How the Jobs-Skills Integrator initiative can succeed

Complexities with the jobs-skills nexus
 

To employers, an ideal worker is one with the requisite skills to do the job immediately. However, the dynamic global business landscape makes it increasingly difficult to ensure that workers can fit job needs exactly, even after education and training.

Enterprises have highlighted their challenges in upskilling. They are unsure how job roles will evolve and, consequently, how skills will change. They also face challenges in navigating a complex training provider landscape where programs vary in quality and have difficulty in ensuring that workers acquire relevant skills that effectively contribute to desired business outcomes.

At the same time, Singapore’s workforce comprises a mixed profile of jobseekers, from fresh graduates to mid-career and mature workers. Each group has varying levels of clarity on the next bound of skills needed and the job opportunities available.

Countries around the world face similar challenges. With an education system regarded as a powerhouse in producing a skilled workforce, Germany has a vocational education training (VET) system that combines the classroom and business, theory and practice, and learning and working into a highly effective model. This model seeks to create a seamless transition to enterprises for its workforce by narrowing the gap between skills taught and actual skills needed at work. Yet, the VET model does not include the concept of intermediaries like the JSI.

Singapore has been adopting a multipronged approach involving various stakeholders — government agencies, enterprises, institutes of continuous learning, adult training providers, trade associations and chambers (TACs), and unions — to enhance the national jobs-skills nexus. 

Measures to help enterprises transform their jobs and skills requirements already exist, and efforts to upskill individuals through better formal and on-the-job learning have enhanced the nation’s workforce capabilities. There is now a heightened expectation to re-skill workers from one sector to meet the needs of another and ensure that such skilled manpower flows are achieved in a seamless manner. Therefore, training programs will increasingly need to have a cross-sector focus and consider skills portability.

The JSI is a timely initiative to tackle this. What does it take for the JSI to truly make an impact?