My job, my skills, my future

I will be honest with you. This is a conversation I have been wanting to have for a while. Not the polished, everything-is-fine version of the AI and jobs story, but one closer to reality and rooted in what things feel like for us the employees right now. The one where we ask plainly: what is actually happening to work?

In this episode of Lens on Singapore, a video podcast from The Business Times, I sat down with Dean Tong, head of group human resources at UOB, and Victor Chua, deputy CEO at NUS-ISS, National University of Singapore, to have a candid exchange on the subject so many of us are fretting about. Between them they gave me a pretty complete picture of where we actually stand.

Why listen

• What UOB’s Better U Pivot Programme reveals about how job transitions actually work  An 80 per cent success rate sounds impressive until you understand what it takes to get there. Tong walks us through the deliberate, structured process behind it and what it tells us about what real workforce transformation looks like versus what gets announced in press releases.

• Why AI bilingualism is the skill nobody is talking about enough  It is not about becoming a data scientist. It is about combining your existing domain knowledge with AI capability. Chua calls it AI plus X and explains why this is where the most meaningful jobs of the next five years will be.

• What two bosses are actually looking for in candidates right now  Problem-solving and humanistic ability. Neither answer is what you might expect and both are worth sitting with.

• Whether you might one day work alongside AI colleagues Tong says that the future is quite foreseeable and he is not joking.

Both are clear about why taking this AI journey is not optional. Surprisingly I left this conversation with more optimism than I expected to feel, and I think you might too. Watch now.

Discover more episodes at bt.sg/podcasts. Got feedback? Email us at btpodcasts@sph.com.sg.

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Written and presented by: Claressa Monteiro (claremb@sph.com.sg)

With Dean Tong, head of group human resources at UOB, and Victor Chua, deputy CEO at NUS-ISS, National University of Singapore

Executive producer: Claressa Monteiro

SEE ALSO

The economy is changing. Will we still have work? Minister Tan See Leng gives his take

Producer: Nicole Teo

Coordinating producer: Chai Pei Chieh

Video production: Studio +65

A podcast by BT Podcasts, The Business Times, SPH Media

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