SINGAPORE - Telco company Singtel will invest $20 million a year and create a learning academy that will train and upskill its employees, following a renewed memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Union of Telecoms Employees of Singapore (UTES) on its Company Training Committee.

In a news release on Thursday (Aug 25), Singtel said this move will build a future-ready workforce and allow workers to be agile and adaptable amid accelerating digitalisation.

The new learning academy, Singtel 8George, will allow its employees to learn at their preferred time and pace, either in person or virtually.

Singtel said it is committed to supporting the Company Training Committee for the long term, with no set end-date.

In the last three years, the telco has invested $45 million to develop new training programmes to help educate employees on emerging technologies, sponsoring 60 of them for part-time courses.

More than 2,500 Singtel employees have benefited from training efforts, driving an annual increase of 15 per cent in learning hours per employee between 2019 and 2022.

Its Singtel Professional Conversion Accelerator has helped almost 1,500 employees take up new roles such as data analysis after gaining 5G knowledge and other tech skills.

Thursday's renewed MOU comes after Singtel's previous three-year agreement with the UTES.

Singtel group chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon said: "One of Singtel's top priorities is building an agile, digital and future-ready workforce. This is important because we want to empower all our people to achieve their full potential in the digital economy, and to support our efforts to evolve from a telco to a 'techco'.

"We will spare no effort to achieve this for our people, through our sustained investment training programmes and working closely with the union to encourage all their members to participate in those programmes."