Bangkok--9 Jul--JP One Consultant
With technology growing and IT businesses thriving, IT workers should seek job opportunities, adjust and study before it’s too late. Opportunity gain or loss — Who should be responsible for promoting Thai IT personnel capacity to prepare for the upcoming
In retrospect, telecommunications and information technology have played gradually increasing roles in all aspects of work, from the items we use to our work, education and businesses. Technology makes its presence felt everywhere in today’s world and the general belief indicates that technology will be inevitably absorbed into everything around us in the future. The past shows the annual growth of the aforementioned line of business to be twenty percent, as evidenced in Bangkok and larger cities. Consequently, IT workers are in demand and many sectors view technology-related industries as branches of businesses for steering the country’s economy into the future.
Today’s business development occurs quite rapidly. All sectors are trend-sensitive. Public and private sectors have turned toward giving importance to technology, telecommunications and IT industries, especially, with the upcoming AEC in Thailand within the next two years. How much have we done to prepare for this free market? At present, Thai businesses, foreign businesses or multinational businesses invest and operate in Thailand. Our neighboring countries are already prepared to a certain degree. The key foundation and driving force behind the work system is capable labor meeting the quality needs of agencies or corporations.
The results from studies or surveys conducted by the ManpowerGroup Thailand are presented in the statement Mr.Simon Matthews, ManpowerGroup’s Manager for Thailand, Middle-East and Vietnam, who supervises the labor markets in the aforementioned areas. [Mr. Matthews] disclosed some shocking information to us that, although Thailand may not grow in leaps and bounds over the next two or three years due to the instability of various systems in today’s and tomorrow’s IT business trends, it is believed that the business sector and various agencies will adopt technology playing larger roles in their industries, and changes will certainly become visible in another three years. Business growth requires capable and quality workers. And once businesses are going along steadily, the AEC will also open up to a free market. Agencies and corporations associated with technology and IT industries all have the same comment that Thai personnel are capably equipped with good working skills, but deficient language skills, which can be assessed by the number of workers entering the market. Of every hundred workers, only one to five possess good language skills, ten to twenty can communicate well enough and the remaining sixty-five can barely communicate in English. This labor force only possesses specific language skills for certain lines of work. As a result, their career path progress is limited, especially at managerial levels promoted from operations because people working at these levels require the knowledge, skills and ability to communicate well.
Today’s Thai IT labor working in technology, telecommunications and IT-related industries can be divided with 60% at the operations level, 30-35% at the management level and 5-7 at the CEO or high-ranking executive level. These numbers make is obvious that operations and management-level workers come mainly from locals while CEOs and executives tend to be foreigners or people with good language skills. Moreover, it is also evident that the upcoming AEC will bring labor movement. Corporations will want workers who can communicate well in English to improve the efficiency of work flow. Changes will be apparent for the management workers because many will be recruited from the countries around us to come and play greater roles by working in Thailand. There are, however, new trends in industries associated with applications, smartphone and other devices meeting the needs of urban lifestyles.
Remuneration issues generally revolve around high pay rates. Some positions in these lines of work start at 15,000 or higher. However, the IT labor force also needs to meet employer demands. Despite high market demands, a shortage of available labor force in this sector persists. Today, many HR departments in agencies recruit people from Manpower. Current markets have changed and workers are in greater demand than ever before. Regardless, Thai workers do not meet corporate demands. Do we have to consider this a lost opportunity, just because of poor language skills?! What kind of preparations and what knowledge and information is needed by students and university graduates entering the future labor market? Who will be responsible for expertise, language ability, work skills and knowledge in different lines of work? Is it the responsibility of the public sector or the private sector? Is it each individual worker’s responsibility? Or are cooperative efforts required from all sectors in order to seriously deal with the upcoming changes? How should we handle AEC? What do we need to do to cope with opportunity gains/losses and IT labor movement?