January 2016—Dr. Nangialay Ghows Alami used to spend too much time explaining administrative workings to his staff—employees of the Afghan Swiss Medical Institute of Higher Education.

One employee, he said, “had problems with everything, especially financial analysis,” and would always ask him questions. But then the employee took a training offered under USAID’s Afghanistan Workforce Development Program in April and May 2015. He learned how to make a project schedule and showed Alami how he could do his work more effectively.

“I increased his salary by 30 percent immediately,” said Alami. “This training has made my life easier.”

While the hospital was established six years ago, the Institute was established three years later to fill the large medical professional skills gap in Afghanistan. Most Afghans, who can afford to, often travel to India and Pakistan for treatment because there is a larger, better trained workforce of skilled medical staff.

The Afghan Swiss Medical Institute is currently training about 600 medical students who will enter the workforce after training, according to government statistics. As this institute and others build up the health care services in the country, there is a shortage of skilled workers to handle administrative support. Private hospitals are rather new to Afghanistan, and the workforce needs training to build up support service skills.

The Afghanistan Workforce Development Program is a four-year program designed to train, place and promote participants to fill these needs. One goal is for 25,000 participants to get salary increases of at least 3 percent after training.

Through a financial management training program, 17 of Alami’s administrative staff learned how to collect money from clients, draft invoices and perform data entry, and were promoted with salary increases. Another 19 of his administrative staff were trained under a project management program.

“The staff needs training that is service-oriented, such as communications, marketing and financial services,” said Sangar Amin, a program manager who facilitated the hospital’s financial management training program.

“Employees need skills like how to make payments to vendors and how to get money from people to pay their bills,” said Alami. “Before the training, my staff used to check with me a lot. The training has increased the efficiency of my staff and the hospital as they now know the correct department to approach to do their tasks. They are clear about the delegation of their responsibilities.”

The Afghanistan Workforce Development Program has trained about 25,000 Afghans, 36 percent of whom are women. The program, which runs from April 2012 to April 2016, has helped more than 15,000 skilled workers find new jobs or get promoted within their current job.

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