Up-skilling: one of Vietnam’s greatest opportunities
When my father was a young boy he read avidly, searching for any insights that might help him to forge a happy and prosperous future for himself. One of his favourite authors was the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
And it is one of the latter’s most famous quotes that has resonated with him ever since: “pour ce qui est de l’avenir, il ne s’agit pas de la prévoir, mais de le rendre,” or in English “as for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.”
This perfectly sums up my father’s “Nothing is Impossible” attitude to life, which also now drives THP as well, forming one of our seven core values. We always dare to think differently and to set big goals for ourselves.
But we also know that it is our execution, which will determine success or failure. If we want to become Asia’s leading beverage company and continue to thrive for more than 100 years, then we need to invest in each new generation of employees who passes through our doors.
So we take training very seriously. It is one of the biggest benefits that we offer our staff.
When a new recruit joins THP, we work with them to create a personal development plan. This establishes what skills they need for their job and also what more they would like to acquire to supplement the ones they already have.
Doing this in today’s Vietnam is very important for two key reasons
Firstly, there is huge demand for skilled labour. And it is becoming more acute with each passing year as Vietnam’s GDP expands and more companies shift their operations across the border from China.
Competition to retain talented staff is, therefore, intense. Companies need to continually think up new ways to cultivate a sense of shared purpose that prompts employees to stay put.
Secondly, Vietnam’s education system is not geared towards producing students with the kind of skills that companies require. This doesn’t mean that there haven’t been huge and impressive changes for the better in recent decades.
Back when my father was born in 1953, Vietnam was still a French colony with a literacy rate of just 5%. Today, that figure tops 95%.
Each year, many thousands of Vietnamese young people are flowing into the workforce. Tey are typically the first generation in their family to embrace office life over an agricultural one.
However right now, they leave an educational system focused on imparting knowledge from the teacher to the student. It is not geared towards classroom discussions and student participation.
Many school leavers consequently start their first job without the ability to speak up, or think for themselves. We all know, from the government downwards, that we need to do so much more to ensure that we can reach our 2030 goal of becoming an upper-middle income country.
So it is good to see that the United Nations has been promoting World Youth Skills Day every July 15 since 2014. This year’s theme is “transforming youth skills for the future.”
One thing that Vietnam clearly has in abundance is youths in need of training. If we grasp the opportunity to tackle this effectively, then Vietnam’s ongoing prosperity will be assured.
In total, we have a 55 million strong workforce and 23 million fall in the 16 to 30 age-bracket. We also have a demographic advantage over close geographical neighbours like China and Thailand.
In Vietnam, the 15 to 24 age group accounts for 15.22% of the population compared to 13.02% in Thailand and 11.48% in China. Yet government statistics also show that only 24.5% of Vietnamese employees have any kind of diploma or certificate.
Earlier this month, Mr. Pham Vu Quoc Binh (Deputy General Director of the General Department of Vocational Education and Training, Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs) said that the government is targeting a 30% ratio by 2025. By 2030, it wants 75% to have some kind of a diploma and 40% a certificate.
A recent ASEAN Foundation youth study also revealed the scale of the task ahead. Almost half of Vietnamese young respondents (44%) only had basic digital skills. And just one-in-three had gained skills from on-the-job training.
Topping the list of skills they wanted to acquire are self-leadership and interpersonal skills. This fits with the kind of training that THP conducts.
We train our staff in human values and how to improve their soft skills. We focus on giving someone the tools to achieve their potential by teaching them how to grasp opportunities, overcome challenges, embrace change and above all else, to approach every task and all of their colleagues on the basis of our seven core values.
We continually emphasize how much we value people who are proactive about taking the lead and making decisions within the scope of their responsibilities. We teach everyone how to speak up in meetings and contribute ideas without causing someone else to lose face.
One thing my father has never been interested in is surrounding himself by “yes” people. One of his favourite sayings is this one: “if you agree with all of the time, then one of us is unnecessary.”
My family are big believers in self-improvement. We are avid learners and we want to offer that opportunity to everyone who works with and for us.
We know that this will help THP to continue advancing and create stronger bonds between the company and its employees. But we are also happy if our training contributes to wider society as well for we do not define loyalty as staying at THP forever.
We are always happy to see people who leave THP prosper in their new jobs. We hope that they will never forget the education they received from us and perhaps they will use the skills they learned to forge a partnership with THP at a later date.
As the Vietnamese saying goes: “Ăn quả nhớ kẻ trồng cây” or in English, “when eating the fruit think of the tree’s planter”.
