Country: Ethiopia
Closing date: 11 Sep 2018
Assessing the efficacy of soft-skills service provision (Modules and service providers), and supporting on improvements.
Background
The government of Ethiopia has adopted the second growth and transformation plan (GTP II) with the prime focus of transforming the country to a middle-income country by the year 2025. This GTP has a strong focus on supporting the development of an industrial economy and to this end, the government is establishing a number of industrial parks with the intent to boost the Ethiopian manufacturing sector, create an attractive investment proposition for foreign local investors and employment opportunity.
The Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP) is one of the completed and operational industrial parks where nineteen investors have begun operations, employing approximately twenty thousand workers. The Hawassa Industrial Park - Sourcing & Training Employees in the Region (HIPSTER) project was created to address the challenge of sourcing large number of workers into the IP mainly from an agrarian background and with no experience in formal or manufacturing jobs.
Enterprise Partners (EP) is a UKaid Funded program that aims to support and transform Ethiopia’s economic growth. EP facilitates the implementation of the HIPSTER project collaboratively with Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute (ETIDI), Southern Nations, Nationalities’ and Peoples’ Region – Bureau of Trade and Industry (SNNP-BoTI), Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), and Investors Association (IA).
Within the HIPSTER pipeline; SNNP-BoTI identifies, sources and screens potential workers from ten catchment areas around HIP, and the workers are then sent to the grading centre where ETIDI tests against various industry standards. Workers are then allocated to factories by the IA, and are given in-class training/induction by Soft skills training providers. [1]
Background specific to this assignment
EP undertook an assessment in September 2015 to examine causes of labour related challenges in manufacturing and industry. The assessment was undertaken in Addis Ababa and included consultations with sectoral government bureau’s and institutes, private and government TVET colleges, fashion design and operator sourcing colleges, foreign direct investors and local garment factories.
The challenges identified included poor worker readiness, frequent absenteeism and turnover, poor awareness of factory working environment, poor employee sourcing, recruitment and training processes, low labour productivity and poor motivational systems amongst others [2].
In order to address this issue, EP supported the development of a soft skills training content and conducted training of trainers (ToT) [3]. The soft skills training includes work ethics, time management, and life skills- summary of training topics attached as Annex 1.
There are now four training service providers in HIP providing soft skills training and induction for recruited workers. These service providers have trained 7600 operators directly in Hawassa Industrial Park.
The training is in class and takes a total of five days (8 hours a day) to complete.
Although assessments of current training has shown that factories recognize the value of the training, and see good training results in orienting operators, majority of whom come from informal farming work or no work experience to factory floors, there are a number of challenges that remain to be addressed. Some of these challenges, as identified by factories include, the intensity of the induction process, the need for a more interactive methodology to get the message across, this can include audio/visual tools and the need for flexibility to deliver the training.
The cost of training per operator charged by current service providers is another major challenge in a situation where worker turnover was averaging 10% [4]. Factories have no incentive to invest in their workers at those replenishments rates and have clearly indicated they would be unwilling to cover the external costs of direct training to operators.
EP, investors and stakeholders are now interested in evolving the current training content, curriculum and training methodology to address overarching and specific challenges identified.
Purpose
The purpose of this TOR is to identify an international learning and content creation expert (individual) who will assess the efficacy of the current program, though, among other things conducting a comparative analysis of similar soft skills curriculum, and delivery mechanisms both nationally and internationally.
The expert will then make recommendations on the appropriate content and medium of transmission in manner that support the standardization of soft-skills service provision in Ethiopia.
The expert will also evaluate existing service providers, determine their needs and capacities and make appropriate recommendations on capability of service providers ability to deliver new training methodology. Service providers identified as capable will be coached to provide training to in-house trainers or HR departments who will then deliver soft-skills training to workers.
Specific task
The assignment have two phases:
Phase I: The consultant is required to;
- Conduct a comparative analysis of soft skills service provision (training materials and provision mechanism), both within and outside of Ethiopia, and assess the efficacy of the current program (including training materials, curricula and delivery mechanism) in light of international best practices,
- Assess the capacity of the soft skill service providers, content writers and in country capacity for audio visualization and production, and make recommendations and selections of service providers to work with accordingly.
- Create a strategic engagement plan with project timeline, for the development of standards for soft-skills service provision, in consultation with local service providers and other relevant stakeholders.
Phase II:
- Coach the local service providers on conducting a needs assessment, module selection and development, content creation and production of appropriate training materials and delivery methodology (currently envisaged to be TOT and supervision for in house trainers), as well as evaluation of results.
Deliverables and timeframe
Description of each deliverable
- Assessment of the efficacy of the current curriculum/modality and comparative analysis with international best practice – 3 days
- Assessment of service providers – 5 days
- Creation of a strategic engagement plan – 3 days
- Coaching local service providers on module development, production of appropriate training materials, and delivery of TOT and evaluation of results – 15 days
- Compiling report – 4 days
Total – 30 days
Qualification
- Minimum of 10years’ experience in learning, content design and administration of soft skills training
- Experience in developing audio/visual learning tools
- Experience working in garment industry training
Engagement Timeline
The consultant is expected to work with EP, HIPSTER stakeholders and local curriculum developers and training providers between September 2018 and January 2019. The consultancy is expected to take place over 30 of days and amount of time spent in country will be negotiated with the consultant.
Working Arrangement
The EP/partner focal persons for this assignment to whom the consultant will be reporting to is the Garment labour intervention Manager and Garment Sector Lead.
The consultant will be working with a team of service providers for soft skill manual refinement and video production.
Please follow the link below to read the Annex:
Last date for submission of applications is 11th September 2018.
[1]Refer to HIPSTER project document V2.0 March 2018 for more information on pipeline.
[2]Soft Skills Assessment, 2015
[3] For ETIDI staff, private fashion design and operators sourcing colleges and soft skills training provider firms
[4]Insert reference
How to apply:
To apply follow the link below:
https://chm.tbe.taleo.net/chm04/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=DAINC&cws=1&rid=3924