SINGAPORE - Workers in Singapore have been increasingly focused on picking up the skills relevant to blockchain, workflow automation and human-centred design.
These three "rising skills", as professional network LinkedIn calls them, have a higher prominence here than in other Asia-Pacific countries.
LinkedIn said in a report released on Wednesday (June 19) that rising skills are those which saw exponential month-on-month growth in listings by members over the five years from January 2014 to December 2018.
"These skills may be nascent now but will potentially see wide-scale adoption in the future," said the report.
Organisations are also vying for talent equipped with these skills, the report noted. Users in Asia-Pacific with these rising skills received three times as many private LinkedIn messages from recruiters as the average user in the region.
Outside of Singapore, professionals in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan were most focused on adding artificial intelligence knowledge to their skillsets, while those in the Philippines and Indonesia were most focused on social media marketing.
Human-centred design, which means developing solutions while focusing on understanding the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process, was most prominent among professionals in Malaysia.
The 10 rising skills which had the biggest increase in listings over the five-year period for the Asia-Pacific region, in no particular order, are:
1. Blockchain
2. Workflow automation
3. Human-centred design
4. Compliance
5. Social media marketing
6. Continuous integration
7. Gesture recognition technology
8. Artificial intelligence
9. Robotic process automation
10. Front-end Web development
As jobs transform rapidly, 65 per cent of employees surveyed in Singapore indicated they were worried about the pace of change in the skills needed to succeed. A majority of employees here also felt they lacked the time at work to take on learning and development.
LinkedIn surveyed 4,136 employees and 844 learning and development professionals in Australia, India, Japan and Singapore on the state of workplace learning and skills requirements for its report.
Ms Feon Ang, LinkedIn's vice president for talent and learning solutions in Asia-Pacific, said that different skillsets are required to navigate the rapid transformation brought about by digitalisation.
"It is therefore important for organisations to have a deep understanding of their current talent pool, and how to evolve it for their long-term business goals," she said.
"Helping current talent to upskill or reskill early can help organisations ensure that their future talent needs are met."
