Singapore’s ‘career bridges’ must be built before workers lose their footing

“CAREER bridges”, one of the recommendations from Singapore’s Economic Strategy Review (ESR) this year, are timely. But the real test of plans to support those in at-risk roles is whether employers and employees can anticipate change early enough to act before disruption leads to displacement.

Artificial intelligence, automation and restructuring are not only changing how businesses operate, they are also reshaping the nature of jobs themselves. That is why the intervention needs to move upstream, beyond post-retrenchment support and into proactive workforce planning.

ADP Research’s People at Work 2026 findings highlight the scale of the challenge. In Singapore, only 15 per cent of workers strongly agree that their jobs are safe from elimination, below Asia-Pacific’s average of 18 per cent and the global figure of 22 per cent. The study found no region in which a majority of workers feel confident about their job security.

Despite relatively low unemployment in many markets, workers are no longer measuring security by whether they are employed today. Increasingly, they are asking whether their roles will still be relevant tomorrow.

Transition, not reinvention

The uncertainty emerges because disruption usually begins at the task level. A job title may remain unchanged while the work within it is quietly reconfigured. It can start with manual steps shrinking and routine tasks becoming automated.

Over time, responsibilities that require more human involvement, such as exception handling, judgment, communication and problem-solving, may make up a larger share of the role. By the time the title changes, the job itself has often already evolved.

This is where workers need to think differently. Instead of asking whether their jobs will disappear, they should ask which parts of their roles are changing the fastest.

Workers should assess their jobs by tasks: Which responsibilities are repetitive or rules-based? Which depend on judgment, communication, stakeholder management or domain expertise?

This can help workers identify where they are most exposed to disruption, while also uncovering transferable skills that can support a move into an adjacent role.

That approach changes the nature of career planning. In cases of AI-related job disruption, the next move is not a complete reinvention, but a transition into an adjacent role that builds on existing strengths and experience.

Career bridges are most effective when they connect people to the nearest credible next role, rather than implying a wholesale reset.

Workflow clarity matters

But workers cannot do this alone. Employers often have the clearest view of which workflows are being automated, which capabilities the business will need next and where roles may grow, shrink or merge.

If that information remains confined to management discussions, employees are left in the dark and career transitions become reactive rather than planned.

Businesses also have an incentive to provide this clarity. Evolving job scopes directly affect business performance.

Globally, workers who feel their jobs are secure are six times more likely to be fully engaged, 3.3 times more likely to report high productivity, and twice as likely to say they have no intention of leaving, compared with those who feel uncertain.

Employers that are transparent about change are therefore more likely to improve performance and retain talent.

Employers should map tasks across roles and identify which activities are most likely to be affected by AI, automation or restructuring. From there, they can build a rolling 12 to 24-month view of how roles are likely to evolve – which jobs may absorb new responsibilities, which may lose tasks and which may need to be redesigned.

Instead of allowing a role to become obsolete, employers should separate automatable tasks from higher-value work and reshape jobs around the latter.

Training must also become more targeted. Development is effective only when linked to real internal opportunities, specific future roles or clear redeployment pathways. This requires aligning skills investment with actual workforce demand, not generic learning agendas.

Where roles are likely to narrow, redeployment should begin early, before retrenchment becomes unavoidable.

Manager-employee conversations are another weak link that needs attention. Employees need specificity: what is changing in the role, which skills will matter more, and what internal opportunities may be available if the work continues to evolve.

Clarity may not remove uncertainty entirely, but silence almost always makes it worse.

Build bridges early

Of course, employers do not have perfect foresight. Technology adoption is uneven, and some changes will happen more slowly or differently than expected.

But that uncertainty is not a reason to delay action. It is a reason to review roles more frequently, update assumptions earlier, and make career transition part of normal workforce planning rather than an intervention after the fact.

Career bridges can play an important role in helping workers move from areas of declining demand into areas of emerging opportunity. But, as the ESR recognises, career bridges need to “proactively develop workforce transition plans before large-scale displacement happens”.

This can take the form of helping workers understand how their responsibilities are changing, connecting them to adjacent opportunities, and supporting transitions before roles break down completely.

If career bridges begin only after a job disappears, they are already too late to support workers.

The writer is a senior vice-president at ADP Asia-Pacific