Mr Speaker Sir, I rise in support of the Bill. Integrating Workforce Singapore (WSG) and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) strengthens the effectiveness of Singapore’s workforce and skills development ecosystem and attests to the Government’s agility in responding to change in our labour landscape.
Firstly, I would like to thank Minister for his opening speech for reassuring us that workers, staff, and employees in both Workforce Singapore and SkillsFuture Singapore will not be adversely affected by this merger.
Last year marked ten years since the national SkillsFuture movement was launched to promote lifelong learning as a national priority. In this House, I called for a timely review of services delivered across WSG, SSG, and other arms like the Institutes for Higher Learning (IHLs) and NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), to reduce duplication of resources and provide even more seamless end-to-end support for workers, jobseekers, and employers. I am glad that this call has been heard.
The creation of Skills and Workforce Development Agency (SWDA) responds to trends like increased geo-political and economic volatility, new technologies, and diverse career aspirations. Rationalising the ambits of WSG and SSG provides a strategic window to critically assess what has worked, and what hasn’t. Identifying where the gaps are, who are the underserved, and what are the bold steps we need to take to ensure our workers stay afloat, abreast and ahead.
To this end, I offer three priorities for the next bound of Singapore’s skills and workforce development ecosystem, what I call the 3 ‘High’s – High-Speed, High-Quality, and High-Returns.
High-Speed
First, High-Speed. This refers to speed-to-market for training curriculum when new skills become in-demand and career transition programmes when industries face sunset. In a fast-changing and highly competitive global labour landscape, the earliest bird catches the best worm. SWDA will need to accelerate operational speed by reducing administrative burden, sharing data analytics, and consolidating support packages into a ‘one-stop shop’ experience for anyone, anytime, and anywhere. The success of this vision will depend on faster rather than slower clearance chains with joint oversight. SWDA must also make clear to employers that delays in job redesign and training investment will compound real costs through widening skills gap, tardy transformation, and weakened competition positions while early adopters who step up will reap strong gains and benefits. This can be made possible by closer integration of training design with company training and transformation committees to ensure a smoother training-to-work journey for in service workers. Furthermore, proactively undertaking job redesign can also ensure more immediate fit for freshly trained new hires, especially mid-career trainees whose freshly acquired skills and track-record experience in critical thinking and business problem solving present good value to prospective employers.
High-speed in absorbing shocks is also key during times of geopolitical and economic volatility, which are set to persist. The Government has done this well, for example through the Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce and Homefront Crisis Ministerial Committee. However, I urge that more can be done to support impacted workers.
Business restructuring and AI-driven disruption have slowed hiring and growth of entry-level jobs. Graduates across Autonomous Universities and Private Education Institutions in the past year secured fewer full-time positions across the board. Will SWDA consider launching an extended and higher-value iteration of the GRaduate Industry Traineeships (GRIT) programme with opportunities ranging from one to two years and with monthly traineeship allowances on-par with starting salaries?
As only over 3,000 involuntarily unemployed workers received at least one payout, out of the 10,000 SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support (JS) Scheme applications received and despite 60,000 workers expected to be eligible for the scheme every year, will SWDA consider reviewing the scheme’s salary cap, criteria for involuntary unemployment, and service delivery experience? For example, job matching and career guidance services can be integrated with JS scheme to fulfil the vision of being a ‘one-stop shop’ for involuntarily unemployed workers.
Following the European Union, South Korea, and Vietnam’s introduction of AI legislation and explicit classification of employment-related AI as “high risk”, will SWDA require responsible practices such as anti-discrimination risk assessments, human oversight, and right-to-know transparency when deploying AI-enabled Human Resources technology under the Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+) programme?
High-Quality
Second, High-Quality. Measures have been recently rolled out to raise the quality of training providers seeking course approval and funding, including requiring more practice hours and suspension for those with low ratings. These are steps in the right direction. However, we must also be mindful that what is considered “useful” is different to every learner. Apart from audit compliance and learner satisfaction, high-quality job-related learning must mean industry application or validation such as employer co-design, work-integrated learning like attachments or paid-per-task opportunities, portfolio building, and access to mentorship or networking. This increases potential employment outcomes for learners while allowing employers to assess candidates with lower risk.
For non-job-related learning for exploratory or personal interest reasons, high-quality can be defined as learners motivated for further learning and future pursuits, as opposed to poor experiences becoming barriers to developing a mindset of lifelong learning.
I also encourage SWDA to review the quality of student internships as internship-stacking and credit-bearing internships become more commonplace, especially for non-university graduates whose starting salaries lag their university peers. This includes safeguards to ensure fair allowances, reasonable work hours, and safe and meaningful tasks. Investing in high-quality student internships will benefit the same employers when graduates enter the workforce.
High-Returns
Third and final ‘High,’ High-Returns. Unlike other countries, where unions need to lobby for fairer access to training opportunities and employment support, Singapore has invested billions into our workforce and skills development ecosystem, and earlier than most. We also have a highly educated workforce with over 60% of resident workers holding tertiary qualifications, and over 40% holding degrees. On paper, this should translate into a highly productive and skilled workforce. It is worthwhile asking, “Do the returns justify our investments?”
Granted, returns may be hard to quantify, as they go beyond employment outcomes, wage progression, and training participation rates among vulnerable worker segments. Investing in a culture of lifelong learning and employment support has ripple effects on the resilience and diversity of our workforce. At the same time, a disconnect between training supply and labour demand results in underutilised talent and skills or qualifications mismatch, which drive employers to hire externally. In other words, we end up paying twice, once to train Singaporeans, and again to import foreign skills, while weakening the Singaporean Core.
In Singapore, we do not have a shortage of funding or initiatives. We have a coordination problem. Our workforce and skills development ecosystem has matured beyond the experimental, piloting phase. Moving forward, I submit that funding must be more closely tied to or even conditional upon outcomes i.e. whether quantitative like time-to-placement or qualitative like more meaningful and autonomous tasks within work scope. Can SWDA also share its plans to successfully integrate jobs and skills infrastructure and management strategy to increase ROI?
Time, skills, and qualifications mismatches were raised as a point of concern in NTUC’s recently released two-year study with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) on underemployment. This refers to when workers can work more hours or take on ‘higher-skilled’ roles but are unable to or choose not to. We therefore recommend an expanded definition of underemployment and closer tracking of these trends. SWDA can develop a robust and centralised tracking system to track longitudinal outcomes of its various courses, programmes, and credit schemes as well as workers’ Career Health to ensure returns commensurate with cost.
Conclusion
To conclude, the creation of SWDA holds powerful potential for a Higher-Speed, Higher-Quality, and Higher-Returns skills and workforce development ecosystem, given the successful integration of jobs and skills infrastructure and management strategy. I encourage SWDA to boldly re-imagine what learning and working can look like for the next generation, and plant seeds early, just as the Government did with WSG and SSG over a decade ago. I also invite SWDA to leverage the Tripartite Jobs Council as it operates within the wider workforce ecosystem to transform skills and jobs, because this will be SWDA’s key ground like into the heart of workplaces and worker groups.
Can Singapore become a leader in innovative and inclusive learning practices such as peer learning through communities of practice, residency programmes, and incubators for non-traditional career aspirations or non-traditional learners like caregivers, seniors, and persons with disabilities? Can Singapore accomplish a triple-win by fostering a workforce with higher productivity, higher resilience, and higher flexibility to meet the needs of workers, learners, and employers? If we continue to be proactive rather than reactive, I believe we can. We must remember that today, we no longer learn, work and retire. We learn, work, learn, work, learn, work, and maybe, retire.
Mr Speaker Sir, I support this Bill. Thank you.
