Engineer-turned-horticulturalist among 13 Singaporeans awarded SkillsFuture Fellowships

SINGAPORE – Mr John Tan’s affinity with plants began with a bougainvillea that he owned 30 years ago. It was growing well until it started to wilt. He started researching and reached out to nursery practitioners to find out how to revive it.

He later learnt that the plant was root-bound. According to the National Parks Board website, this can happen when the roots hit the sides of the pot and start escaping through the drainage holes.

“All I needed to do was remove the root that was growing out of the hole in the pot. After clearing the choked pot, the plant started growing leaves and flower again,” Mr Tan said.

It was during this time when his army mate, who was managing a nursery, planted the idea of him pursuing a career in horticulture. Mr Tan was coincidentally on a six-month sabbatical after selling his engineering company.

“I took his advice and bought a second-hand truck and hired one worker,” said Mr Tan, who wanted to do landscape maintenance.

He has never looked back since.

Today, Mr Tan is the principal design director and horticulturist at Esmond Landscape and Horticultural, a company he started in 2000 after earning two diplomas in horticulture and landscape design.

While there was a period of time when he was admittedly too focused on the finances, a turning point came in 2008 when Mr Tan found a renewed meaning in creating family-centric landscape designs for homes.

“I wanted my designs to be able to get the family together... How does the garden become an extension of the living room?”

On finding one’s passion, it is a matter of liking what you do and finding meaning behind it, he said.

Mr Tan was one of 13 individuals presented with SkillsFuture Fellowships by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at Marina Bay Sands on Nov 4 in recognition of their dedication to skills mastery and development.

The 64-year-old has also started a scholarship programme for his staff and Institute of Technical Education students to support upskilling and training. One of his employees, who went on to pursue a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at the National University of Singapore, returned in 2023 to work at his company again.

Noting Mr Tan’s exemplary journey in pursuing his passion, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said: “A lot of people think that upskilling and retraining are for people in their 20s, 30s or 40s. But actually there is no time bar or age limit when it comes to upskilling.”

“In 2019, we had about 30,000 individuals who took up stackable modules. Today, we have 37,000,” he said, adding that many of these modules were initiated by firms.

Mr Chan also urged companies to give employees a chance to demonstrate their skill sets beyond their generic abilities, degrees and diplomas. “It is about getting the right skill sets, the right work attitude. We are getting more progressive employers to send this message, though their own examples, to parents and students,” he added.

The SkillsFuture Fellowships, now in their eighth year, are given to Singaporeans who have mastered the skills in their respective fields, embrace the spirit of lifelong learning, and are committed to mentoring and inspiring others.

For the first time, four individuals and five employers were selected by trade associations and professional bodies.

At the event, Mr Tharman also presented the SkillsFuture Employer Award to 22 businesses to honour employers who are exemplary in developing their employees’ skills and fostering a culture of lifelong learning in their workplace.

The event was also attended by Minister of State for Education and Manpower Gan Siow Huang.

An employer awarded in partnership with Singapore Business Federation was Alliance 21, which developed an in-house competency framework and career progression pathway aligned with the skills framework for logistics.

Alliance 21 chief executive Benjamin Ong told The Straits Times: “Our leaders are trained to approach this performance management as more than an evaluation tool. They see it as a foundation for an employee career progression.”

Together with relationship building, he added, this approach deepens the company’s understanding of each employee and his career aspiration, enabling the company to design a career path that is aligned with its business interests.

Additionally, the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, Institute for Human Resource Professionals and SGTech got to select the 2024 award winners.

Another SkillsFuture Fellowship recipient is Mrs Kannigadevi Narayanasamy, who has overseen early intervention programmes at 13 childcare centres for more than three decades.

One of her notable achievements is developing the Educarer Aide Training programme to help girls who have turned 18 gain employment at pre-schools.

“Parents were very happy to have their children work at the childcare centres... I still remember the first batch of girls taking a picture of their pay cheque when they first received it and sending it to our WhatsApp group,” she recalled.

As the assistant director at Presbyterian Preschool Services, Mrs Narayanasamy’s biggest joy and reward from the job is being able to help the girls be gainfully employed and contribute well to society.

“It’s about providing them with the right platform and supporting them by having a system in place,” she said.