Tight labour market spurs upskilling of workers: Josephine Teo

A tight labour market may be a good thing, as this motivates companies to look at marginal candidates more closely and find ways to upskill them rather than overlook such prospects out of hand, Communications and Information Minister Josephine Teo said.

Such conditions also support the three labour market outcomes the Government wants: High employment, low unemployment and sustainable wage growth, she told a panel on creating a global skills framework on Monday.

"When employers have obviously a very large pool to select from, they are much more likely to want plug-and-play," she said.

However, a tight labour market prompts employers to look at candidates more closely and make the effort to top up their skills - out of necessity, as they seek to meet their manpower needs, said Mrs Teo, who previously held the manpower portfolio.

Agreeing, fellow panellist and chief executive of management consultancy Bain & Co Manny Maceda said the world's rapid pivot in recent months to tight labour markets means companies have had to get much more creative in where they look for po-tential hires. "The recruiting side of this then becomes very important to be able to find new sources of talent."

He noted that 50 major companies in the United States, including IBM, Nike and Walmart, have committed to hiring over the next decade a million black Americans who do not hold a degree, and that reassessing job requirements is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Earlier this month, Singapore's Manpower Ministry said it would support the hiring of mature workers who have not worked for at least six months, people with disabilities and former offenders, by extending the Jobs Growth Incentive for employers to September.

At the discussion, panellists said there is growing recognition from both employers and workers of the need to shift to a skills-based approach of looking at competencies and job fit, not least because jobs are changing faster than ever.

LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue said that the networking platform found from its 830 million users' profiles that since 2015, the skills composition for jobs has changed by about 25 per cent. The pace of change is expected to double by 2025, he said.

Besides more equitable hiring for those who have acquired their skills through non-traditional ways such as apprenticeships, a skills-based approach shows there is more similarity between jobs than most people think, he said.

Ms Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chairman of integrated healthcare conglomerate Apollo Hospitals, noted the growing consensus that even staying in one profession will require a constant upgrading of skills, like for doctors.

"They constantly have to reskill, change as technology keeps changing, (including) those that are not at the cutting edge, and leading it," she said. "If we have doctors who don't know how to use robotics, then they get outdated very fast."

Mrs Teo said firms in Singapore have in the past decade come around to the need to map the skills and competencies of their workforce, and that the alternative is falling behind the competition.

But no amount of persuasion by the Government or labour unions will get workers to move on skills upgrading unless employers show they value such training, she said.

"When workers can see that, then they will really be motivated to acquire the competencies."