Singapore Pools giving social service sector a boost

WANTING to play a part in the digital transformation of the social service sector by equipping people with new skills, Singapore Pools opened the doors of its Singapore Pools Academy to learners from beyond its organisation.

Set up in 2019, the academy has partnered institutes of higher learning to develop or run training programmes. It has taken a two-pronged approach in pursuit of its objective:

First, through programmes for its own employees, aimed at capability building, and second, through programmes for mid-career switchers who are interested in the social service sector.

To this end, as part of the SGUnited Skills programme, Singapore Pools and Singapore Polytechnic (SP) teamed up with SkillsFuture Singapore to launch the SgPools Academy-SP Connexion programme.

Connexion, as it is called in short, comprises 3 full-time, 6-month long training courses designed to train learners for roles such as business process specialist, business analyst and programme management executive.

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During the duration of the course, participants will also embark on a one to two month-long practicum which provides them with the opportunities to undertake an industry project either in-house or on attachment with a social service partner.

Singapore Pools' chief executive officer Lam Chee Weng said: "We know about the challenges the social service sector faces because we work closely with our partners in this field, and through regular feedback from our staff."

He said that Singapore Pools has amassed technological expertise and learning points as it undertook its own transformation journey.

"Through Singapore Pools Academy, we can now share our expertise to support Singapore's talent development. This is an extension of Singapore Pools' aim to serve the community, and 'Do Good Better' together."

Connexion has made 2 intakes of about 40 students in total thus far, and despite the Covid-19 pandemic, staff and students still completed more than 5,000 e-learning programmes.

Toh Gek Lan, who was in the pioneer batch of participants, said that in the first week of the programme, the class was introduced to skills such as digital storytelling and basic film making.

She said: "I think social service agencies have many good ideas for how they want to make their work more efficient and effective, but they have limited resources to do so.

"Together with another Connexion learner, we developed two project management plans by mapping out proposed activities, timeline and resources required to support agencies in the execution of their future projects. We also worked on a process-improvement project."

She said her project partner worked on improving digitised employee personal records and human resource (HR) forms, she focused on enhancing HR processes, using the principles taught in the Connexion programme to identify gaps and areas for improvement.

A growing workforce

SkillsFuture Singapore has projected that the social service workforce is set to grow to 19,000 by 2025. This is why Singapore Pools has furthered its partnership with SP to help social service agencies along in their digital-transformation efforts, so that more of their resources can go towards their beneficiaries; they will also become more productive and improve their servic outcomes.

Under the partnership, Singapore Pools will curate and provide a suite of online training programmes to be hosted on SP's e-learning platform. The programmes will focus on getting social service workers up to speed with software used for information sharing, data management and process automation.

Singapore Pools' Lam said: "As a partner of social service agencies, Singapore Pools is always looking for innovative yet practical ways to help deepen the skill sets in the sector."

Social service agencies can access these programmes for free, as the platform subscription fees to these programmes will be fully sponsored by Singapore Pools.

As technology is playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of social services, plans are being made to ramp up support for charities in their workforce transformation.

Programmes such as training needs analysis, and workplace training assessment - which covers both technical and soft skills - would be offered to support them in their development.

Georgina Phua, deputy principal (development) of SP, said: "In today's digital age, the social service sector faces growing demands to deliver more citizen-centric digital services."

'The tyranny of the urgent'

Elysa Chen, executive director of CampusImpact, a social service agency that supports disadvantaged kids and their families, said: "As a small charity, our resources are usually focused on service outcomes.

"But we are often caught by the tyranny of the urgent, and neglect what is important. Digitalisation and investing in our people will help us to get to what is important so the work is sustainable...

"Hence, the initiative between Singapore Pools and SP will enable my team members to develop professionally and equip ourselves to do our work even better."

Singapore Pools Academy is not seeking to be a true-blue training provider.

Rather, it wants to augment the education landscape by promoting the philosophy of lifelong learning among working adults, providing purposeful learning opportunities to ensure learning happens beyond "school", said Lam. This way, skills and knowledge are continuously sharpened and aligned to meet the needs of the future, he added.

Toh said that she hoped to contribute to the community by helping the less privileged.

"With the skills I have acquired through the Connexion programme, I hope to be able to streamline and enhance their work processes so that they can focus more on serving their beneficiaries.

"Overall, it has been a rewarding experience and it is heartening to know the agencies value our inputs and contributions."