Upskilling and reskilling for opportunities in the new normal (SkillsFuture Forum 2021)

Panellists:

• Kevin Wo, managing director, Microsoft Singapore
• Yee Wee Tang, managing director, Grab Singapore
• James Wong, executive director, Phoon Huat
• Adeline Sim, executive director and chief legal officer, HRnetGroup Limited Moderator: Christopher Lim, digital editor, The Business Times

Q: How can we encourage workers who are still hesitant about pursuing lifelong learning to go for it?

Mr Yee: What we've found is when someone's given a new project or initiative that's completely out of their scope, many of them actually enjoy this ambiguity. Of course, you must also have a culture where if you try and fail, it's fine. By giving them the opportunity, you actually give them the recognition that 'Hey, you may not know this, but I think you can do this'. That actually encourages them to take the plunge. The play part is actually quite important for them - to start something new is always very encouraging and very fulfilling for them.

Q: How do we help existing workers to transform into becoming comfortable with shifting project scopes and shifting business needs?

Mr Wo: If I use the analogy of a marathon: usually in the marathon race, if you think about a journey of getting to the end goal, there are people who are at the front line who are really ahead of the game and know where they want to go, but there are many others who are still wondering what's going on.

So I think first is to recognise that there will be people that will be in that journey (who are) at different levels of maturity. Some will be further ahead, some will be further behind. And if you think about a marathon, there will be water points, there will be checkpoints, there will be support around (for) some of these people - runners who, along the way, who may need help. In the end, we want to make sure that everybody will get to the goal.

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Q: For young people, those who just graduated or have a few years of work experience, what kind of skills do they need to be successful, moving forward in this environment, as well as the recovery everyone's looking forward to?

Mr Wo: In a world where the pace of change is happening so fast, I think I would encourage our job seekers to be ready to deal with ambiguity.

In the terrain that we are working in, sometimes you may not have all the answers upfront. And being able to navigate through the uncertainty is becoming a core skill, and how to deal with limited information and yet keep your north star clear on where you want to go - I think that sort of agility is important.

The other one which I think is important is the way we learn. Learning is not just the hard or soft skill. I think the environment of learning also becomes important. The workplace environment must be safe for people to ask questions (such as) "why not" and "what if". The environment should be safe for people to take risks and make mistakes, so that people can learn from there. When people make mistakes, it should be celebrated, not penalised, then you learn faster.

And then the third important thing is the employee should also seek to find the answer themselves.

Ms Sim: I think, particularly with new hires . . . a crisis is the best time to pull together with the team, and to really just get all hands on deck and contribute. Sometimes in theory or in social media, it sounds nice to say that there's a work-life balance. But when it comes to a crisis, I'm sorry, you just integrate, you come together.

So I would say, for fresh grads, I think it's not so much a skill, it's a mindset. You'll go in and really just do your best together as a team.

Q: This is the second SkillsFuture forum held during the pandemic. How have the goalposts changed in terms of the expectations and the tools for skills development, leading towards business transformation? Are there new tools or new trends?

Ms Sim: You start seeing a lot more transformational and digital key performance indicators (KPIs) appearing when you're looking at job descriptions. And when people go for interviews, recently they will get questions like "So how would you use live-streaming to sell a product?" And you'll find not just video interviews but asking a candidate to prepare an interview to introduce themselves - it's also becoming the norm.

So, I think that's something that everyone has to be open to. The pace of change has picked up a lot, and even the pace of responses. So you'll find that it's really become the age of instant messaging, which means instant response as well.

Q: Have you encountered any unusual skill gaps that you had to plug in terms of combinations of skills? Have you been able to find them, and have there been challenges in terms of training people to fill them?

Mr Wong: One of the areas that we are experiencing a bit of a gap is bakers with the ability to write a nice description of the product. So in the e-commerce world, we literally have to put in the description of the product and make it attractive to the shoppers. I can get a good writer, but they know nothing about food or they know nothing about baking. If I get a good pastry chef, he's able to explain the product to the customer at the brick-and-mortar store, but he's not able to pen it into a limited length of words, like 70 words, into a short description that sells.

The other area of challenge that I face is that sometimes we can hire a good programmer, but they don't necessarily have the skill of a businessman or think in a business way. And so, I will need somebody to write a programming brief that is very detailed, and this is very difficult to find.

I'm trying to impart this skill, but at the same time I'm also hoping to find people that have this background.

Q: If you're expected just to pursue hard skills, you may not have the soft-skill mindset to do a job well. What's the balance between soft- and hard- skill training?

Mr Yee: I think companies should look at transferable skills. Definitely, a lot of things that are from one job can be transferred to another job. And I always tell my managers when they are recruiting: "You hire for attitude, you train for skills." And I think that once you hire a person with hunger, with humility and wants to learn, that person can fly, no matter what type of job you throw at that person.

Q: No one knows exactly when the tipping point will be in terms of recovery, and the slope of recovery. So when is the time to go all in for training then?

Ms Sim: The pace of change has picked up so quickly that you cannot wait. If you wait, you're out of the game. And actually right now, over the course of the past six months or so, the market has picked up. It's a K-curve. If you're riding it, you're already on the K-curve - as in, on the way up. If you don't change, you don't train, you'll be on the way down. So I would say now, right now - yesterday, actually - would be a good time to do the training.

• This roundtable is an excerpt of the forum; watch the SkillsFuture Forum 2021 highlights video below: