Empower TalentCorp, don’t shut it down, for better results

 

From Ong Kian Ming

The brain drain issue in Malaysia recently hit the headlines when the former dean of Universiti Malaya’s medical faculty, Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, tweeted that UM regularly loses 30 of its best and brightest medical graduates to Singapore on an annual basis.

This tweet, and the news articles which reported it, provoked a variety of public reaction. One such reaction was an opinion piece that was widely shared asking for TalentCorp to be shut down due to its inability to stem the brain drain problem.

Rather than putting all of the blame on TalentCorp, we should empower it so that it can achieve better results moving forward.

Before we discuss how TalentCorp can be empowered, it is necessary to point out what Talentcorp is not responsible for.

First, it is not responsible for the human resource policies within the civil service, including among the medical fraternity. Issues such as long delays in applying for houseman positions among medical graduates and insufficient opportunities for specialist training for government doctors are under the purview of the health ministry and the public service department.

Second, it is not responsible for the creation of high paying jobs or to raise the minimum wages to attract Malaysians abroad to come back home to work.

Third, it is not a recruitment or a job search agency although it carries out limited facilitation meetings between employers and employees to better understand the job market dynamics in the country.

What TalentCorp is responsible for is increasing the availability of high-skilled human capital in Malaysia. This includes bringing back overseas Malaysians who have accumulated skills and experience in certain occupation sectors under the Returning Experts Programme (REP).

The human resources ministry should push for the REP to be given a fresh mandate with enhanced incentives, especially with the increase in FDI into Malaysia and the opportunity to bring home highly experienced Malaysians in different industries.

These incentives may not necessarily be financial but come in the form of other low hanging fruit such as expediting permanent residency (PR) applications for spouses and children of returning experts.

TalentCorp also brings in highly skilled non-Malaysians into the country through the processing of expatriate work visas via its one-stop Malaysia Expatriate Services Centre (MyXpats Centre).

The efficient processing of these work visas is one of the reasons why Malaysia is an attractive FDI location not just in Southeast Asia but globally in the manufacturing and increasingly, global business service (GBS) sectors.

One of the current challenges facing many MNCs is the requirement that they must advertise positions for 30 days before they can be offered to an expatriate worker.

Not only is this policy ineffective in “protecting” jobs for Malaysians, it fails to recognise that the hiring of expatriates for such positions will often result in the hiring of Malaysians in complementary roles as the operations of the MNC in question expands and grows. Over time, many of these expatriates will also be replaced by home grown talent.

Getting rid of such requirements, especially since we are well into our post-Covid recovery, would enable TalentCorp to bring in highly skilled expatriates (some of whom may be ex-Malaysians) more efficiently as part of the process to grow the talent base.

At a time when every country in the world is facing labour shortages post-pandemic, one of solutions proposed by TalentCorp is to allow companies in Malaysia to hire foreign graduates of Malaysian universities in selected sectors via special visas.

This is a commonplace practice in developed countries in sectors such as IT and STEM- related occupations. This is also an effective way to reverse the brain drain in the country.

TalentCorp has advised many private companies on how best to put in place structured internship programmes (SIPs) as a way to provide a value-added experience to interns and to identify suitable candidates for their future workforce.

It has also leveraged its experience in internship programmes to come up with an internship matching service called MyNEXT for potential interns and employers based on carefully collected data from qualified candidates.

Companies with TalentCorp-approved SIPs were eligible for various tax deductions that were slowly expanded over time. These deductions should be continued, and perhaps even enhanced.

One of TalentCorp’s key goals from its inception was to increase the female labour participation rate in Malaysia by introducing family friendly work-life practices in the workplace.

Partly as a result of its focus on this objective, TalentCorp has been at the forefront of encouraging innovation and flexibility in the workplace by advising companies on work-life best practices.

During the pandemic, it pushed for tax deductions for companies practising flexible work arrangements such as the option of working from home a certain number of days a week.

Even though we are at the post-pandemic stage of recovery, such flexible work arrangements should continue to be encouraged, including through tax deductions.

I have only briefly outlined some of the programmes under TalentCorp. These programmes can only be effective if TalentCorp receives the cooperation and buy-in from other government ministries and agencies, including the home ministry, higher education ministry, immigration department and the Inland Revenue Board, to name a few.

Since TalentCorp was not created by an Act of Parliament, it does not have the same kind of leverage with government ministries in the same way as Misa or Matrade.

This means that the human resources ministry needs to support the work of TalentCorp through Cabinet decisions and ministerial circulars to the relevant stakeholders, which include other ministries and government agencies.

The work carried out by government agencies such as TalentCorp does not “grab” the headlines in the same manner as negative news about Malaysian talent leaving for greener pastures abroad.

But this kind of work brings about incremental changes that contribute positively to the current and future talent landscape in Malaysia.

Rather than entertain thoughts of shutting down TalentCorp, this agency should be empowered to do more so that its objectives can be better achieved for the betterment of the nation. - FMT

Ong Kian Ming is a former two-term MP and a former deputy international trade and industry minister.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.