NTUC to step up mentoring efforts, hopes Budget measures will help ease workers’ living costs

SINGAPORE – Unionised firms seeking to help their workers link with mentors for skills and career guidance will soon get to draw on 1,200 mentors under a new pilot scheme by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).

For a start, firms unionised under the Healthcare Services Employees’ Union, ST Engineering Staff Union and United Workers of Electronics and Electrical Industries will get to join the Company Mentorship Circle.

Details of when the pilot will start and its duration are still being firmed up and will be released later.

NTUC secretary-general Ng Chee Meng told reporters at a media briefing on Feb 13, ahead of

Budget 2025,

that the latest pilot applies what NTUC has learnt from ongoing efforts to help those outside its usual reach – including youth and non-members – find mentors.

“Many mentees tell... (the) team that the mentors’ wealth of knowledge has enabled them to be better equipped to navigate career challenges, develop key skills and expand professional networks when they go into a new space,” Mr Ng said.

He added that the three unions were chosen for their scale as well as the wide range of workers they serve, hopefully allowing NTUC to learn how to develop mentorship programmes even in sectors with highly specialised skill sets.

The latest pilot will join three existing mentorship schemes that comprise NTUC’s mentoring ecosystem. Unlike those schemes, which individuals must sign up for, the pilot will be conducted via companies and unions.

Mr Ng said involving companies in the mentorship process would enable better coordination and matching to mentors, to ensure the guidance will ultimately help the firm with better-performing workers.

Of the 1,200 mentors, more than half are C-suite or director-level leaders, and more than 80 per cent have at least 15 years of working experience, he said.

Mr Ng also gave an update on one of the three existing schemes – the NTUC Executive Mentorship Programme, which started in 2023. He said it has already benefited nearly 150 mentees over three pilot runs, with over 250 more set to join the next run from March to May 2025.

“We found reasonable traction in the first tranche of our pilot, and we want to expand this back now into our union space,” Mr Ng said, referring to the latest pilot.

Meanwhile, job placements for professionals, managers, executives (PMEs) and skilled technicians by NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) almost doubled from 8,800 in 2023 to 17,000 in 2024.

The percentage share of those who approached e2i who were PMEs rose from 45 per cent in the last quarter of 2023 to 61 per cent a year after, in what Mr Ng said was a sign of NTUC gaining ground among this group of workers who make up a growing share of Singapore’s workforce.

He reiterated the labour movement’s

hope that fresh government funding will be given for the Company Training Committee Grant,

which defrays costs for companies to rework business processes such that workers get better jobs.

More than 85 per cent of the $100 million given to the grant has been earmarked for approved projects since the scheme was launched in 2022.

Without giving a specific figure, Mr Ng said: “Anything significant would be useful.”

Noting that the $100 million disbursed had lasted NTUC about three years, he said any sum provided would hopefully be a “sizeable amount to scale the effort” for the next three to five years.

He added: “It’s very unlikely that, after all this good work, partners will say NTUC doesn’t get the grant, or employees don’t get that support.”

Asked what else he hoped to see from Budget 2025, Mr Ng said he personally hoped that the upcoming Budget would have measures in place to alleviate the residual impact of inflation on workers in recent years, even as inflation eases.

He thanked the Government for considering the labour movement’s suggestions, including improved protections for platform workers, in designing new policies.

Mr Ng also said the labour movement hoped that the Government would clearly articulate Singapore’s growth strategy, including in terms of adopting artificial intelligence, to help NTUC work with businesses to drive economic growth in a way that helps workers.

“If we don’t settle... the macro space of the economy, thriving businesses, then I will have a very difficult job as secretary-general of NTUC to really move the workers to support this agenda for themselves to seek a better life.”