Minister's Opening Address at the SkillsFuture Fellowship and SkillsFuture Employer Awards Ceremony 2024
Last Updated: 06 Nov 2024
Friends and colleagues
1. A very good afternoon to all of you. Thank you once again for joining us for the eighth edition of our SkillsFuture Fellowship and SkillsFuture Employer Award series.
2. Today, I am very happy that we can all gather once again to honour the people who have served as role models, both from the employer side and the employee side, for placing emphasis on training and upskilling. Of course, this is an ongoing journey, and that is why every year, while we cannot honour everyone who has put in effort, we would like this event to be a showcase of significant individuals who have done so much, not just for themselves or for their industries, but also as role models for others to emulate.
3. Today we are here to honour 13 individuals and 22 employers. I cannot go through all their stories this afternoon, but I would like to pick out two examples.
a. First, is Mr John Tan. John is 63 years young. He used to be an engineer. Then, he discovered his calling and love for horticulture and landscaping, and he started his own company.
i. This is an inspiring company, because a lot of people think that upskilling and retraining is for people in their twenties, thirties or forties. But actually there is no time bar or age limit when it comes to upskilling.
b. Another exemplary company is DLE M&E, a mechanical and electrical contracting firm.
i. We have been talking about Building Information Modelling (BIM), a computer programme for industry design and architectural design, for a very long time. Many companies are trying to adopt such systems. Partly for compliance, because it is earlier to submit your papers to the authorities to get approval, but partly also to make work more efficient and productive for individual at the firms.
ii. DLE M&E invested in their staff, not just to increase their productivity, but also because they know that in order to keep good staff, they have to keep investing in their people, to give their people, who are working so hard, a sense of personal growth and a sense of professional growth.
4. These are just two examples, but I must thank all of you for doing all this. Not just for yourself, but as role models for the rest of Singapore. Congratulations to all of you.
5. We have started this SkillsFuture journey for quite many years now. If we take stock of where we are today, I would say that we have come very far based on the foundations established many years ago.
6. But this is an ongoing journey. There is still work for us to do as a community.
7. Let us look at the numbers. Every year, we need to train and upskill about half a million or 500,000 adults. Why is that so? This is because the lifespan of a job is shortening.
8. If we look at some recent surveys, on average, a person will stay in the same job for only five years. Chances are, even if the same person stays on the same job for five years, within the five years, the same person will be doing different tasks. The job scope would have changed. If that is the case, for 2.5 million adult Singaporeans, every year, we must aspire for at least 20% of them to upskill regularly.
9. Where are we today, at an individual level? We are happy to say that today, we have reached the milestone whereby at least half a million unique individuals undergo some form of skills-training courses each year. That is a tremendous achievement. That is 20% of our population.
10. So, we should cheer. But we are not done yet. If we look at the numbers, we will find that there is a dispersion. Some, in five years, will have attended multiple SkillsFuture courses and programmes. On the other hand, there will be people who have never attended any SkillsFuture programmes. Do not get me wrong – I am not saying that we only count people as "upgraded" because they attended a SkillsFuture programme. In fact, today, there are many people who continue to upgrade themselves without spending a single cent of their SkillsFuture monies. That is because they are wise enough to go around the market to realise that there are many courses, many free-of-charge, that are available and accessible to the population at large. For those who have participated in multiple programmes within five years, good job and keep it up! We hope that you continue to do so.
11. But there is still a need for us to step up here, to encourage those who have not participated in any upskilling programme on their own, be it on their own account, on their employers' account, or just because they found it too difficult, too inaccessible.
12. We must make sure that we understand the reasons for them not participating in such programmes. Is it because money is the issue, or because time is the issue? Whatever it is, we want to be there to help them overcome some of these obstacles, for our people to continue to participate in this movement.
13. So, that is on the individual side. I think we can and still need to do much more to encourage everyone to participate in this movement. Whether you spend the SkillsFuture Credit or not is one issue. Whether everyone is truly involved in learning something every five years is the real issue.
14. On the employers' side, I think we would also like to see two things done more and done better.
15. First, over many years, we have already stepped up the suite of programmes made available to Singaporeans to upgrade. A lot of that is what we call the "supply push", whereby the Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) and training providers curate programmes based on industry needs.
16. We would like to see employers take a more active role in designing the courses, what we call the "demand led" initiative. Employers, being in the market, must know the demands of the market much better. They will be at the forefront of asking for the new skills, encouraging and cajoling the workers to take up these new skills. If we can articulate this new demand, I am quite sure that our training institutions will be most happy to respond to this.
17. But the training institutions cannot work in isolation based on what they think the demand is, without the employers' active input.
18. On this count, we are also making progress. But like every Singaporean, we hope that we always do faster and better yesterday. Last year, we had 20,000 companies participating in the SkillsFuture programme. This year, we have 23,000. That is good progress.
19. In 2019, we had about 30,000 individuals who have taken up stackable modules. Today, we have 37,000.
20. Today, we have many courses, many modules that are what we call micromodules, stackable modules, many of them initiated by companies. Many of them are initiated by our partners in the trade associations and chambers (TACs), some by our SkillsFuture Queen Bee companies, all setting the standards and the pace.
21. I think we are making progress, because the bigger companies, naturally being more well organised and more well-resourced, are taking the lead. But we need many more mid-sized companies, the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to come together to aggregate and articulate the demand for new skills so that we can activate the supply in new skills through the IHLs. That is something we hope to partner the employers and companies to do.
22. The second thing we hope to do better is what we call the recognition of the skills, rather than the credentials. In the past, we had too many companies, too many employers, looking for workers based on generic abilities. That is why we used degrees and diplomas as the generic signalling device.
23. But today, we are better able to know what are the skill sets that are really required for specific jobs. We need the help of employers to send this signal powerfully to the market. The message to the employees, or the potential employees, is not "I would employ you based on your generic credentials", but "I would employ, value and renumerate you based on your specific skill sets".
24. We have encouraging stories of many more companies coming on board to give employees a chance to demonstrate their skillsets beyond their generic abilities, degrees and diplomas.
25. This is something that we need to do very seriously. When I go to the schools, and I speak with the children and the parents, there is always this lingering fear that "if I do not get good enough grades in everything, I may not be able to have a chance to get a good job." But we are turning this conversation around. It is not just about getting good grades in general. It is about getting the right skill sets, the right work attitude. That is more important. We are getting more progressive employers to send this message, though their own examples, to parents and students.
26. We start from young, where we all value skills beyond the generic credentials. The generic credentials tell us something, but the specific skills tell us more. This is where we hope to work with more employers, who have more stories on looking for workers based on their skill sets, rather than just generic credentials.
27. If we can do this well, then we can move away from the overemphasis on generic credentials, whether it is a diploma or a degree. Instead, we will have more stackable modules, more just-in-time modules, more Work-Study Diplomas and Degrees that are catered to the specific needs of the industry. All this will allow us to spend the resources we put in for SkillsFuture in a much more targeted and cost-effective way.
28. On the whole, I must say that with the foundation set by President, one of the key proponents of the SkillsFuture movement, we have made good progress.
29. But as Singaporeans, we would like to do even better, and these are the few areas we need to do even better: Strengthen the emphasis on skills beyond generic credentials, strengthen the demand-led appreciation of skills with the TACs and the Queen Bee companies, so that the institutions can activate the supply.
30. At an individual level, do not just stop at reaching half a million people being involved in SkillsFuture every year. We must aspire to make sure that the half million are not largely the same individuals, but a broad-based movement where every Singaporean has inside ourselves the DNA to keep upgrading so that we can remain competitive and relevant at an individual level and national level.
31. Thank you very much for your support for SkillsFuture, and we look forward to working closely with you to take the SkillsFuture movement forward.