The Star carried the news “Talent Corp to woo back 70,000 Malaysians” emphasizing that this is one of the key focus of the 10th Malaysian Plan.  While I see this as a very positive move by the government.  I would also like to raise my concerns and hope that the government will execute this with care.  “Woo back” is the key word here - and also the cause of my concerns.

It has often become a norm is many organizations to use the method of “counter offer” to retain its employee.  While it may work for short term, it’s often a method that I’d highly discourage.  Some employees goes a step further by first leaving the organization and joining back several years later with a significant salary increase.  This is often referred to as the revolving door.  When this becomes too evident, employees will start to make use of such tactics to get pay increments and soon it become a culture in the organization.  So why not take care of those you have around instead of going out to hunt for those who have left?

The same applies to the brain drain issue that’s affecting Malaysia or most developing country at the moment.  In order to increase the number of talented individuals in the country, there are 2 ways - increase inflow or reduce outflow.  Outflow reduction is often hard to measure because often the talents were still “unpolished gems” when they leave for another country.  Increase inflow of talents is easily measured because it’s “polished diamonds” that you’re importing.  Therefore, often people will choose the more visible path especially when visibility becomes important when election is around the corner.

Let me list out the issues that may occur out of this “wooing back with incentives” methods:

• People tend to leave with the intention to come back later to get the “incentives” which may not be bad but we would be always be short of “young and rising” talents.
• When it becomes too visible that those that went through the revolving door gets more benefits, it indirectly encourage talent outflow that goes unnoticed (we may still not achieve a net increase in talent inflow if this happens).
• Government incentives for foreign talents become the next largest subsidy in the future.  We all know what issues we could face if people becomes “addicted to subsidies”.
• We’re still likely to woo back those who finds it hard to make it in another country and decides to return (and still get incentives).
• We may just become “retirement ground” for many professionals.  We just heard of ageing population issue recently, this might just add on to it.

Therefore, my suggestion would be:

• Pump the incentives into the industry with shortage of talents rather than to the individuals.  For incentives to be given to “all critical positions” irregardless of whether it’s eventually taken up by someone residing overseas or locally.  That will not only bring back those who have left but retain those who are still around.
• There should not be any preferential treatment for those who have left, otherwise it becomes a punishment to those who are loyal.
• Increase the education bond amount placed on government scholarship holders who were sent to study overseas.  Bear in mind the bond we place on our scholarship holders are often nothing after currency conversion if a company in UK wants to buy it out.  The bond amount should take into account effort in identifying the student and time value of money.

Finally, in order to gain the respect of those who are away, it’s first important for us to respect those who have stayed.  Continue shouting “we’ve got no talents” will put us in the rut forever.

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Tags: brain drain, government policies', incentives, revolving door, talent, talent corp

This entry was posted by Clayton J.C Tan on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Culture, Economy, Human Resources, Leadership & Management, Malaysian Education, Malaysian Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.