Key Message 2: Investment in Human Resources

An exercise is needed that attempts to appraise and quantify investment in human resources in Malta. Myriad initiatives are currently undertaken by the public, private and NGO sectors. In 1999, for example, the Malta Development Corporation and the Employment Training Corporation provided grants amounting to 1,092,000 Euros to 73 industries for staff training purposes. A number of large public and private corporations have set up their own staff training centres and invest extensively on HRD. Both the public and private sectors have increased the stakes by sending teams to pursue courses of studies leading to higher degrees in business administration (MBA) and other areas. The public service structure has its own HRD arm - the Staff Development Organisation (SDO) providing workers in public service with a range of courses. A number of Embassies contribute to HRD in Malta by offering a wide range of bursaries and scholarships. More overseas educational opportunities are being created for youths and adults through participation in the mobility actions of the Leonardo, Socrates and Youth Programmes.

Stakeholder opinions and recommendations:

1. There is a felt need for venturing beyond schooling and appreciating the diversity of learning environments and depositories of knowledge, skill and culture. There is also a felt need for flexible definitions and conceptualisations and therefore progress beyond curricula, certificates, professional teachers, standard hours and sites of learning.
2. Beyond state responsibility as provider: The diversity of options now available in the realm of formal schooling should be extended to other forms of learning. The State should move from provider to partner and facilitator. Encouragement of flexitime, part-time work, educational leave, tax relief, employee education funds or vouchers, including those for the unemployed. In going about such a task, social partnership arrangements are inevitable.
3. Multi-skilling is crucial: What is important is to learn how to learn and how to master the transferability of skills. This is the real meaning of employability and the associated evolution in the meaning of job security.
4. Contribution of social partners: A genuine form of social partnership needs to be developed where the state is willing to forego absolutist decision-making powers and other social partners are willing to forego comfortably irresponsible reactive (rather than proactive) stances. The Malta Council for Economic and Social Development could serve as one important testing ground for a new configuration of public-private co-operation. The reality is that social partnership in Malta is embryonic and needs to be developed on a wider scale and scope.
5. The need is urgently felt for a flexible, voluntary and customised approach to lifelong learning - at individual and/or enterprise level - within a wider macro framework of broad general principles. A networked system of provision that incorporates incentives and disincentives needs to be developed in order for employees to be either allowed or encouraged to undergo further training, both in-house and out-of-house. One needs to determine whether employers are justified in their fear of funding training only for someone else to benefit. It is also important to depart from the classroom paradigm so as to effectively erode worker or adult resistance to such ideas; most workers do not want to 'go back to school'. The question was moreover raised whether access to lifelong learning be recognised as an individual human right.
6. The diverse learning environments and learning agents need to be recognised and further empowered. The accreditation of skills, knowledge and expertise beyond the classroom paradigm need to be urgently fostered, especially now that the Malta Council for Professional and Vocational Qualifications has been established.
7. Another issue raised was that of effectively overcoming obdurate 'glass ceilings' in relation to gender in training provisions. One such modality is the use of champions and role models to demonstrate that hardly any job around is 'made' either just for men or just for women.