The country aims to develop skills frameworks for more sectors as it further works to upskill and reskill its workforce and avoid mismatch between skills and jobs.
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Undersecretary Rafaelita Aldaba, in a speech read by DTI Competitiveness Bureau’s Director Lilian Salonga at the Philippines Future Skills Summit, said the Philippine Skills Framework (PSF) initiative has been launched in three industries –logistics and supply chain, digital arts and animation, and game development.
Aldaba said cross-sectoral skills frameworks on human capital development and business development have also been formulated.
“And the key for us is to align the PSF with our Philippine Qualifications Framework or PQF,” she said.
The PQF describes the levels of educational qualifications and sets the standards for qualification outcomes. It is a quality assured national system for the development, recognition and award of qualifications based on standards of knowledge, skills and values acquired in different ways and methods by learners and workers of the country.
Aldaba said the PSF initiative is a common language that employers and workers share to ensure the “match between jobs and skills”.
The initiative is an inter-agency effort that is aimed to provide industry sectoral information, including its employment landscape, various occupations, skills requirement, work context, expected profile of workers, performing occupation or job roles, and skills description which defines the performance expectations from each skill, she said.
“Through the PSF, employers will be able to identify the skills and competency. A potential employee must have to be able to effectively fulfill a job role and the companies can use the framework to design progressive human resource management and talent development plans for their employees,” she added.
Aldaba said jobseekers can specify the skills and competencies that he or she would need to acquire to advance his or chosen career path.
She added educational and training institutions can also use the skills framework to revise the existing curricula or design new courses that would capacitate workers with competencies demanded by industry currently and in the future.
The Philippine Trade Training Center (PTTC) earlier identified eight priority sectors targeted for PSF development, including logistics and supply chain, information technology-business process management, construction, tourism, food (agriculture and fishery), creative industry, manufacturing, and health and wellness. A PSF on tourism has also been planned.
In the same event, Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual said the “DTI seeks to prepare our workforce for jobs where they can excel, jobs that employers’ need and those that respond to future demands.”