The methodology and Guiding principles used for the development of the Strategic plan
The role of HRD Councils worldwide has been to act as an unifying force for achieving performance excellence through people by serving as a catalyst and an innovator, fostering communication and collaboration with and among stakeholders in human resource development and providing expert leadership in performance improvement and evaluation.
The objects and functions of HRD Council in Mauritius are definitely of a tall order and which, if successfully implemented, will help the country to emerge as a knowledge economy. The main guiding factors in the development of this Strategic Plan have been to look at the issue of the human resource development from a national perspective in order to locate the aspirations and requirements of HRD for the country at large. In this context a ZOPP exercise was conducted on 23rd and 24th April 2004 whereby the Vision and Mission of the Council were worked out and the core problem facing the emergence of an effective HRD for Mauritius was found to be ‘an absence of institutional synergies to devise and implement an integrated human resource development strategy’. This led to the development of the Problem Tree and the Objective Tree.
These objectives, which looked at the issue of HRD from a national perspective, were further discussed at the level of Council, the Executive Committee and Sectoral Committees. They were supplemented by the recommendations of the ILO concerning HRD (Report published in June 2004), whereby emphasis had been laid on the 5 main thrusts of HRD namely Pre-employment, Re-skilling, Up-skilling, Entrepreneurship training and Market oriented training. All the above led to the development of 27 strategic objectives concerning human resource development from a national perspective.
The 27 objectives were to:
▪ Facilitate access to high quality education/training
▪ Stimulate creative activities at all levels
▪ Create opportunities for outreach for excellence
▪ Promote attitude training at all levels
▪ Promote a national training culture, life long learning and employability
▪ Create an effective LMIS
▪ Develop the National Human Resource Development Plan
▪ Promote entrepreneurship training and development of entrepreneurial attitude
▪ Promote recognition of prior learning and experience
▪ Promote the development of the knowledge economy
▪ Evaluate the impact of training
▪ Create opportunities for reconciliation of family and work life and promotion of life long learning
▪ Coordinate educational and training policies and structures
▪ Use appropriate pedagogy in HRD
▪ Create a robust HRD value chain ( Education-Training-Employment)
▪ Promote employability skills including numeracy and literacy
▪ Encourage commitment of employers to HRD
▪ Promote training in core skills
▪ Survey of the aspirations of long term unemployed and redundant workers in terms of skills requirement
▪ Consolidate quality control of training providers
▪ Arouse interest in the teaching profession
▪ Encourage critical thinking at all stages of education and training
▪ Create an environment which is attractive to the development of a skilled manpower
▪ Encourage reverse brain drain
▪ Provide greater scope for professionals and equal opportunities in the labour market
▪ Encourage positive attitude, ethics, and citizenship
▪ Foster innovation
The HRD Council discussed these 27 strategic objectives which were necessary from a national perspective and which would involve the participation of different stakeholders both from the public and private sectors. These were used as a basis to develop the 11 medium term strategic objectives of the HRDC, which form the basis of this Medium Term Strategic Plan.
The 11 objectives are expected to be attained over the medium term. Out of these 11 objectives, 6 have been identified to form part of the Immediate Action Plan of the HRDC.
