National training index to boost Malaysia's workforce, says HR minister

The National Training Index (NTI), the first index to measure training and development in Southeast Asia, has the potential to set the gold standard for regional peers to emulate, says Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar.

He said the NTI, developed by the Human Resources Development Corporation and launched today, will soon become the benchmark for industries and organisations to shape their learning and development programmes.

"The indicators used in the NTI were designed to encourage industry players to invest in their people and provide more learning and development opportunities to meet industry and business needs.

"It also forms the basis for determining the organisations' own training activeness as measured against their industry peers," he said when launching the NTI together with the first edition of the NTI Report 2022 in Kuala Lumpur today.

Using the insights garnered from the NTI, Sivakumar said his ministry will be able to formulate policies and implement initiatives that will also ensure that the Malaysian workforce is equipped with the relevant skills required by the global market.

He also believed that it could create targeted programmes to ensure more Malaysians could participate in the labour market and become capable, productive, and highly skilled members of society.

The minister said NTI is a comprehensive framework that offers an all-encompassing evaluation of the training and development capacity of employers in this country as a roadmap for formulating and implementing a sustainable workforce strategic plan.

Commenting on Malaysia’s achievement with a rating of 0.70 overall, putting the country in the "experienced" category according to the NTI Report 2022, Sivakumar said various initiatives have been carried out by the government in providing human development training to date.

"However, there are many more programmes that can be carried out and improved. We would also want to achieve the 35% skilled labour target by 2030, and therefore various training modules are still needed," he said.

The NTI Report 2022, which measured 81,706 business organisations with over 4.3 million employees from five economic sectors and 238 subsectors, showed that employers in Malaysia have a high capacity for performance in terms of training preparedness, competencies of training providers, commitment to upskilling and reskilling, and high adaptation to digital learning.

The scores in the NTI are in the range of 0.00 to 1.00 and are categorised into four levels: leader (rating of 0.76 to 1.00), experienced (rating of 0.51 to 0.75), adopter (rating of 0.26 to 0.50), and beginner (rating of 0.00 to 0.25).

NTI is assessed through three dimensions: firm preparedness, worker skills development and training provider effectiveness, and 19 indicators.