[kictanet] Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, HR Issues

[Edith Adera]

Dear Listers,

Me thinks that not only should there be a register of the skills available, but it would have been nice for the research to provide deeper insights on type of skills and preferences for on-shore vs off-shore jobs - this would allow for a better assessment of skill gaps (vis a vis the target market) and to strategise accordingly by targeting markets where one has comparative advantage while working long-term in filling the skills gap to pursue harder markets to reach.

Vision 2030 is 21 years away....this also has implications for what we do with the children joining nursery school today! Can we have short term and long-term plans that strive to quickly upgrade skills of young people joining the workforce (short-term: hence relevance of multi-media university) while institutionalizing science learning in the long-term at the start of school? This could be achieved through multi-media science teaching from an early age (nursery). Research has proven that multimedia curriculum content greatly enhances teaching and learning (and improves comprehension and maintains interests in subjects that may otherwise be boring e.g. science).

Edith  



-----Original Message-----
From: kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke [mailto:kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.or.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Walubengo J
Sent: 08 June 2009 08:06
To: Edith Adera
Cc: kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke
Subject: [kictanet] Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, HR Issues
 t
-Day 5 of 10- BPO Discussions, Human Capacity Issues

Morning all,

I trust you had a refreshing weekend.  Today I want to introduce the theme on Human Resource Development for the BPO industry.  The Researchers found that India, S.Africa and Mauritius had a comprehensive inventory of their skill-base that was also available for Validation by prospective employers and investors.  Another observation was ofcourse the sheer numbers of Indian graduates (millions) that made it the largest base of highly skilled pool of graduates with strong mathematical/scientific orientation.  Whereas, Mauritius was producing only 10,000 (university) graduates per year compared to Kenya's 30,000 per year, Mauritius had the advantage of properly documenting their national graduates database and marketing it appropriately to potential clients in Europe/America.  In addition, the Researchers noted that Mauritius had a government funded but Private-Sector oriented ICT Academy that produced graduates specificially for the ICT industry.

In Kenya, the Researchers observed that apart from the lack of a national database on the available skills/graduates, some of the BPO operators were engaged in vicious poaching cycles where Agents trained in-house by one Operater are immediately hired by the Competing Operators. It was noted, that an attempt has been made by the .KE Government to create an Industry-specific University (Multimedia University College of Kenya) to address the HR gap but its success or otherwise will remain to be seen in a few years time.  The Researchers also noted that Kenya's English-speaking labor force had an edge over the Indian one given that the average Kenyan had a "neutral" accent unlike the Indian graduate who tended to have an "ethnic" accent that often distracted the Euro-American markets/clients.  

But this advantage is yet to be exploited - even as the Indians move up the BPO value chain and concentrate on non-accent related processes such as Software Engineering, Research (Financial, Medicine, etc), Product (e.g. Civil and Architectural) Design amongst others. Which leads us to todays questions.

Qtn 7: How do we develop a national database on the wide-range of available ICT skill in Kenya - specifically which institution should be mandated to realise this, ensuring that such a database is kept upto date over the years?

Qtn 8: What strategies should the country adopt to ensure a continuous supply of relevant and timely BPO-Specific skills?

Please, lets have your comments flowing,dig yahjwalu starting now...

walu.

Encl: Synthesis 3 - HR Issues