Mechanical and maintenance engineering technicians, is the highest demanded category in the country, ‘technicians – general’ is the category with highest departure for foreign employment in a year. The highest passed out batch in 2018 consist of ‘Mechanic (Other Machinery)’, whereas the highest demand is for ‘Mechanical and maintenance engineering technicians’ (56% of the total required cadre) while the highest annual departure category is also ‘technician-general’.

Considering the very low supply of the Rubber and Plastic industry related skilled employees currently, the total skilled cadre required to fill the existing gap would be approx.2,919 per annum skilled employees.  ‘Tyre making and vulcanizing machine operators’ is the highest demanded skilled category occupation in the Rubber & Plastic Industry. This is followed by ‘Factory worker – Rubber’, ‘Latex Product Operator’, ‘Factory worker – Plastic’, ‘Plastic Extrusion’ and ‘Plastic Bottle/cup blowing machine operators’.

The estimated skilled employees’ gap for Metal related industry and Engineering service sector is 32,377 after considering the current supply. The highest demanded skilled job category for Metal industry is ‘Welders and Flame cutters’ followed by ‘Aluminum fabricators’. For Engineering service sector ‘Mechanical and Maintenance Engineering technicians’ are the highest demanded skilled job, followed by ‘Electrical Engineering technicians’, ‘Welders’, ‘Refrigeration and Air Conditioning technicians’.

Many companies are tabling the existing skills requirement in the market when questioning about the emerging skills but not necessarily very new talents that they foresee as future needs. This is because the existing skill requirements are very challenging to source, hence they mention it as emerging skills. The highlighted emerging skills  requirements are; ‘Injection Moulding Machine Operators’, ‘Packers’, ‘Plastic Cutting’, ‘UPVC /Aluminium Welders’, ‘Lathe & Milling Machine Operators’, ‘CNC Machine Operators’, ‘Elevators’ , ‘Electricians’, ‘Technicians’, ‘Welders and Macaronic Engineering’, ‘Pipe Fitters’, ‘Electricians, Steel Modification’, ‘Cutters and Welders’, ‘Lathe & Milling Machine Operators’, ‘Industrial Engineering’, ‘Research & Development and Innovation’ ‘Multi-skilled Craftsman’, ‘Skilled Workers with smart technology’.

As an immediate solution to the scarcity of skilled workforce, companies tend to recruit unskilled employees and train them on the job. Although the companies’ expectation is to train them and sustain them in the company, from candidates’ side it was just a stop gap filler for them. It would have not been their desired destination to have a career in the industrial sector. Therefore, retention of such recruits is always challenged. Recruits from vocational training centers also tend to leave once they start experiencing the job, and the key reasons for this trend are; working environment, lack of comfort in the work place like odd odors in the factory (Rubber and plastic) and non-ac environment, unwillingness to work long hours, lack of fitment to the job or the industry (attitude). Further, poor pay and other benefits, prioritizing recruiting from adjacent areas, employers prioritizing recruiting unmarried people also contribute to the same.

People’s ‘preference towards white collar jobs as opposed to blue collar jobs’, ‘Higher salary expectations without having the right skills, experience and/or qualifications by candidates’, ‘not comfortable with the working environment due to the sound, smell and noise’, ‘youth seek for easy money through convenient jobs such as riding three wheelers’ and ‘the inability to stick to one job’ – lack of endurance are other attitudinal and societal trends cause the skills gap in the market from companies point of view.

Sample size of a study like this is a critical factor to be considered at the design stage. When deciding on the sample size 2 critical factors were considered;

1. While confidence level and margin of error are the factors deciding the sample size, allocated investment was also taken into consideration, but still ensured minimum sample requirement that should be covered in order to represent each industry.
2. The recommended sampling technique for the study was stratified random sampling to ensure representation of important strata such as Small, Medium, Large enterprises. However in the absence of the database of companies that were classified under these strata, purposive sampling technique was applied for this study, where the companies who had given approval to access data were included in this study. Nevertheless, the representation of strata was ensured.

Geographical coverage of the sample spread was guided by the manufacturing establishment distribution provided by the census and statistics department (manufacturing establishment registered with the ministry of industries and the state-owned industrial establishment). Accordingly, it assured that more than 60% industry related companies are concentrated in Western province. Therefore, the sample coverage was ensured from Western Province and other part of the country approximately 70:30 respectively.

The definition of micro, small, medium and large scale companies used for this study was borrowed from Asia Development Bank definitions. Accordingly, the companies with 200 or more employees were defined as large scale, companies with 26 to 199 employees were categorized as medium scale, companies with 5- 25 employees were defined as small scale and companies with less than 5 employees were defined as micro scale. Except for metal related industries where all four segments of businesses were covered, MESSCO decided to cover only small, medium and large scale companies under Rubber & Plastic industry and Engineering services.

The Desk research was executed at the prelude stage mainly to gather data and statistics regarding trends of selected 3 industries and its contribution to the country’s Economic growth. The desk research was completed with the macro view of the country’s Economic trends and significance of the role that should be played by Rubber & Plastic, Metal related and Engineering Services industries. Therefore, both unpublished and published policy documents and administrative reports, related recent newspaper articles were referred for the desk review. As one of the key objectives of the desk research was to gain an understanding of skill supply side trends in the country, most of the data sources referred were obtained from vocational training institutes.

Due to lack of published data with most updated trends in the industry, the researcher interviewed following institutes and authorities to fill data gaps;

1. Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment
2. The Plastic & Rubber Institute of Sri Lanka
3. NAITA – National Apprentice and Industry Training Authority
4. DTET – Department of technical and Education Training
5. VTA – Vocational Training Authority
6. NYSC – National Youth Service Council
7. Urban Council and Pradeshiya Sabha

Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) were conducted among seniors in following listed institutes at this phase. The objective of this phase was to gather skill gap measuring parameters and variables that should be quantified at the quantitative stage. Parameters including, the contribution of the industries to the country development and economy, occupation categories that exist in the three industries currently and their importance level to the industries, emerging skilled occupation categories that they perceive to be which are critical to meet future industry requirements, industry experts and training providers perspectives on issues faced by the three selected industries with regard to skilled and unskilled employees. Other than that these discussions were helpful to understand some of the very relevant data sources that should be approached by the researcher to enhance the desk review and the sample frame of the quantitative phase of the study.

Accordingly, senior level officials from the following industry related bodies and training institutes were interviewed under this stage;

1. The Ministry of Industrial and Commerce
2. The Plastic & Rubber Institute of Sri Lanka
3. IESL – Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka
4. IIESL – Institute of Incorporated Engineers of Sri Lanka
5. Foundry Development and Services Institute
6. University of Moratuwa
7. NAITA – National Apprentice and Industry Training Authority
8. Ceylon Electricity Board Training Centre-Piliyandala
9. DTET – Department of Technical and Education Training
10. VTA – Vocational Training Authority
11. NYSC – National Youth Services Council
12. TVEC – Tertiary Vocational Education Commission

The main objective of quantitative study was to quantify the skill gap in the three selected industries. Therefore, employers of Rubber & Plastic, Metal related and Engineering Services were covered in this study. Human Resource Managers, Managers or Company Owners from the selected employers or companies were interviewed.

The sample coverage during the quantitative phase is 252 companies including 62 Rubber and Plastic Sector companies, 61 from the Engineering services and 129 Metal related industries.

Majority of the companies classified under the selected three industries are located in the BOI zones namely, Biyagama, Homagama, Kalutara, Ekkala, Galigamuwa, and Kundasala and hence it was covered.

A semi-structured questionnaire developed using the results of desk review and qualitative phase as a quantitative data collection tool. To validate the research tool, 13 companies were interviewed in a pilot phase before commencement of the main interview phase of the study. The findings of the pilot interviews were analyzed and discussed with MESSCO and preceded with the main phase. Required amendments to the research tool were incorporated for the main data collection phase.

The interviews were conducted in the most convenient language to the respondent; hence the research material was prepared in relevant languages. Experienced senior level researchers conducted interviews, to enable capturing any emerging topics that are relevant to this research at the discussion stage. As a result, other than the quantitative data that was covered, there were many vital qualitative data which was captured under this phase.

To make the interview process productive, the approval letters that was provided by MESSCO was used in order to get access to data and for interviews with companies.

As two key quality control measures, the business cards of the companies were collected by the researcher wherever it was available and there was a call back process to approve the authenticity of the final interviews before it was taken for data processing. At the data processing stage, logic checks were executed before data was taken for analysis. The analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).  Main data analysis variables considered for the study were;

1. Overall Manufacturing and Engineering Service sector level
2. By each industry level – Rubber and Plastic industry, Metal related industry and Engineering service sector.
3. The scale of the companies within industries –Micro & small, medium and large scale companies.