Aug 2011 28
Question 2
Posted In Quick Challenge 1
What is one lesson from Singapore that businesses in Vietnam can learn from to enhance their competitiveness?
*First-level replies are reserved for Quick Challenge answers only. Inappropriate comments may be removed without prior notice.
As one of the emerging economies in the world, Vietnam has attracted a fair amount of investment over the past few years. Growth has been impressive, seen in the higher standard of living and overall educational level as well as the reduction of poverty in many areas across the country. However, to sustain this growth level, Vietnam needs to pay more attention to the economic model it is following, which is based on productivity and competitiveness rather than low labor cost and intensive capital investment. To boost productivity, the country in turn should improve on its workforce skills, and one neighbour of ours that has been successful at this is Singapore with its Workforce Development Agency (WDA). WDA is the central government body that oversees the strategy related to human capital upgrading of the whole country and makes sure that the workforce remains competitive and employable. To achieve this, WDA develops the national Continuing Education and Training and works in tandem with its Industry Skills and Development Councils so that skill demand for each economic sector is covered. This worked quite well for the country especially right after the 2008 economic downturn (a two-year Skills Program for Upgrading and Resilience.) In this way, employees’ skills are continuously enhanced and become more relevant to the industries that the country wants to focus for future growth. This strategy is a joint effort of industry and educational institutions, rather than the sole responsibility of the institution. The current approach in Vietnam fails on quantity, quality and relevance of education and skills, which makes Vietnam one of the hardest countries to recruit employees. Vietnamese and international investors also cite the lack of relevant skills in managers and workers as a barrier to expansion (Thomas Valley and Ben Wilkinson, 2009). As such, a governmental agent like WDA would play an important role in helping Vietnam sustain its growth in the long term through effective communication with all economic sectors and continuous skill enhancement for employees.
Source:
Singapore Workforce Development Agency Website http://app2.wda.gov.sg/web/Common/homepage.aspx
Vietnam Competitiveness Report (2010)
Chau Ngoc Quynh Giao – Ychallenge Organizating Team
You have a good idea. But I think it’s really difficult in Vietnam. We simply has few millions more people in Singapore. What about you tell us more about your implementation plan?
Well, I also agree with imfino in the sense that as students or future businessmen, we simply can’t interfere in the decision making process in the industry or national level, shall I say. So how do you think this kind of incentive can be implemented? Should a Special economic zone be an answer to this hindrance?
Thank you all for the comment. Yes, it’s true that educational reform is a matter of public policy, but I believe we don’t really need to revamp the whole system to make it work. From a corporate/employer’s point of view, we can proactively seek to collaborate with universities/vocational school and state our interests in which type of skills we wish to see in prospective employees. Of course, university management also needs to have an open mind and be willing to amend their curriculum if necessary.
Another point worth mentioning is the skewed perception against vocational training, which I agree with Nhat Khoa (commented below) leads to a lack of engineering or technical skills in the labor market. This is a message that the educational system needs to send across to students, probably pre-university to shape their mindset towards a more balanced perception between vocational training and university education.
I’m particularly interested in Minh_Le’s idea on special economic zone, can you please elaborate?
Thanks guys!
In my opinion, Vietnam has a plentiful labor resource but in general, the labor skills is not high enough to meet the requirements of hi-technology. For example, Intel has established the biggest chip manufacture factory in Vietnam but is currently facing with shortage of skilled labors. I agree with you that educational and skill training programs must be improved more in quality. Moreover, Vietnam has to solve the wrong mindset of students who prefer taking business major to taking technical major. In the future, Vietnam may have enough qualified banker, businessmen… but lack of engineers, which prevents the economic development of Vietnam.
What is one lesson from Singapore that businesses in Vietnam can learn from to enhance their competitiveness?
Yeah, I would say, Vietnam needs to learn from Singapore’s tourism industry. What is the lesson I am talking about? It’s the way how Singapore advertises their country’s image to friends all over the world, in term of poster designing, art photos in newspaper and website’s availability.
Before I came to Singapore to study, I do not know anything about Singapore except what I saw in newspapers and Internet. I had had a very fantastic imagination about this country thanks to colourful photos of this county I saw in advertisement. Some pictures are real Singapore but thank to the art of photoshop, it becomes much more luxury and attractive to foreigners who has not been seen Singapore before. Actually, after I boarded Singapore, the real scene was not that sparking and glistening as I thought. Then in my case, the power of photoshop works! Let’s make the photos more attractive to the viewers!
It can be said that appearance is most paid attention in Singapore. It also can be illustrated when we go to Singapore Tourism Board’s website, very colourful, eye-catching and user friendly. A lot of nice Singapore’s pictures are showed in the website. The website provides foreigners a good visualize and a lot of useful but concise information. Every information is available in the website such as hotel, destination, entertainment, art, etc. Come back to Vietnam, when I try to find some websites about the place where I want to go, I really cannot find and if can, it does not provide me attractive pictures about such places to persuade me to visit if not say, it discourages me.
That’s the basic lesson that our tourism business can learn from Singapore!
Dear HoaiThu,
Thank you for a very exciting and interesting essay. To tell the truth, before leaving for Singapore to study, I had known about it through online tourism resources, advertisements on Discovery channel, National Geoegraphic and many more specialty tourism magazines. I think Thailand and South Korea are two others nations which are very successful in marketing their images to the world and attracting foreign tourists. In my opinion, our country also has many beautiful and potential destinations for tourism but are not being marketed effectively. Other issues that should be taken in consideration are environmental and security issues in some destinations which prevent the tourists from re-visiting and negatively impress them. These issues should be resolved first prior to marketing our tourism opportunities to foreign visitors.
Moreover, there must be a continually updated tourism board website to provide all-in-one place where tourists can find everything they need about our country. Tourism destinations should cooperate with airlines such as Vietnam Airlines to provide full service, both on-plane and off-plane, and tourism information to passengers.
Our citizens do contribute to our nation image. Therefore, a wrongdoing or lack of awareness can potentially mark a bad score in our visitors’ eyes.
Well, I think doing good marketing is a good start for Vietnamese tourism to raise its level but other lessons can be learned to enhance the real experience of tourists in Vietnam as well…
Something like a central website like Yoursingapore (which is an initiative from Singapore tourism board) with information on events and festivals with tips on planning our trips. I feel that our tourism industry is pretty much fragmented and divided among countless tourist agencies, leading to a lack of a concerted effort to centralize and streamline the marketing and management initiatives.
Or tourism info booths around popular and big cities like Hanoi, HCMC, Danang, Nha Trang with free maps for tourists to walk around…
Or free 10-minute phone calls at the airport to any local number… I particularly love this feature at Changi Airport, which I haven’t found elsewhere… It helped me connect with a local friend once and I had a good time visiting Singapore during my transit without any prior planning
I think those are little things but matter….
Long been hailed for being a green and clean city, Singapore is setting its eyes on an even more ambitious target: becoming a hub for renewable energy in Asia Pacific. Thanks to its favorable business environment and extensive human capital, an increasing number of green energy firms are expanding their presence in this city, for example Vestas Wind Systems and Phoenix Solar Group. Against that backdrop, businesses in the alternative energy sector are setting up good connections with research institutions and government institutions for various R&D programs and recruitment programs, as well as offering internship opportunities and case studies for dissertations. Some of them partner with Clean Energy Research Program (CERP) to provide Company Scholarships for Master Studies and Research on alternative energy. It would be great to see something like that happen in Vietnam. This practice need not be limited to renewable energy firms alone. Vietnamese businesses should create synergies with other forces in other sectors and investing in involving more young minds in the industry conversations, long before they leave school, for mutual development and collaboration opportunities.
Thuy Phuong – Organizing Team
I think initiatives from businesses to foster research has been started in Vietnam with projects like the FPT Technology Research Institute… but according to what I heard, the problems they are facing is the lack of interests in doing research among young Vietnamese despite their funding… Perhaps they’re worried about career prospective and applicability of their work…
Any ideas to close this gap?
Answers:
Since I was a child, I have been listening to my dad’s complaints about meetings. He is a high school teacher and he has been teaching for over 35 years. Throughout these years, meetings with him were not meaningful at all because he just came there, doing nothing else but waiting for the time to leave the meetings.
When I grew a little more, I heard from my brother that meetings were even worse than that. After such meaningless meetings were meals and boozes. He was scared of meetings because when he was drunk, he could not complete his work the next day.
From what I heard from my dad and my brother, a perception of meetings formed inside in me. I thought meetings were nothing more than just a waste of time for companies because if you only want to announce something in a meeting, simply just write it on the notice board or send it via email.
However, my perception has changed remarkably since I had the very first chance to work for a company. That was my first internship in Singapore.
At this company, meetings are meetings, not listening and feeling useless. I attended some meetings and I saw that these meetings were very effective. Employees take turn to contribute ideas; all of these ideas are discussed seriously but excitedly and are jot down by a secretary. The leader is not a preacher but a facilitator. Usually some participants disagree and argue with the leader right on the spot without fear of being hated or fired. There seems to be no distance between the leaders of the meetings (often are the managers) and the participants (the employees). When I asked some of my colleagues how they felt about the meetings, they said they would be very happy to attend meetings all the time. The reason was because their ideas were taken into action and they felt respected.
From this internship, I have my second perception for meetings. Meetings are for all people to contribute ideas and thoughts and make change to the organization.
The difference in the first and the second thoughts of mine is perhaps also the difference between Singapore companies and traditional Vietnam companies (I am not talking about MNCs which are quite many in Vietnam these days). Why does this difference affect the competitiveness of a company? It has been proven through many real-life examples that the team’s solution for a problem is usually better than that of a single person, even though he is the smartest guy in the team. As a result, a company combining ideas from its employees to make decisions will be much better than a company which solely depends on the director for making decisions.
Therefore, in order to enhance the competitiveness, companies in Vietnam must create a friendly environment so that employees dare to speak out in meetings. They should also acknowledge and appreciate every single idea because doing that makes employees feel esteemed and want to continue contributing in the future. After all, employees are the most precious asset of a company. If we do not know how to make use of them, we are losing our strongest competitiveness.