Employers in Malaysia urged to support employee training

“There are no excuses to do otherwise,” said Effendy Abdul Ghani, president of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC).

Effendy said there are existing platforms that employers could use to give their workers the training and development they sought. He singled out the Human Resource Development Corporation (HRDC) as one such platform available. 

HRDC is the government human resource training entity tasked with encouraging employers to provide learning and development opportunities to their employees. Employers pay a levy to HRDC, which is then used to underwrite the cost of the training programmes.

Apart from HRDC, he said, employers could send their workers for technical and vocational education and training programmes. 

Effendy was commenting on the results of a recent survey that showed that while 97% of Malaysians wanted to upskill themselves through training and development, only 36% of them were given such opportunities by their employers in the past 12 months. 

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The 2022 Randstad Workmonitor survey also showed that 61% of workers wanted to upgrade their technical skills, 60% wanted to develop their soft skills and 54% were keen on upskilling themselves for their current roles. However, the enthusiasm does not always translate into a strong desire to grab opportunities available, according to FMT.