Publications Topics Archive Topics Archive 2004 Vol.34- No.12 Editorial: The Urgent Need to Develop Human Capital | Editorial: The Urgent Need to Develop Human Capital |
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Human resources (HR) issues are emerging as an area of increasing concern for members of the international business community in Taiwan. For some companies with major expansion projects, there is an immediate and pressing need to hire greater numbers of qualified engineers and other professionals. Other multinationals, having taken up the government's invitation to establish R&D centers in Taiwan, worry about whether the supply of high-level research scientists will continue to grow as competition for the talent pool intensifies. And still others, particularly those involved in the service sector and in marketing, find that a large proportion of the job applicants they encounter are deficient in crucial English-language skills, an international mindset, and practical business sense. As the above recitation shows, the problems are both short-term and longer-term, and involve questions of both quantity and quality, and both technical and non-technical manpower. A recent meeting with AmCham representatives organized by Economics Minister Ho Mei-yueh and attended by high-level officials from a number of relevant agencies outlined various plans that the government has drawn up to rectify the current shortcomings. Among them are scholarships to send more students abroad for graduate work, expansion of domestic Master's degree programs, efforts to encourage Taiwanese talent now living overseas to return for employment here, stepped-up vocational training, and the forging of closer connections between industry and the universities. The problem is that most of those proposed remedies focus on improving the long-run situation, but do little to help managers solve the manpower difficulties currently confronting them day by day. Regulations governing the employment of foreigners and PRC-passport holders for white-collar positions will need to be substantially liberalized to provide a buffer until the longer-term programs can produce results. Heightening the challenge is the fact that Taiwan is on the brink of a new wave of development in the value-added service sector. International companies are eyeing the market, but they may be discouraged by the limited supply of prospective employees with the requisite specialized training, coupled with the difficulty of bringing in those professionals from abroad. Many of these companies may be relatively small-scale operations that fail to meet the minimum-capital requirements for hiring foreigners that were written with big-ticket manufacturing investments in mind. As a communication channel, the recent meeting was helpful in informing AmCham about the government's current thinking regarding HR development and in alerting officials to the urgency of the needs faced by industry. For decades, one of the key factors spurring Taiwan's robust economic growth has been the availability of high-caliber human capital on the island for jobs from the factory floor to the research labs and management offices. At a time of greater challenge and competition in the international arena than ever before, Taiwan cannot afford to allow that advantage to erode. |
