‘Bangladeshi companies see employees as an expense. But they are your investment’

A total of 10 local manufacturing sectors experience an average of 30% skill gap that also increases with the level of technological sophistication of the industrial sectors, revealed a study by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.

The study revealed that 53.74% of the 119 surveyed RMG enterprises face skill gaps in general.

The study found only 3.65% of the labour force in Bangladesh receives training each year, but the rate is only 1.35% in specific ten sectors.

The Business Standard caught up with Human resource expert Dr Sutapa Bhattacharjee, Professor at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka, to delve deeper into the skill gap issue.

Dr Sutapa Bhattacharjee, Professor at the IBA, University of Dhaka. illustration: TBS

According to the BIDS study, the industrial sectors of Bangladesh are moving with a 30% skills gap. What do you think is the reason behind this significant gap?

In our academia, the curriculum from the elementary to the university level has remained the same for a very long time. Whenever the curriculum is updated, only the content is being changed. However, from a young age, students don't really get the scope to practically apply the knowledge they have earned. And after passing college and university in this manner, they get to use their knowledge practically only after entering a job.

When they enter this application phase, they learn from more experienced employees and receive some training from their employers. But remember, by the time they are starting, they are already aged around 22-25; before that, they had never practised things like decision-making. So there is a gap between the academia and the industry.

Academia and the industry are co-dependent, yet there is a basic gap. Our policymakers probably also realise that as well but can't always do something about it. But if we can mitigate that gap, people can start garnering practical knowledge much earlier. Only after entering the job market do people realise a lot of things they learned are of no use at their jobs, and in fact, they didn't learn many things they actually needed to know. Teachers need to know from the industry what their students need to know.

For example, the Institute of Business Administration is closely linked with the industry. And that is why organisations like to hire IBA graduates. We send our students to organisations, and through their assignments, they learn how organisations work, how theories work, where the gap is and how to minimise it. Through this process, they also learn to blend their practical knowledge with theoretical knowledge.

As a teacher, I believe we should be more attentive to this issue.

According to the study, only 3.65% of the labour force in Bangladesh receives training each year. It is even lower for some industries. Why are organisations so reluctant to train their employees?

The primary reason behind this is companies still consider employees an expense. But your employees are your investment; the more you invest, the more you will get in return.

What does it mean to invest in a person? It means helping them develop their talent, enabling them to learn new skills and empowering them to think freely. And there is no alternative to training to achieve these things. You get the result of training in the long term; you can't arrange a training today and expect results tomorrow. It is not like setting up a new machine so that you will get a finer product tomorrow.

In our country, most private organisations expect an immediate result. If they don't see a result within two months, they consider the training a failure and conclude that there is no need for training and training is a complete waste of money.

But the issue is learning is a continuous process, and knowledge is constantly changing and evolving. If you don't nourish your people, eventually, their knowledge will become stagnant, and they won't be able to offer anything new.

Owners need to realise that they need to invest in employees and help them grow. Then the work culture will be: if you can't apply the knowledge you learned in training to your work, you will become irrelevant. Then employees will be more alert, and owners will start getting the results.

Organisations that maintain a work culture, instead of operating on the owner's whim, are run by the top management and focus on investing in employees. They are now the top employers in Bangladesh, local or multinational. Their products are selling well, and their profitability is relatively high.

If you don't train your employees and don't nurture them, you will never get the best output from them. But this is a long-term process. If you start a diet today, you will not be fit tomorrow. It is a continuous process, and the same applies to employees.

We are expecting more FDI. However, these companies are not finding enough people with the necessary skills, especially at the managerial level. Are we losing out on opportunities because of this?

To some extent, yes. Managerial competency is something if you don't become self-sufficient in, and have to rely on foreigners, you can't run industries in the long run. You can hire a COO from abroad and travel to other countries for work. This is the perk of globalisation: you can tap into talent from anywhere.

However, if a local talent can never assume that role or if you don't have skilled and dedicated employees to follow the orders given by the leader, of course, you will lose the foreign investment.

When I invest in another country, I will observe its strengths. The first thing on that list of strengths is talent. If you depend on another country for talent, your talent might decide to move back home anytime. On the other hand, a Bangladeshi working in a company located in Bangladesh will not leave the job so easily and quickly, which will bring stability. And that helps a lot.

If we look at our neighbouring country India, we will see that they have managed to bring a lot of NRIs back. The reason behind that is they offer a very good package. They don't simply offer monetary benefits, but also freedom to work freely and other perks. One thing we must remember is the fact that people want to return to their motherland, but you have to give them that environment. We have to give them scope to grow and a good working environment.

We are not being able to nourish our talents properly, a lot of our talents are living abroad, and we can't bring them back, and we are also becoming dependent on other countries for talent. So, naturally, this is harming our investment prospects.

What can be done to close the gap between academia and the industry?

We have to start at the policymaking level. First, the company owners and the top and middle management need to paint a clear picture of what skills they need. Then, the teachers who prepare the students need to know what skills we need to teach the students. They might also need to learn new things.

Regular market visit, industry visit and industrialists teaching classes can be really helpful. An internship is very important. If workers in their four years of undergrad work in four organisations, they get an idea of what they like to do and their strengths and weaknesses. 

Many of us dream of working in sectors we are not prepared for. In our country, where hiring interns is very easy, companies sometimes don't offer any financial benefits. But if we can make students understand the importance of internships, some students are willing to work for two months for lunch and conveyance subsidies.

Teachers should instruct students to take more internships. Not just one after the end of the course, but as many as possible. When potential employees start working as interns, it helps organisations prepare a pipeline of willing workers. At the same time, workers will get an idea about what jobs they will be good at.