Objectives

The objectives of soft skills training for BBPLK Bekasi instructors are:

1. To deliver soft skills training based on national work competency standardization system (SKKNI)
2. To improve the delivery of soft skills training by upgrading STEM soft-skills components within the BBPLK Bekasi current curriculum on soft-skil

Upon receiving this soft-skills training, the participants will develop personal qualities and attitudes that will enable them to collaborate and work together in order to effectively deliver quality trainings in their respective BLKs.

Background

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is implementing Women in STEM Workforce Readiness and Development Program, which is funded by JP Morgan Chase Foundation. The program is implemented in ASEAN-3, namely Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in ICT, IT-BPO and electronic sector respectively. Those sectors are identified as high-growth sectors and present significant projected skills gap but also opportunities for growth. The program focuses on demand-oriented skills development that include both technical skills and soft skills to increase women workforce readiness and reduce skills gaps within private firms. The program focuses on demand-oriented skills development that include both technical skills and soft skills to increase women workforce readiness and reduce skills gaps within private firms. The key benefit for enterprise is having strengthened skills among their workers, as well as increased productivity and reduce turnover due to the strengthened skills.

The Women in STEM project aims to empower pre-employed female youth by providing them with relevant ICT technical skills and soft/core skills training, as well as employed female employees by strengthening their soft/core skills training that are relevant for career development. For the pre-employed female youth, the project signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Balai Besar Pengembangan Latihan Kerja – Bekasi (BBPLK Bekasi), to provide ICT skills training to 415 female youth until the end of 2020. Up to now, more than 200 female youth have been trained on network professional, IT software solution for business, web development and graphic design courses. These youth have been and will continue to be linked with the industry to expose them to the world of work, which eventually increase their employability and optimistically, will lead to their employment.

The quality of workforce relies to a large degree on the trainings they received. To ensure the employability of women workforce in Indonesia, therefore, it is crucial to ensure and improve their access to trainings but also the quality of the trainings themselves. To further strengthen the capacity of Indonesian technical and vocational education trainings (TVETs) to deliver quality trainings, the ILO Jakarta Office in collaboration with the BBPLK Bekasi will deliver soft skills training for 32 new instructors from Balai Latihan Kerja (BLK) around Indonesia. New instructors of these BLKs will benefit from an innovative soft skills training approach by the ILO to support their personal development and to improve their soft skills, allowing them to be better instructors, which in the end, will contribute to improving the quality of trainings in their respective BLKs.