Global Online Workforce (GLOW) Initiative In Malaysia
On 24th of September 2018, people from the Malaysia Digital Economy Cooperation or also known as MDEC had conducted a talk to all software engineers’ students on the Global Online Workforce or GLOW for short. The speaker of the talk was Miss Nor Ashikin Binti Halil one of the member of GLOW. She is from Skudai but now she live in Kangkar Pulai and master in seven languages that are Bahasa Melayu, English, French, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, and Hindi. She also many years of experience on freelancing. In the talk she explained what is MDEC, MDEC is a government-owned institution responsible for the management of multimedia super corridor in Malaysia as a technology industry and commerce zone founded in 1996. There are a lot of programs or platforms that are under MDEC created to help the people to use the internet to do business for instance eUsahawan that entrepreneur to do business online. So, in the talk she explained a lot about GLOW.
GLOW was created to produce a capable digital community, to introduce freelancing as an alternative career for Malaysian to get income for global digital platforms, to introduce the skill and service of Malaysian to the global market and to provide support for digital workers to ensure they stay motivated. In GLOW there is a sharing in economy for instance sharing in space like booking apps or website that share the space in doing business, sharing in stuff like Grab or Uber that uses the driver’s car to do their jobs or sharing in skill is people that offer their skills up for work like a freelancer. So what are the skills that we can offer? Skills like digital marketing is the marketing of product using digital channel to reach the consumers, translation that translate audio, text, or books from one language to a different language, data entry that enter or update data in a computer system, graphic design that design poster or picture, web developer that specialize in making world wide web application or a virtual assistance that is basically like an assistance but you do not have to meet your client face to face you just have to do it online through your computer. There are a lot work that freelancers can take for instance transcribing that convert audio, thought or data to written or printed forms.
Benefits of joining this program
There are benefits in joining GLOW and doing freelancing work. The first benefits in joining GLOW and doing freelancing work is GLOW can help us to become a better freelancer because provide programs for people who are interested in joining freelancing. They will teach you step by step on how to create a profile and choosing a project based on your skills. The second benefit is we can get income from the internet. Nowadays, a lot people dreamed of doing work from their home, with freelancing they can work from their home and get income without going to meet their client because all the work is done online and it also beneficial to students that trying to find a side income. They can do freelancing work in their free time and can get income from there that they can use for their everyday use.
Next, the benefit is we can gain more experience. GLOW provides many programs to help people to become a professional freelancer. As Miss Ashikin says freelancers always learn something new because that the nature of freelancing. We sometimes have to learn something new in order to do new jobs, so as we learn more and work more we can gain more experience and be more mature in decision making problems. People with more experience get pay more than people that do not have any experience. So by doing this program it will help us gain more experience to become a more successful person in freelancing. Besides that, we can control our workload. This is because we chose the work that we do, there are many jobs offered to freelancers so they can manage their workload by doing one work at a time. A tip given by Miss Ashikin, if you are a newbie to freelancing you better start small because the consequences of that work not going well will also be small, do not chose big work with a high pay if you do not have many experiences in dealing with the work.
Next, the benefit is you are your own boss. If you are freelancing and the client is being a real pain and difficult, you can always drop the job. Freelancers are essentially their own boss. So, they can get rid of unwanted stress of problems in doing their work. Another benefit is we can avoid long commute. Most freelancer work from their home, they do not have to travel outside from their home to meet their client because most jobs do not required them to meet their client face to face and communicate each other via email or messenger. These make freelancing easy to do because you can work from the comfort of your home and do not have to face the hustle and bustle of the outside world. The final benefits is you can keep all of the profits. Now you can keep all of the profits from small or large projects because you do not have to split the pay to anyone else because you are the only doing the project. This can ensure you have a big income provided you are doing a lot of project or big project with big payment.
How MDEC get people to join GLOW and who can join it
MDEC held many programs that attract people to join GLOW. The first program is Fast Track program as you can see in figure 3. It is a free program that targeted to new freelancers or skilled retired employee to improve their use of freelancing techniques and help them become a better freelancer. The second program is Higher Learning Institution as you can see in figure 4. It is targeted to students to take this as an elective subject in their studies and they will be monitored online. It can help them to understand more about freelancing. So who can join the program held by GLOW? So basically almost everyone can join this program but GLOW really looking for people with qualification in IT, graphic design and foreign language, IPTA and IPTS students that are qualified and skilled, retirees that are skilled and qualified young professionals that are looking for a decent side income. Example of freelancing platforms for international are freelancer, upwork and shutterstock. For domestic there are kerja digital, freetime works and 123RF. These platforms can help freelancers to find a suitable project that they can take based on their qualification and skills.
Impact of this program to Malaysia
The impact of this program to Malaysia is it creates more professional freelancers that excel in many aspects of working. There are many freelancers but not many that can freelance effectively, for example we chose the project without thinking the consequences if we did not finish the project on time or we drop the project. How will affect us, our score will be low and we may not be hired for another project. So, these are the thing that we have to think before choosing a project. There are many freelancers that excel in their respective field but that is it for instance an IT expert excel in IT related jobs but fail in language scope jobs. So with this program freelancers can to be professional in freelancing and improve themselves in other scope of jobs. Besides that, this program can promote freelancing as one of the major careers in Malaysia in the future. With freelancing becoming more popular for young adults nowadays, with the decent payment in each jobs attracts the interest of young adult to become a freelancer, so do not be surprise in the near future freelancing will be one of the most sought career in Malaysia.
Lastly, the last impact of the program is more online based jobs will emerge. With the popularity of freelancing is skyrocketing, more and more jobs will be available to freelancers to take. These jobs usually based online, it is easier for the freelancer and client because they hired specialist from other country without having to see them face to face. They only communicate either via email or messengers. This will make the digital market in Malaysia become more famous and thus help to improve the economy by attracting foreign digital market to Malaysia because of many digital specialist here.
Reflection
In a nutshell, this talk is beneficial especially to the students because with the GLOW they can find a side income thought freelancing. Miss Ashikin also presented the talk with full enthusiasm and confident that can spark the interest in the hearts of the students to join GLOW and become a freelancer. In my opinion GLOW is a really good program that was introduced by MDEC to help people of all categories to learn more about becoming a professional freelancer, to produce a creative and critical thinking mind for a better future.
