Beyond upskilling: Helping Singapore’s maritime workers acquire the right mix of skills

NEW upskilling measures, such as SkillsFuture Credit top-ups and training allowances, were announced at Singapore’s Budget 2024 to help the workforce adopt industry-relevant and future-ready skills amid uncertainties brought about by technological disruptions, the sustainability imperative and geopolitical tensions.

With the government’s continuing support of lifelong education and skills upgrading, Singapore’s workforce has more avenues to realise the benefits of upskilling. They could gain even more by taking a systematic approach to developing their skill sets.

There has been strong focus on digital skills among businesses and workers. Skills related to data science and artificial intelligence are expected to be in demand, as the workforce adapts to the growing pervasiveness of technology across all aspects of business and operations.

Digital skills, however, form only one piece of the upskilling road map. Today, employees equipped with skills to pursue sustainable outcomes or think creatively could be just as valuable to businesses. To become a competitive workforce, Singapore’s employees and businesses must approach skills upgrading in a more systematic and considered manner.

Maritime Singapore: A case study

Singapore’s maritime industry, as a dynamic sector at the nexus of world trade and the global supply chain, has always strived to upskill and transform its workforce. Like many industries, we compete globally, and must prepare our workforce to adapt to a confluence of megatrends – accelerating digitalisation; the imperative to decarbonise; changing demographics; and aspirations across generations of workers, for example.

In 2023, the Singapore Maritime Foundation (SMF), with the support of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), formed the Tripartite Advisory Panel (TAP) for Future-ready Maritime Workforce to deliberate ways of sustainably equipping the workforce with the skills needed for 2030 and beyond. In its deliberations, the TAP consulted extensively with leaders from industry, unions, the public sector and institutes of higher learning.

SMF released the report of the TAP in April 2024 with a core set of recommendations to equip the maritime workforce for change, including the development of a systematic framework to build skills.

The TAP outlined three key pillars of skills that a future-ready workforce would need to be equipped with – domain skills, digital skills and soft skills. In each pillar are enduring skills that are fundamental and should be continually developed and deepened, as well as emerging skills which are in-demand or new skills that are gaining significance resulting from new industry, societal or technological changes.

Deepen domain skills: Domain skills refer to a specialised set of skills, knowledge, abilities and expertise required for a particular field of work. Take for example a shore-based technical superintendent who has gained some seagoing experience and is now applying that knowledge to a shore-based role overseeing a fleet of vessels. Domain skills in this instance will include deepening of the existing skill sets needed to perform the role competently, such as knowledge of regulatory requirements and compliance.

Build digital skills: Digital skills are becoming increasingly important for the workforce as technology permeates almost every aspect of business.

Maritime is rapidly transforming due to the impact of digitalisation. Data can serve as a bridge between sea and shore, and can help both shipmasters and shore-based professionals, such as those planning shipping networks, make decisions that optimise efficiency and reduce energy usage. Advances in data science could enable predictive ship maintenance in the future, making shipping smarter, safer and more sustainable.

Go beyond hard skills: The Singapore workforce has traditionally prized and prioritised the mastery of hard skills, and this has served us well thus far.

However, shipping is a highly global industry with its fair share of complexities. Therefore, soft skills such as analytical ability, dealing with ambiguity, and leading multicultural and sometimes multi-geographical teams become increasingly important, particularly in management roles.

Returning to the first example, in order to progress in their career, the technical superintendent has to demonstrate skills such as transdisciplinary thinking and adaptive leadership as the demands of the role evolve.

Cultivate a lifelong learning mindset

In the TAP report, we emphasised that skills are not static because first, professionals may progress or even pivot in their careers, and second, change is constant. Therefore, even as the workforce continues to build and deepen enduring competencies across domain, digital and soft skills, it must also acquire emerging skills in each of the three dimensions to remain competitive.

To do so, it is vital for the workforce to view education and training as a continuum so that learning never stops.

To implement some of the recommendations of the TAP, a new Joint Office for Talent and Skills has been set up by the MPA and SMF to coordinate efforts to prepare the sector’s diverse workforce for change.

One key focus will be to partner the institutes of higher learning to strengthen the curriculum and educational experience for tertiary students, and develop a suite of continuing education courses using a stackable-skills, micro-credentials model for working professionals while aggregating demand from the industry, so that the impact can scale across the sector.

Although this upskilling approach centred around building enduring as well as emerging domain, digital and soft skills is based on maritime experiences, it may provide useful reference points for other industries to explore their workforce transformation strategies.

By the same token, the maritime industry is ready and open to learn from adjacent sectors to strengthen our talent pool, as we navigate a confluence of changes in the macro environment and a more demographically diverse workforce.

Singapore’s government has made the first step in enabling upskilling on a national level. It is now on the various sectors and industry leaders to give their workforce a plan on how to do it comprehensively.

The writer is executive director of Singapore Maritime Foundation