Indah Kurnia Lestari, senior officer of employment placement service, Ministry of Manpower, BINAPENTA Kemnaker shares her passion and journey for creating an inclusive labour market for all.
After fifteen years in the public employment services (PES) field, Indah Kurnia Lestari’s relentless passion for uplifting the lives of Indonesian people is stronger than ever.
“If you stay in a good environment that inspires you and supports you, it makes me think that this is my field, this is my journey,” she said.
The direct impact of employment services on people’s lives, especially vulnerable groups, inspired Indah to join this sector. She believes that connecting jobseekers with the needs of employers is the most powerful way of reducing poverty in the community.
Her early career with the Ministry of Manpower, Indonesia continues to influence and shape her success until today. She recalls the early days when her supervisor gave her the opportunity to join the World Bank labour policy workshop in the United States. Beyond benefitting personally from the workshop, Indah made sure to share the valuable knowledge and experiences with her colleagues after her return.
Positive about the contribution of her work to Indonesia but “not want[ing] to feel satisfied yet,” Indah is never complacent and strives every day to bring about inclusive and decent employment for everyone, including persons with disabilities, elderly people, women and youth.
Building capacity to provide more comprehensive counselling to jobseekers
Indah believes that employment services counselling designed in a way that caters to the specific needs of jobseekers can lead to inclusive participation for all in the economy and that this is necessary for long-term growth in Indonesia.
Since 2023, she has been deeply involved in the consultation, design and implementation of the signature four-tiered training programme for public employment services counsellors, a collaboration between the Ministry of Manpower Indonesia, BINAPENTA Kemnaker and the International Labour Organization, with support from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China.
The programme has benefitted more than 3,000 public employment services counsellors across the country.
“This is the first time that I am involved from the beginning, not just as a participant, not just as a speaker, not as a moderator, but I have had the opportunity to create and implement the programme and evaluate it together with ILO colleagues so it’s very meaningful for me,” she said.
“The tailored four-tiered training has had a significant impact on our daily work because it provides our public employment services counsellors with practical tools and structured methods to improve their skills, particularly for delivering job guidance and enhancing communication and negotiation skills with stakeholders. After receiving the training, employment counsellors expressed gratitude for the opportunity to learn from the different expertise around the world and are very supportive of this collaboration with the ILO,” Indah said.
“For example, after the training, one of the counsellors from Jakarta applied what they learned from the programme and successfully helped a jobseeker with disability land a job with a US company,” she added.
Following the successful planning and rollout of the four-tiered public employment services training programme, further support continued to be provided to Indah.
Her insights and contributions at various knowledge exchange initiatives in China, Cambodia and Thailand have proven valuable for collective learning among peers facing similar challenges in the region.
In 2025, the ILO “Promoting the global development initiative with a focus on South-South cooperation in employment in ASEAN” (ILO ProSSCE-ASEAN) project supported Indah to attend training on ‘Shaping and Managing Effective Employment Services’ organized by the International Training Centre of the ILO in Turin, Italy. There, she joined delegates from around the world to explore the role of employment services in facilitating labour market transitions as well as opportunities arising from artificial intelligence and digital innovations.
To ensure that her colleagues across Indonesia could also benefit from the training, Indah organized a series of knowledge sharing sessions and participatory webinars with the ultimate goal of applying good practices and key takeaways from the training to the Indonesian context.
Partnerships and investment are crucial for lasting impact
By embracing the South-South Cooperation approach, the ILO’s partnership with Indah and her team has been one of collaborative value creation and shared resource mobilization.
“The decision to adopt the cost-sharing mechanism with the ILO came from our shared understanding about how we could expand the reach of public employment services training. With limited government budget, we collaborated with the ILO to increase demand for service quality. Through cost-sharing, we could deliver more training sessions and ensure that more employment counsellors could join and benefit from these programmes,” she added.
To advance sustainably, Indah underscores the integral role of partnerships and shared commitments. After one year of implementation, progress on sustainability of the programme has already become more concrete.
“One of the success stories is that our training participant from Jember, East Java already implemented the concept of the four-tiered PES training by using their own budget and expanded training participation beyond PES officers to job intermediary officers,” she said.
South-South Cooperation paving the way for positive progress
“If I look back at the past 15 years, my work has had a tremendous impact until now. On the one hand, I am very grateful because my directors gave me the opportunity to join knowledge sharing initiatives and workshops abroad. Beyond benefits at the individual level, I’ve always thought about how the lessons learned and good practices could be shared with other colleagues,” added Indah.
Cooperation among developing countries facing similar labour market challenges will continue to be the backbone for sustained impact and shared prosperity for all in the economy.
“It is a dream come true as we have been working together on this collaboration since 2023. I feel very grateful because thousands of my colleagues from across Indonesia could join all the initiatives that we’ve arranged together. There is positive progress. We also learned so much from colleagues from ASEAN and China and hope that our work to provide inclusive labour market programmes can be sustained,” she concluded.
For further information please contact:
Tarinee Youkhaw
Advocacy & Knowledge Management Officer
ILO ProSSCE-ASEAN project
Email: youkhaw@ilo.org