The government has allocated RM1.6 billion in Budget 2024 and another RM3 billion in Budget 2025 toward upskilling and reskilling, while raising alarm over the 620,000 jobs at risk of displacement due to automation by 2030.
Despite all these efforts, companies still struggle to find employees with practical and basic digital skills. On the other hand, workers remain somewhat sceptical of training programmes due to not being able to apply them to their current roles immediately.
It becomes a paradox where Malaysia has more investment than ever before in the last 5 years, but the outcomes of that still remain strongly misaligned. The country also has years of ambitious spending and bold projections, especially in maintaining current and producing talents, but generally, the upskilling ecosystem has not kept pace with the speed that the current digital climate demands.
What exactly are we doing wrong here? And can we fix this before we lose more talent?
Start at the frontlines
For employers, specifically, it’s a big challenge to navigate the upskilling landscape. Sure, the Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp) and Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) offer overlapping training schemes, but the lack of management from the employers still means most companies.
If the management is unclear from the get-go on what kinds of courses to prioritise or even how to claim what they’re eligible for. The HR teams will then most likely end up choosing based on what’s easiest to claim and not what actually addresses business needs during that period of time.
A lot of these HRDC-claimable programmes have become somewhat performative. Why is that exactly? Instead of focusing on capability-building, training is treated as a compliance requirement and even “a once every two-month” initiative.
What this does is that it creates a cycle where companies provide these training programmes for the sake of checking boxes, and their employees will be “forced” to attend, but retain very little information.
Mismatch between reality and strategy
Despite the billions allocated for upskilling and reskilling, the question isn’t whether we have enough training or not, but whether we have the right kind of training for these companies.
In Malaysia, the lack of alignment between training content and labour market realities is one of the biggest causes of inefficiency. Many upskilling initiatives are still rolled out top-down. They prioritise the number of participants trained and headcount metrics rather than more meaningful KPIs such as employee retention, career growth, as well as productivity increase.
On the other hand, employers are often left out of programme design altogether. Certain syllabi and course decisions are made without input from company leaders who need the talent. In some cases, the courses being promoted are several steps behind what businesses now require – simply put, it’s outdated.
Another concerning issue is the growing disengagement among employees. For those who are already burdened by long shifts and economic uncertainty, the prospect of attending a full-day training with no clear career outcome is not as good as the employers make it out to be.
So, the motivation to upskill and reskill diminishes even more when some employees don’t witness their peers being promoted or even rewarded after completing such programmes. Hence, without tangible advancement, upskilling and reskilling become just another unpaid burden to them.
A reset toward results
In order to fix this, Malaysia needs more than just new training programmes. What this country needs is an honest reset. First, acknowledging the fact that the current training programmes are not working and the government and its agencies must prioritise outcome-driven design, not just counting participation rates.
This means funding training providers based on demonstrable results, it could be through post-training salary increases, internal promotions or even successful tool adoption, such as AI-powered tools.
Secondly, the private sector must be more involved. What companies can do is that they can be partners in programme development. This is what we do at OpenAcademy, where we do bite-sized content that aligns with the current problems within the team department and courses that address the issues and can be applied directly after the session. So, when companies co-create the content itself, training becomes much more relevant, more job-specific and more likely to stick with their employees.
Lastly, companies need to understand that learning is continuous and contextual. Instead of one-off workshops or once every two months initiatives, companies should adopt more fluid models or even short modules embedded in weekly workflows. This requires a mindset shift away from formal instruction toward capability activation.
Ultimately, Malaysia’s upskilling dilemma is not about the amount of funding we get every year – it’s about how effectively we utilise and translate it into real, measurable progress. If we continue funding money into structures that don’t necessarily produce results, we risk both public resources and widening the skills divide.
There is no such thing as digital transformation without talent transformation. So, until we fix the way we reskill our workforce together, every billion ringgit spent won’t be worthwhile, and we won’t have a workforce with future readiness.
The article titled “With 620,000 jobs at risk and RM1.6 billion already allocated, why is Malaysia still failing to upskill and reskill effectively?” was authored by Celine Ting, Co-founder & Managing Director of OpenAcademy
About the author
Celine is currently leading OpenAcademy, the education subsidiary of OpenMinds. She has led digital projects across various industries including fashion, e-commerce retail, telecommunications, F&B and banking. Her experience within the digital space enabled her to assist brands in developing digital strategies and up-skilling digital competencies, which has led her to the education industry and now into the e-learning industry with the OpenAcademy App. She believes that anyone is able to make an impact with the right help. In order to continuously enable learning, she speaks and mentors at various events held by universities, startup events and corporate companies.