The Economist Myanmar Summit 2015
Vicky Bowman appeared on a panel on ‘The Human Capital Conundrum’ at the Economist’s Myanmar Summit 2015 on 15 May.
Her comments covered the challenges of recruiting and retaining skilled Myanmar staff, including attracting ‘repats’ back from higher salaries overseas and developing human resources programmes such as onboarding and long-term incentive payments to retain staff; the need for collective business input into the government’s planning for future skills needs for technically qualified staff; the shortcomings of existed and fragmented vocational training programmes; and the value of on-the-job training and internships and entry level jobs in hospitality for developing work-readiness skills in Myanmar staff.
The panel also discussed the importance of training programmes which teach leadership skills, the need to encourage critical thinking from an early stage in the curriculum and cultural taboos for students to critically challenge the ideas in supervisory and teaching roles. The Summit was attended by a range of Myanmar and foreign businesspeople and opinion-formers and discussed Myanmar’s ongoing reforms.