough on the learning curve. The burning question is "How can we recruit the type and kind of candidate who we can send through an accelerated orientation and learning so that he/she can get operational in the shortest possible time?" This is one of the many reasons why the Human Resources function has now become so important in organizations.
Way Forward
Managing Education for Business and Commerce in a Globalised World is the way to go. It must be the way forward for us. Managing education involves empowered people for a globalised world of business and commerce. In today's world, business is constantly changing, becoming more complex, more integrated, and more interdependent. Businesses are no longer insulated from international competition and the business environment is no longer dominated by large scale manufacturing. As Robert Murdoch of News Corp remarked, "the world is changing very fast; big will not beat the small anymore; it will be the fast beating or swallow-up the slow." The dynamic revolution in macro factors of globalisation has been caused by -
(a) decline in the barriers to free flow of goods, services, and capital
(b) technological changes in communication, information processing, and transportation
(c) social ethics and concern for protection of the environment in an arena of cross-border culture.
To succeed and grow in this scenario of paradigm shift our focus should be on the strategies we adopt to meet the global challenges. To help live in knowledge, in discriminative understanding of things and beings, and in imbibing the core values of life educational institutions should reach beyond the horizon of the academics. As the famous Chinese philosopher, Confucius said, "don't adjust the goals; adjust the action steps." Hence, educational institutions offering business education should formulate and evolve strategies for excellence to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The private sector organizations will be more than willing to invest in education of graduates provided the right steps are taken to make them employable, taking into attention the following:
1. People skills
2. Flexibility to adjust to corporate culture
3. Humility to learn and develop
4. Maturity to realize that an 'university degree' is only a means to an end
5. Social and business etiquette
6. Knowledge and education linked to changing business needs.
What is more, the private sector organizations will be very happy to jointly sponsor a business orientation programme for Ministers who are involved in vocational and tertiary education in this country so that there will be value addition to the education system in Sri Lanka.
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