Malaysia’s efforts to drive digital talent development and workforce upskilling has received global recognition in the recently released Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2020 (GTCI 2020) – a comprehensive report that INSEAD University, Google and Adecco produced to track and measure the world’s talent performances.
In fact, Malaysia’s newly earned accolades for talent development had dominated the upper-middle-income countries in multiple categories, pushing it up the GTCI table to 26th out of 88 countries. This new record is two spots higher than its 28th ranking from last year.
In terms of performance ranking, it scored strongly in the Enable, Attract, and Vocational and Technical Skills pillars. This is due to the concerted efforts in developing digital tech talents and upskilling the nation’s next-gen workforce. It also improved its ranking significantly in the Retain pillar. These pillars are the key thrusts in Malaysia’s continuous investment in talent development and acts as the pivot to empower businesses to deploy new technologies that enable and sustain business performance and continuity.
The report also commended Malaysia’s impressive ability to consistently match labour market supply and demand, coming in at 6th place globally for Employability. It also placed very high in two sub-pillars that relate to talent enablement: Business and Labour Landscape (13th) and Market Landscape (22nd).
“These achievements clearly reinforce the fact that Malaysia is on the right track to develop industry-ready digital talent. We must continue to level up our workforce and provide a conducive environment for digital innovation and creativity to thrive. More importantly, businesses now need such talents as entire industries must be digitalised as the global economy explores a new norm for a post-COVID-19 period. This is where our digital talent development, digital adoption and global growth accelerator programmes for high potential local companies will play a key role in upskilling our talents to the next level,” said Surina Shukri, CEO, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).
The new GTCI 2020 ranking also earned Malaysia another milestone as it is the only country from the Upper-Middle Income bracket that is in the top quartile of the report. Malaysia has outperformed high-income economy countries in the list such as China, South Korea, Spain, and Portugal.
“We want to make digital skills accessible to all Malaysians; and through our Grow with Google umbrella program we are helping to create economic opportunity for anyone interested to upskill themselves,” said Marc Woo, Country Manager, Google Malaysia. “Whether it’s through our free Mahir Digital bersama Google in-person training or self-study by downloading our free Primer app, there are many avenues for Malaysians to make a future for themselves and become sought after talent,” added Woo.
Even as Malaysia achieved multiple accolades in this year’s GTCI, it also highlights the need for continued focus on talent development and retention. Concerted and coordinated efforts in government agencies, the corporate sector and academia are now critical as they can ensure Malaysia will continue to drive its efforts to solidify its talent competitiveness in the age of AI and automation; moreso, in an uncertain post-COVID economic landscape.
More details about the report can be found here: gtcistudy.com.
