400 food services workers to benefit from revamped reskilling scheme: Josephine Teo

FOUR hundred existing frontline and operational workers in the food services industry are expected to be upskilled in the next two years, under a revamped Job Redesign Reskilling (JRR) Programme, said Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo at its launch on Thursday.

Workforce Singapore and the Singapore Productivity Centre, supported by Enterprise Singapore, created the JRR Programme for Food Service Assistants "to encourage more employers in food services to uplift the jobs of their frontline and operational workers in tandem with their digital transformation", the organisations said in a joint statement.

This is the second iteration of such a scheme for the industry, which struggles with a manpower crunch. The first, launched in February last year, upskilled more than 1,000 workers in food services from more than 30 companies, according to the statement.

The revamped programme narrows reskilling efforts to target frontline and operational workers, as opposed to the previous broader-based approach, which also catered to those in professional, managerial, executive and technician (PMET) roles.

It also streamlines the application process, enhancing the Job Redesign Guide to provide a step-by-step guided template for employers to easily customise their job redesign plans. Employers can choose to conduct training entirely on the job, or include classroom segments with external vendors.

The programme provides salary support for employees during training, capped at three months. Singaporeans and permanent residents below 40 years of age may receive up to 70 per cent of their regular salary, capped at S$2,000 per month. Those aged 40 and above may receive support of as much as 90 per cent of their salary, capped at S$3,000.

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Mrs Teo said that non-PMET jobs may remain vacant even after six months because job seekers are deterred by the work environment, physical demands and shift work. It is thus increasingly necessary for employers to be willing to redesign jobs and reskill existing staff to be able to fulfil these roles.

"The kinds of skills that we see today will not be the same as five or 10 years ago," she said. "We can try to meet those skills by training people, whilst they are still in school… But I think the better thing to do is to complement it by also helping people who are currently in the workforce already reskill, in order to access these opportunities."

Mrs Teo was speaking after her tour of Eurasia Global Food, which manufactures and supplies pork globally, as well as to local supermarkets and restaurants. It also operates two restaurant brands, Gochi-So Shokudo and Tun Xiang. The company has gone through multiple job redesign efforts since 2018, one of which was under the previous version of the JRR Programme.

Eurasia relocated to a larger factory in August last year, where processes such as slicing meat are mechanised, said chief executive Kelvin Ong. This has helped lighten the workload for employees, who can focus on less laborious work, and improve the process flow, he added.

Chong Nyok Mooi, 56, is one of five employees who benefited from the six-month JRR Programme undertaken by the company last year. She has worked in the food and beverage industry for more than 10 years and at Japanese restaurant Gochi-So Shokudo for about one-and-a-half years.

When she received on-the-job training, Mdm Chong learned to operate a computer, deal with customers, identify different cuts of pork and facilitate cashless payments. "I didn't know how to do cashless payments like PayNow before," she said in Mandarin. "I would ask my colleagues to help."

Mdm Chong said that while she may take longer to pick up new skills and is still afraid of making mistakes, she is now able to carry out value-added tasks and help out wherever more hands are needed. After the training, she received a 7 per cent wage increment.

Mr Ong said that Eurasia's restaurants do not draw a distinction between front-of-house and back-of-house staff, as employees are cross-trained. With some tasks relegated to the factory, the quality of the food is maintained.

This means that even someone without kitchen skills might be able to become a restaurant manager, he added. Fewer employees are also needed at each outlet and staff can focus on service. Space needed for the kitchen has shrunk to only about 20 per cent of a commercial setting, making way for more customer seating, he said.

Mr Ong intends to train another 50 employees under the JRR scheme this year. This will ease the company's manpower needs and allow it to expand much faster without quality or service issues, he said.

Eurasia opened 10 restaurant outlets between August 2020 and April 2021, raising the number of its restaurants to 14. It plans to expand in the next five years, with a view to operating a total of 60 restaurants.

"Job redesign has been on my mind for a while. I think having this programme is good because it's a more structured way to conduct training, to let everybody understand what job redesign is about and how to execute it," Mr Ong said.