Everyone has their own abilities and talents. The thing that distinguishes one individual from another is how they brought the talents into the light to achieve specific goals. In economics, talent is generally associated with the specific skills of employees demanded by firms and the economy. This is the reason education and training after secondary school is critical for our labour market.
Talent-driven economy generally means the ability of the workforce to exceed any other drivers of economic development. To fulfil this objective, Malaysia must always be prepared to invest in the knowledge, capabilities, and skills of the workforce through education, training and social support. In this regard, we believe that all parties—government agencies, private firms, corporations, non-governmental organizations and the community have contributed significantly to the formation of Malaysian talents over the years.
However, the most important measure after recognizing talent as important driver in economic is to determine the talent deployment. This step including to initiate and arrange related policies, processes, procedures and norms in shaping these talents so that it can be deployed productively. Appropriate approaches also intend to reduce gap between industry’s demand and talent created as well as to encourage government agencies and private firms to explore new areas that have the potential for the talents and economy.
In Malaysia, we have a great numbers and even extraordinary talents in various fields. Some of these talents had offers from abroad but they return to Malaysia with high patriotic spirit. Meanwhile, others may not have the opportunity to serve in the country for various reasons such as their talent are not needed, disproportionate remuneration, bureaucracy, no support, no opportunity to break the monopolies and traditional business model and others. Things like this make the issue of ‘brain drain’ become never endless for Malaysia.
In the global, we have seen some talented individuals become self-made rich. It is undeniably that wealth is one of the motivations for people to work hard to sell their talents. Is this a bad thing? After all, that is the real purpose why many countries demand for talents to serve them. Therefore, striving to get rich is a good endeavour, especially if the wealth benefits others.
Islam portrays wealth as a blessing and a test to human beings. The companions of the Prophet Muhammad SAW such as Abdul Rahman bin Auf RA, Zubair bin Awwam RA and even the wife of the Prophet SAW himself, Saidatina Siti Khadijah binti Khuwailid who was rich, gave a lot of charity and contributed in the name of Allah SWT. The difference is, wealth in Islam must be obtained from legitimate paths, to be spent on permissible things, to avoid prohibited practices such as monopolies, hoarding, gambling, usury and oppressing others. That is why the real wealth according to Islam does not weaken one’s faith and even makes them a better human beings.
In the current context, there are two perceptions on how people look into talented self-made rich individual. First, people can take inspiration from their success in building and offering their talents. Second, people may question whether the wealth of this ‘talented’ individual is from his or her genuine talent or simply a result of poor decision by firms. For example, poor recruitment of ‘talented’ individual in firms or strategic institutions due to factors of favouritism, corruption, cables and others.
Inefficiency may rise from this practice when the genuine skilled individual in the specified field is not given appropriate opportunity to fulfil the recruitment’s objective. The firms of institutions may incur monetary losses when they have to pay high remuneration for the incompetent individual. Time and energy are also wasted when the task that should have been completed by the ‘talented’ individual has to be done by others because in reality he or she is undertalented for the recruitment. Islam opposes such practices since it leads to misuse of power, misspend to unnecessary purposes, unjust to others and many more.
Apart from this issue, we may also actually be ‘overly’ in offering opportunities to the talented individuals. In other words, we may place too much attention, expectation and responsibility on these gifted individuals without taking into consideration other humane matters as these people are also same as other people. They have their own dreams, wants, hobbies, families and feelings.
Malaysia once recorded several genius individuals that have been identified since a very young age. However not all these individuals we can witness their greatness contribution to the country. The failure to continuously polish and support the talent like theirs is actually borne by us all. We may had forget to take into consideration factors such their age, mental and physical health and needs that may lead them to extreme duress especially when they are still children. That is why talent deployment is very important for Malaysia if we intend to keep polishing new talent and to get benefit from them.
Stepping into 2022 in these few days should make us aware the importance of talent as a today’s economic driver. Malaysia can’t no longer rely on cheap labour and traditional business models as to attract foreign investment. It takes a very strong political will to see talented Malaysian especially the young to have a fair and equitable opportunity to show their innovations and expertise for the sake of our nation.