Malaysia's Need for Digital Workforce at All-Time High

In Malaysia, there is a great demand for talent with digital skills, but it seems the current talent pool is not sufficient. There is a growing need for digital skills among workers, despite a shortfall of supply as the country swept by the wave of digitalisation.

Kelly Services highlighted this in the Malaysia 2019 Salary Guide. The report said the main problems for firms are to identify and hire talents with hybrid skills and to provide opportunities for existing employees to learn through re-skilling or upskilling.

Managing director of Kelly Services Malaysia, Brian Sim said the core component of many jobs today is digital competency. “As more and more businesses embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution and digitally transform their businesses, a growing skill gap can be seen in the Malaysian talent pool."

“This issue is being addressed by both the Malaysian government as well as organisations through various policies and initiatives, but workers must also take the initiative to upskill themselves to remain competitive in this evolving employment landscape,” he added. The two key sectors that are expected to grow in 2019 are engineering and information technology, despite the problematic state of the economy.

The report said that demand for soft skills in jobs that are already in the tech sector is also seeing an increase in demand and are highly sought after in the engineering and IT sectors.

“Graduate employability has also become a concern for Malaysia. Employers recognise the concerns on graduates’ skills gap, such as the lack of industrial training experience and communication skills.

“Declining standards may further exacerbate this by creating talent pool deficits. At the same time, Malaysia’s brain drain is large and growing, with neighbouring countries offering enticing opportunities to Malaysia’s skilled talent,” the report stated, adding that Malaysia needs to grow a sustainable pool of highly skilled talents as it rolls on towards achieving a high-income status.

Slower Growth for Banking Sector

The salary guide report also mentioned that banking and shared services sectors have been observing slower growth since the general election in May 2018.

Meanwhile, positions such as Systems Applications and Products team leads and information security managers will likely see an increase in demand in 2019. These positions are also among the highest paid, with a minimum of RM17,000 and RM12,000 respectively. Head of production and project managers are the top jobs in the engineering sector, with minimum pay of RM18,000 and RM10,000 respectively.

The banking and financial services sector sees a tough year ahead but there is a continued trend for job creation for high skilled jobs such as financial analysts. A huge gap also remains to be filled to have 60,000 accountants by 2020. The current figure is only about 40,000.

The report also showed that human resources professionals will proceed to play an important function in the growth of businesses.

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Source: The Star

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