Benchmarking Analysis of Occupational Standards for The Malaysia’s National Occupational Skills Standard (NOSS) Approach Towards New-Collar Jobs Era

Abstract

Malaysia National Occupational Skills Standard (NOSS) is a document that underlines and specifies competencies needed by a skilled worker who is gainfully employed in Malaysia for an occupational area and level, and pathway to achieve the competencies. NOSS is developed by industry practitioners and skilled workers based on occupational needs and career structure in particular occupational area. NOSS is used as a guideline in preparing learning equipment and materials development, as a training analysis, and could be used as assessment materials. Meanwhile, in the working environment, NOSS is used as a guide for recruitment, career development, and staff performance evaluation. As the government agency that's responsible for formulating, promoting, and coordinating strategies and skills training programs, Department of Skills Development (DSD) has enforced the use of NOSS as a basis in developing instructional training materials for skills training in Malaysia. Approaching the New-Collar Jobs era, a revision of the NOSS is needed to ensure the competencies are in line with the dynamic change in the job structure. This study analyzed the occupational standards in the benchmarking countries and their approach on new collar jobs. We found that Malaysia is in-line with the other benchmarking countries in approaching new collar job era and could also adopt some of the other approaches by the benchmarking countries.