Empowering our future talent

This article is brought to you by ManpowerGroup.

ManpowerGroup Academy’s RTDM Model aligns the needs of employers with the capability of talent, through tailored training and development programmes.

Business models are being disrupted! The macroeconomic forces ManpowerGroup identified a decade ago — shifting demographics, greater individual choice, client sophistication and technological revolution — and their structural impacts are evident as predicted.

This confluence of digitisation, machine learning, aging and shifting populations, polarisation, consumerisation and alternative ways of working means business models are being transformed. We are in the midst of a skills revolution. Technology is transforming businesses and we know companies cannot find the talent they need.

In APAC for example our Talent Shortage Survey shows that 46% employers are reporting difficulty filling vacancies at this point in time.

Traditionally, businesses have relied on tertiary education providers to equip people with necessary skills to become productive in the world of work. Yet, even though Malaysia has 200,000 graduates every year, only 75% of graduates are employed upon graduation.

In fact, despite having a relatively low unemployment rate of 3.5% in Malaysia, 61% of the unemployed are young people aged 15 to 24. So we asked ourselves what the reason behind graduate unemployability is, and what can we, as a leading workforce solutions organisation, do about it?

The fourth industrial revolution brings fundamental shifts around the world that require unprecedented rapid changes in academic curricula. It is predicted that 65% of jobs that Gen Z will perform do not even exist yet. A contributing factor is family pressure for graduates to pursue qualifications in more “traditional” professions such as law, medicine, and engineering.

Our assessment of graduates completing our programmes revealed that one out of three completed a degree that may not align with their core competencies. This proved to be a significant contributory factor in graduates deciding on what jobs to pursue.

Faced with this reality, we saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between the employer’s expectations and the graduate’s capabilities. By establishing programmes that first aligned graduate competencies with the demands of the job, we could then focus on accelerating the graduates’ work readiness through tailored experiential learning and development.

This culminated in establishment of the ManpowerGroup Academy in 2009 to bridge the gap between employers’ expectations and candidates’ skills. Over the years the Academy has evolved its programmes to meet specific employer needs through structured training and coaching, accelerating graduates’ work readiness, and enhancing their employability.

The Recruit, Train, Deploy, and Manage (RTDM) model was developed to deliver a set of highly focused role specific technical training and coachable modules in leadership capabilities and soft skills that improve graduates’ work readiness. This approach facilitated a journey of self-discovery of graduates’ strengths, weakness, competencies, motivations and passions.

The RTDM model was devised based on the following enablers:

• Locating the talent – Assessments are developed to find the right committed human capital

• Industry readiness – Blended learning programmes are introduced with career awareness, focus and industry fi t personality assessments

• Experiential – On-the-job training

• Deployment – Placement and monitoring

The success of the Academy surpassed our initial expectations, with over 600 candidates graduating in 2017, and an expected 1,500 in 2018. Building on this success, we’re expanding our programmes beyond young talent, to upskilling candidates throughout their career.

ManpowerGroup® (NYSE: MAN), the leading global workforce solutions company, helps organisations transform in a fast-changing world of work by sourcing, assessing, developing and managing the talent that enables them to win.

Our expert family of brands – Manpower®, Experis®, Right Management® and ManpowerGroup® Solutions – creates substantially more value for candidates and clients across 80 countries and territories and has done for 70 years. In Malaysia we have been operating for over 20 years.

If you wish to upskill your talent, contact ManpowerGroup here.

This article was published in Human Resources’ special edition – Training & Development Guide 2018, Malaysia. Read the full magazine here.