Startup Bahrain got the chance to talk to Amal Kooheji from Tamkeen about the Career Progression Programme. If you ever wondered what CPP is all about? Read on for the specifics, secrets, and valuable information—from an insider’s point of view.
First of all, thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you. Could you please introduce yourself, and tell us more about what you do at Tamkeen?
Amal: I’m Tamkeen’s Vice President for Human Capital Development. Tamkeen have two objectives that complement each other to serve the private sector: one that provides support for enterprises, and one that supports individuals who are in the labour market or are entering the labour market. I oversee the programmes that provides all of the services and solutions for the training, skilling and development of Bahrainis.
Can you give us one or two examples of those services?
We have two flagship programmes. The Career Progression Programme targets existing employees in the private sector and aims to develop them further, enhancing their skills so they can become more productive subsequently securing wage increments. Along with employers, we go through the process of identifying their skills and devising a training plan to further develop those skills and enhance them. Employees achieve this by attending training programmes suitable to their progression. We subsidise the training, and we also subsidise the wage increment for a certain period of time—to entice the private sector to upgrade the employee and increase their wages. We know that stagnant wages are an issue in labour markets, so this is one of the ways we can stimulate that change positively.
The second flagship programme is Tamkeen’s Professional Certification Scheme, which serves any Bahraini individual who wishes to improve his or her career or skills through attainment of professional qualifications in diverse fields. We have around 250 qualifications in various sectors, and Tamkeen’s criteria for listing them can be met through licensure to practice a certain profession, enhancing an applicant’s ability to perform tasks within a specific profession, or helping them find employment if they are job seekers. It is a very, very popular programme that has proved extremely successful.
Is the Professional Certification programme part of the Career Progression Programme, or are they two separate programmes?
They are two separate programmes people can benefit from. They target two separate audiences. Even though a third programme includes existing employees as one of its target audiences, it is individual-led; whereas Career Progression Programme is employer-led. Do you feel that Tamkeen has effectively fulfilled this role of diversifying and progressing the careers of employees in the private sector through these programmes?
If you look at our past eight years of operations, we’ve served around 100,000 individuals in the kingdom. They came from various segments: students, job seekers, and existing employees in the private sector. We have people who have progressed in their careers by increasing their wages, securing a job, or becoming self-employed entrepreneurs. One very important consideration is that the number of people in the private sector has now exceeded the number of Bahrainis who were working in the public sector eight years ago. I think we have managed to contribute to this, but I don’t think we are the only solution. Tamkeen and other stakeholders in the market, such as the Ministry of Labour and similar organisations, have all contributed to making the private sector an attractive employment opportunity, since the public sector is now a saturated job market.
Of course. So far, what has been the biggest challenge in this journey?
We believe that in general, the Bahraini individual is attuned and motivated to learn, grow, and study. I In general, I think Tamkeen has been there for people who want to invest in themselves. We give them the access and opportunity to do so, by providing the necessary training programmes that contribute to enhancing their skills and thus their employability.
The challenge may lie in the fact that geographically, the Bahraini market is quite small—so we find that certain qualifications or certifications get saturated very quickly. This results in the need to measure more frequently the impact of these qualifications. We have managed to become very dynamic at Tamkeen, very responsive to market needs. We can add or remove certificates, for example, in order to cater to the changing market climate. Perhaps in other, larger markets, things wouldn’t change as frequently.
From a supplier and service-provider point of view, I think Bahrain has certain skills that we are good at delivering, but we are not good at everything. We have created some flexibility in our processes and procedures to allow for this. I think it is a big challenge. We allow external parties to come and partner with local, internal organisations to deliver the different programmes. We even allow people to travel to complete these programmes, when necessary. I think the diversity and quality of training is the answer to your question. That is the challenge.
Do you offer support for online courses?
We do—if required, and if the programme is offered formally online. It depends upon the awarding body, and how the programme is delivered.
That’s excellent.
It all depends whether or not the certification is listed with us.
What if there was a certification not listed as part of the approved Professional certifications scheme?
If the certification you are looking for is not included in the list of approved certificates, you will need to complete and submit the online requested certification application form (from our website www.tamkeen.bh ). Tamkeen will then evaluate your request and inform you of the final decision. We have tried to include as many certifications from various training disciplines as required by the market in Bahrain.
We have certifications in an array of disciplines based on market needs. We even support certifications in cosmetology, in fashion and deep-sea diving. .
Basically, we provide the support that will enhance your skills and licenses you to practice within a certain career path. In terms of certificates in cosmetology and the culinary arts, for example, they are very few in number. However, these individuals have proven themselves to be highly successful. They became entrepreneurs and often become quite successful; it makes financial sense to invest in them, even though they are fewer in number.
Excellent. Since these two programmes were launched, how do you think people view them? Do you think there are misconceptions?
I think there aren’t a lot of misconceptions, but there could be some challenges that I’d like to clarify. For example, because the Career Progression Programme is accompanied by a wage increase, some people may enter the programme just for the wage increase. We would like people to think more deeply about it, and consider it as a whole developmental plan. Having said that, we did allow a direct wage subsidy track in that programme, and said that whoever wanted a direct wage subsidy could just go for a direct wage subsidy, and not take the training. It wasn’t popular at all. People did take the training with the wage subsidy. They wanted the training.
It made me happier that people wanted to enhance their skills, but still, I believe that even if the employer wants the training, you could find the staff members who may only be interested in the wage subsidy more than the training itself.
We also have a lot of other programmes in our portfolio, and we have clusters of employment programmes through which we finance training and wage subsidies for employers who want to employ Bahrainis. FDIs, for example, come to the country and want to employ Bahrainis. We provide grants that allow them to do so. We have clusters of student-based programmes targeting youth, in which we develop and instill work ethics, awareness, and the entrepreneurial mindset.
Let’s go into more detail. What happens, exactly, when I apply for Tamkeen’s Professional Certification Scheme?
The process is an online application. You would, as an individual Bahraini, say, “Okay, I want to progress in a certain area.” Give me an example. What do you want?
Web development, for example.
We have the CIW Webmaster programme. There are 270 specific qualifications, at the moment, on the list. You would need to look for the CIW Webmaster or any other web development software, click on it, and find the training institutes that have registered with us to provide it.
In Bahrain?
In Bahrain. You have to choose one of them and fill out the online application. One of the requirements is to go to the institute of your choice. You would bring us the quote along with written approval from them that you have been accepted. We’d check your papers, and give you approval. You would go, register in the chosen institute, pay your 50%, and we would pay the institute 50% upon your submission of the receipt to us. We take on half the risk of you failing. We wouldn’t want you to fail, of course; You would start your studies or training come back after you’ve finished, bring your certificate when you have passed—and we would pay you back the 50% that you initially paid. That’s how it works.
For some programmes, depending upon the pass rate, mechanism, and level of demand, we pay 100%. This is also true for overseas programmes. If a programme is not offered in Bahrain, you’d come to us, give us the quote, we’d give you initial approval. For some of the other programmes, like CFA Level 1, reimbursement is 100%. It’s a low pass rate, so we take higher risk there; but we’ll give you approval.
We would give you approval; you would go to the institute, pay 100%, and go out of the country to study. When you come back, if you’ve passed, we pay you back the 100%, rather than 50/50. So we have two payment structures, depending upon the qualification.
What is not covered by the grant?
For overseas study, accommodation and travel expenses are not included. It covers tuition, exam fees, membership fees, books, learning materials, and the tools required for the qualification.
Is there a minimum and maximum duration for each programme, or could it be something like an intensive three-week boot camp, for example?
It can be anything, as long as the certification is listed. We actually look into the quality of the qualification, and choose to either list it or not. There are also caps on prices, especially local ones.
We don’t have the same cap for everything. We maintain a database containing eight years of data, so we actually know the prices on the market. We cap it, so an institute is free to charge whatever they want to charge—but we will only cover a predetermined amount.
Would you mind sharing with me the most popular and least popular courses?
It changes every quarter. I think the top sectors are IT, medical qualifications, Health and safety, and finance…. We also have a lot of physiotherapy courses that are specific to certain types of physiotherapy.
Interesting.
In the medical field, for example, we support a number of programmes. Imagine you are already a dentist, and then you go and study aesthetic dentistry. That gives you another edge. It allows you to practice something that will make you more profitable.
Do you think there is a reason why the popularity fluctuates all the time?
I think part of it is the quality of training as delivered by the service provider. In any given quarter, we have monitored higher number (or lower) in the different qualification fields. Even occupational health and safety, for a while, was at the top—. There may be a number of criteria that influence demand in the training demand. It is usually determined by word of mouth. Bahrain is very small, so that affects demand, as well.
And what about the least popular?
There are individual programmes that have a higher cost. You’ll find that cosmetology and personal trainer fitness programmes, for example, may only be done by a handful of people. That explains why they are the “least” popular, because that is attributed to the low number of individuals that work towards attaining those certifications. However, they are the ones who have a plan, and are passionate about it.
How did Tamkeen’s new strategy improve these human capital development programmes?
The focus of our new strategy is mainly segmentation. How do we provide packages of offerings for our various newly-defined segments of students, job seekers, and existing employees? We’re working on all of these strategic alignments at the moment. For example, the Career Progression Programme targets only existing employees. However, existing employees come in various wage segments. How can we change the mechanism—whether it’s funding policies, duration policies, or caps—for each segment of that population?
Who is Amal outside of Tamkeen? What do you like to do? Where do you like to hang out?
Tamkeen is my life. Truly, I come from a training background. I’ve been a trainer all my life. Last year, I completed 20 years of work, 12 years as a trainer, and nine years at Tamkeen. Human capital development is my passion. It is everything in my life. Outside these walls, everything I do has to contribute to that.
I love books. I love reading and arts. I actually read a lot. I’m catching up on the reading that I haven’t been able to complete so far in my life, because most of my reading has been about labour markets, labour economics, training development, management, human minds, human psychology—a lot of what I used to teach, and a lot of what I work with now. I have a book club that I go to every week.
I’m a very social person, so my schedule is just completely packed with family engagements. I come from a very big family, so there are lots of family obligations. I like to surround myself with people who can participate in fruitful conversations about development, especially Bahraini economic and labour development, along with that of the world at large. My friends come from these kinds of backgrounds. I like to network with people, where we sit and engage in these conversations—what’s happening in the outside world, what’s happening in Bahrain, in the realm of human development and economic development? This is who I am.
Really nice, really interesting, Amal. Thank you.
Thank you.