SINGAPORE: An Economic Strategy Review committee tasked with exploring ways to manage the impact of restructuring is looking to “intensify” career conversion programmes in order to save jobs.
This would involve working with companies that have business changes planned, to proactively upgrade the skills of their employees before they retrench any workers, said committee co-chair Desmond Choo on Monday (Feb 9).
“I think that can help people from falling out of the workforce,” he told reporters.
The committee is co-chaired by Mr Choo, who is also Minister of State for Defence and deputy secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC); and Mr Goh Pei Ming, who is Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development.
They were giving a midterm update on the work of the committee, which is one of five committees charting an economic blueprint for Singapore.
The committees announced seven key recommendations in January, after gathering feedback from businesses and workers.
Mr Choo said that career conversion programmes, which are administered by Workforce Singapore, have shown very good results in the past years.
“We can double down on some of this work, working closely with (trade associations and chambers) and companies to identify more opportunities for career conversion programmes,” he told reporters.
The committee is also looking at “career bridges” as a solution to the “resistance and inertia” that workers may feel towards acquiring new skills and changing industries, said Mr Choo.
Career bridges assume that “not all your skills are irrelevant” and that workers might already have a significant percentage of the skills required for another role, he added.
Mr Choo said this would involve building a bridge for workers in industries that are more impacted by artificial intelligence, such as administrative work, to move to more resilient sectors that offer other career trajectories, like healthcare.
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