With the Decision No. 1486/QĐ-TTg by Prime Minister, this year, for the first time, October 4 became Vietnam Labor Skills Day. The importance of skilled and highly qualified laborers to the development of the country is once again confirmed. This wills become a great driving force for stakeholders in activities to improve skills for laborers. Having an anniversary day to remind, celebrate and honor is not difficult. The problem is, behind this spiritual motive force, what tasks do stakeholders coordinate to implement and how they are effective – compared to the goals and expectations set by the Government in this important decision?

Before this event, the Prime Minister issued the Directive No. 24/CT-TTg to promote the development of skilled human resources, contributing to improving labor productivity and national competitiveness in the new situation. The directive clearly states the objective: by 2030, vocational education and training of Vietnam will reach ASEAN-4 level and G20 level by 2045. To achieve that goal, the Prime Minister require to pilot college-level training for junior secondary graduates; do well human resource need forecasting; strengthen the linkage among State - schools – enterprise and encourage enterprises to recruit workers based on occupational skills ... The highlight in the Directive is that the Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs to consider and propose "Vietnam Labor Skills Day". Not only to honor the skilled, skilled workforce; The Prime Minister hopes that this is an opportunity to remind the community of an important task of enhancing Vietnam's human resources, contributing to increasing labor productivity and enhancing national competitiveness.

Associate Professor, Dr. Bui Hoai Son - Director of the National Institute of Culture and Education of Vietnam said: “This is a necessary issue in efforts to improve the quality of human resources':” Skills day is extremely important for Vietnam in the current context when the Party and the State are considering human resources as one of the three strategic breakthroughs. To implement these strategic breakthroughs we need to enhance more the quality of human resources. We have assessed that the quality of our human resources in recent years has made very good progress; however, compared with the general level of the region and the world, the quality is still very alarming and needs to be paid more attention. Therefore, Skills day is really important for Vietnam in the current context, becoming the day to honor skills of Vietnam laborers, enhance the awareness of society of importance off skills, thereby developing more skilled labor".

And after many considerations and options, October 4 every year has been decided to become Vietnam Labor Skills Day. Mr. Nguyen Chi Truong - Director of the Skills Development Department, Directorate of Vocational Education and Training, Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs affirmed, “A national decision is not only a driving force for the Vietnamese workforce or vocational education and training system, but also a strong message that the Government wants to affirm to the world and potential international economic partners”

"With the size of the workforce of nearly 56 million, only over 22% are trained, the rest are considered untrained. The world and investors think that our quality of laborers is not our advantage which made them to decide to invest. Thus, the decision of the Prime Minister is the driving force and objective for the training process, also announcing to the world that Vietnam is determined to attract investors and it have resources to develop and keep up with the world. In addition, this decision is a message that changes all parties' minds: enterprise must also change their mindset of recruitment based on skills no longer based on qualifications, which the Prime Minister directed more than twice before issuing the Directive No. 24/CT-TTg and the Decision 1486: “Form now on wards, recruiting is not based on qualifications, but on skills, so we can find talented people. In order to do so, we must go up with the world, change and improve the country with the power of skills” . That is a meaningful message!", Mr. Truong said.

From the Directive No. 24/CT-TTg to Directive No. 37/CT-TTg and the Decision No. 1486/QĐ-TTg of the Prime Minister, the education sector in general; the labor invalids and social affairs sector - the governing body of the vocational education and training sector – the cradle for training the majority of human resources in the manufacturing sector for economic development, in particular have great encouragement to promote implementation of many work tasks. The important thing is how do stakeholders coordinate to implement effectively the goals and expectations set by the Government.

Dr. Pham Xuan Khanh - Rector of Hanoi High Tech Vocational College said: "Besides the efforts and determination of each laborer to change their skill and attitudes to keep up with the trend, dealing with immediate and long-term challenges, for educational institutions like us, we need to constantly improve, renew programs, facilities, equipment, management models, linkage to businesses. For enterprises, it is also necessary to regularly coordinate with schools to respond to changes in society and the economy and improve their production efficiency ".

In fact, upskilling the level of Vietnamese laborers depend not only on the efforts of laborer but also the efforts of enterprises or recruitment system ... It is also the story of the policy - vision of the country's human resources in the domestic and international economic context; That is the talent in operating the education system in general, the vocational education and training system in particular. Above all, it is necessary to define labor skills as the goal - the standard - a measure of training effectiveness, a measure of recruiting and using employees ... then the human resources in Vietnam can be improved and upgraded. That is the message that is inspired and transmitted, on the first Vietnam Labor Skills Day - October 4, 2020.