NSRS

The National Skills Registry Sytem.

The National Skills Registry System (NSRS) is a Project initiated by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) established in 2008 with the main objective of establishing and maintaining a continuing nationwide skills registry system with the enhanced PHIL-JOBNET as the repository of the Skills Registry.       The Skills Registry is a roster of active labor supply that shows information on the qualifications and skills set of registrants which are either formally acquired in school or gained through experience.  With a computerized system, this Registry can be readily accessed by clients or interested parties through an information highway that is available all throughout the country.

A.     Rationale

Talent mismatch is a global phenomenon. It is an issue that has been identified as one of the key challenges for the new and succeeding working age groups. This notion moves beyond the skills mismatch problem as this condition involves a new generation of potential workers who lacks the necessary job-related skills and intra- and inter-personal competencies, or work attitudes, that will aid employers subsequently attune their services and/or products to the constantly changing needs of their clientele. Moreover, the high roll-over rate of employees who move from one company to the next, technological  innovations, large scale work consolidations, drive for green jobs creation, and the necessity to adapt to diverse and flexible work arrangements  are challenges which exacerbates the issue of a growing pool of workers who lack the expertise to do work-specific tasks.

     

            The growing world economies have likewise observed that due to the changing world of work trends, there are many hard-to-fill jobs that have remained unfilled, in the midst of difficulties experienced by many to gain and/or maintain decent employment.

            From the macro perspective, this phenomenon forces the DOLE, to think of strategies and subsequent actions to be undertaken, which may curb the said problem, using existing government structures, programs and resources. From the micro level, it creates the necessity of empowering the PESO institution that will place it at the forefront of alleviating this primary concern.

            As we enter the Human Age, these combined efforts will provide the necessary conditions or environment that will promote the development and maximization of human potentials. 

 B.     Background

            The National Skills Registry System, or the NSRS Project, was initiated to establish a web-based NSRS in the Philippines. This will be achieved through the creation of a system that shall capture the pool of available talents at the community level. The ingenuity of this system comes from the system’s ability to capture the ‘liveness’ of available skills in the country. Likewise, the system has the capacity to track on monthly and quarterly bases the employment status of registrants enrolled in the system. The ‘liveness’ of the system is vital as it is seen as the most strategic approach in linking available manpower supply and demand.

In addition to registering available skills in every locality throughout the country, the relevance of the said project is the ‘liveness’ of the skills registry wherein potential employers are given the assurance that the skills registered are up-to-date and only those who are actively searching for employment are shown. This will help expedite the selection and hiring process for employers. Furthermore, because of the monthly and quarterly reporting mechanism of the project, DOLE and PESO are certain that the enrolled skills registrants may be easily contacted and interviewed by potential employers. It also shows its potential of being used as a mechanism to discern additional intermediary services that the PESO may extend to increase the employability of the enrolled skilled registrants, either through the provision of skills re-tooling or upgrading that may be used for both wage and entrepreneurial endeavors. As such, this project aims to aid the PESO in facilitating the referral and placement of jobseekers given the available job vacancies in and outside the community.

Moreover, by integrating it with the Enhanced Phil-JobNet System, this will result to the creation of an IT-based system that has the capability to serve as a hub for the active and live interplay between labor demand and supply.

For this reason, generated data by the NSRS project can be used to help define existing policies on employment facilitation which will subsequently equip the PESO with additional mandate that will transform it as the main employment brokering facility of the Philippine Government.

C.      Objectives

            The NSRS was conceptualized and designed to realize the following specific objectives:

1.       To establish a national registry that signals the formal creation of a labor market as the environment for the interplay of labor demand and supply; 

2.       To establish and maintain a continuing nation-wide skills registry system with the existing ENHANCED PHIL-JOBNET SYSTEM as the repository of the Registry;

3.       To enhance the present databank of manpower supply indicating their skills and qualifications that can be readily accessed by clients;

4.       To strengthen the current system of  registry of labor supply and demand from employers and job seekers; and,

5.       To harmonize the manpower databases of the following DOLE agencies- BLE, POEA, PRC, TESDA, NMP  and possibly other government agencies such as CHED, DepEd, etc. so that the supply and demand situation for skills at a given time in the labor market can be determined, assessed and updated on REAL time mode.

However, for lack of other standard definition of what SKILL means, for purposes of this project, it refers to any talent, ability, proficiency, competence, handiness, expertise, declared by the potential applicant/registrant.  The burden of proof rests on the applicant/registrant when subjected to an interview by the employer.  Immediate proof of skillfulness upon demand shall form part of the documents to be submitted by the jobseeker on educational background, work experience, employment certificate or training certificate.  These documents, however, shall not be submitted at the time of registration.

  

D.      Expected Deliverables

            Provided the objectives expressed above, the NSRS Project aims to achieve the following outcomes:

1.       Capture most if not all the manpower supply available for potential employment locally and abroad;

2.       Facilitate the decent employability of individuals who are available, willing and able to work whether wage employment or entrepreneurship/ livelihood.

3.       Facilitate the employment of qualified members of the labor force that suit the requirements of local and foreign employers as well as recruitment agencies at any given time;

4.       Provide valuable information for institutions engaged in education and training such that their curriculum will be more focused to the manpower needs of the time;

5.       Ease unemployment and underemployment challenges;

6.       Provide an efficient feedback mechanism on the employment status of the manpower supply whether or not the Register meets the need/requirements of employers;

7.       Harmonize all data systems among government agencies on labor demand and labor supply to increase the efficiency of deployment of manpower; and

8.       Contribute to the overall development and improvement of the quality of the Philippine labor force to be more globally competitive.