Dimensions of Personal Character Required by the Workplaces

ISBN : 978-602-97249-0-5 International Seminar on Vocational Education and Training 49

F. Dimensions of Personal Character Required by the Workplaces

Employability skills consist of mainly workplace know-how smart mind, good heartpersonal character, healthy physics, and consequently good behaviors. Personal character required by the workplaces is part of employability skills, called heart set affective domain. Based on my personal experience as a consultant of vocational education for eight years at the Directorate of Vocational Education, Ministry of Education and Culture, the personal characters required by workplaces can be identified as follows: work ethics, intellectual curiosity, reliabilitydependability, self-discipline, honesty, commitment, responsibility, respects for self and others, tolerance, hardworking, interpersonal relationshipsociability, integrity, good manners, communication, perseverance, work motivation, cooperationteamwork, initiative resourcefulness, courage, diligence, integrity, adaptability, self-control, faster learner, willingness to learn new things, knowing how to learn, flexibility, and entrepreneurship. Some workplaces may require all of those personal characters, but others may only need some. Those personal characters heart set should be prepared by vocational education and training institutions because they are all as the education of the heart are required by the workplaces. However, a lot of vocational education and training institutions still disregard character education although they are considered very important by the workplace. It is urgent for vocational education and training institutions to prepare workforces with good characters, both for wage employment and for small and medium enterprises SME. At the present time, however, personal characters education for SME is ill-prepared and ill-implemented. In the case of Indonesia, SME is very important generator for employment opportunity. The data shows that 70 to 75 percent of all people in Indonesia are employed in small enterprises. Therefore, it is suggested that current and future workforce education should be also geared toward SME entrepreneurshipmanagement of SME and not only for wage employment. Entrepreneurial spirits, knowledge, skills, and behaviors for developing SME should be the core business of vocational education and training institutions. Educating current and future workforce for entrepreneurship SME is not only supplementary, but it should be considered as a must, considering their inherent capacity to absorb a large proportion of new entrants into the labor market in Indonesia. ISBN : 978-602-97249-0-5 International Seminar on Vocational Education and Training 50 Obviously, this view will require new philosophy and practices in educating future workforces. Also, we are all aware that the future is still uncertain and the pace of change becomes faster and faster. Therefore, it is also important that vocational education and training institutions prepare workforces with strong broad-based, multi-skilled, flexibleadaptive skills, technology-literate, entrepreneurial skills, and good desirable personal characters that can be seen from the capacity of solving problems, ability to work in teams, and learning how to learn, to mention just a few. The rapid changes around us also push more and more in the direction of lifelong learning, where the distinction between initial and continuing education disappear.

G. Strategy for Implementing Workplace Personal Character Education Programs