VDC News

The VDC’s current resident ghost writer Claire Field has just had a major report published by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on “Promotion of business engagement models for upskilling and reskilling the ASEAN workforce”.

The project was supported by the Australian government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Aus4ASEAN Digital Transformation and Future Skills Initiative and was designed to boost ASEAN business engagement in workforce upskilling and reskilling, with a specific focus on medium-sized enterprises.

The findings from the report which are of most relevance to Australian RTOs include the following:

• Undertaking training with overseas VET providers (and universities) is highly valued by ASEAN businesses, but only for their senior managers, because of the higher costs involved.
• While Australian RTOs may be thinking of online delivery models as a way of reducing the costs of delivery and making their training more accessible to businesses in the region, the research identified that medium-sized businesses had a preference for face-to-face training or hybrid delivery models, rather than fully online.
• The opportunity to simply take an Australian VET qualification offshore and deliver it in a new location is no longer relevant (if it ever really was). Not only is the cost prohibitive for many businesses (and individuals) but there is now excellent work being done by many Southeast Asian governments to facilitate skills development in their countries. That means that the opportunities for Australian RTOs lie in partnerships that can contribute to these countries’ formal VET systems and to help meet the demand for industry-certified training – rather than simply looking to offer an AQF qualification.
• While Australian RTOs have great knowledge and expertise they can share with VET providers in Southeast Asia and in the training they can deliver to Southeast Asian businesses – there is a growing amount that Australia can also learn from Southeast Asia.

Some of the examples of good practice in skills development identified in the report include:

• Malaysia’s Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp) manages an HRD Levy Fund, which requires employers to contribute a levy which in turn provides financial support for training and development programs across various industries, including for micro, small and medium enterprises. Employers can claim the training costs for their employees from the fund, thus reducing financial barriers to upskilling. It also encourages businesses to continuously invest in employee development, and helps ensure industry-specific training programs can be developed which are relevant to business needs.
• The Philippines’ Inter-Agency Council on the Digital Workforce Competitiveness Act focuses on digital skills and technology mapping to identify workforce strengths and training needs. It aims to enhance digital competencies across various sectors, and its leadership by the Department of Labor and Employment is designed to ensure that the Philippine workforce is well adapted for the digital economy. The Council provides businesses with data-driven insights on workforce digital skills, identifies training priorities for digital transformation, and encourages investment in ICT infrastructure and digital platforms to support workforce upskilling.
• Thailand’s Skills Development Fund is a ‘train or pay’ approach to encourage business investment in skills. The government requires companies in Thailand with more than 100 employees to either pay a levy or provide skills development programs to at least 50% of their workforce, and unsurprisingly the fund has led to a “sharp increase” in the amount of training provided by Thai companies, with approximately four million workers receiving training each year.
• The government of Singapore launched SkillsFuture in 2015 to promote a national lifelong learning culture. SkillsFuture supports individuals to upskill and reskill through both generous course fee subsidies and the SkillsFuture Credit, which is given to all Singaporeans to further help with out-of-pocket costs of training. SkillsFuture also has a strong focus on business skills development and includes a number of initiatives, including the SkillsFuture Queen Bees (SFQBs) whereby industry leaders typically from larger companies are appointed to share advice on skills, good human capital development practices and to offer training for smaller companies in their industry sectors.

The Appendix to the report also details all of the successful VET initiatives that different Southeast Asian governments are proud of and want to share, and the initiatives they want to learn more about (from other ASEAN member states and other countries like Australia).

“Although there was less business engagement in the research than anticipated, the project identified that right across ASEAN member states there was a deep awareness by government officials of the importance of industry engagement in their TVET system and a range of programs and initiatives to facilitate that engagement. There was also a deep understanding of the challenges of engaging small and medium-sized enterprises and a willingness to try and find mechanisms that would help facilitate that engagement.”

Finally, Brunei Darussalam is not often front of mind when Australians think about engagement in Southeast Asia, and while it is only a very small country, it is making serious changes to “green” its economy and it has a truly industry-engaged VET system – including surveying businesses before and after students go out on mandatory workplacements – to further strengthen the industry relevance of what their VET institutes deliver.