Industry Roundtable with Mr Tan Kiat How, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information and Ministry of National Development; and selected corporate partners
Highlights of the industry leaders roundtable session held at NUS Institute of Systems Science on 22nd November 2021 with the theme ‘Singapore’s Digital Talent Pool: Challenges and Opportunities.’
In Singapore, the manpower crunch in the ICT industry is something that both the public and private sectors have been grappling with since 1981. Moving forward, this issue is one that Singapore can expect to be confronted with much more severely.
“There are structural mismatches of demand and supply that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, due to the flow of people. This is not unique to Singapore – it is a global issue that countries around the world are facing,” said Mr Tan Kiat How, Minister of State, Ministry of Communications and Information & Ministry of National Development.
Speaking at an industry roundtable hosted by NUS-ISS on 22 November 2021 as the chairman and moderator, he highlighted three key worries. Namely, the lack of people, the shortage of relevant tech skills, and above all, timing. “Timing is everything; if we don’t seize the window of opportunity and lose the first mover advantage, we then lose the competitive edge.”
However, he stressed that the opportunities of the digital economy are immense, and that Singapore is at a good starting point. “We are well-positioned for a number of reasons – the pervasive use of technology in our region across the board, the disruption of industries, the emergence of new business models, as well as broader shifts in geopolitics are creating great opportunities for us and I think we need to seize them.”
Navigating the supply-demand issue
Ng Kuo Pin, CEO, NCS, said that while Singapore is facing a situation where the supply is not able to cope with demand, it's not necessarily a bad thing. “In fact, it actually means we have an economy that is really picking up."
On what the industry can do more to address the issue, he suggested that the public and private sector can create “playgrounds” to develop tech talents. “We often talk about how digital talents are required for digitalisation, but we overlook the fact that it's not about simply hiring off the market to serve company needs. The digital talents need places, or spaces, they can grow.” He explained that simply graduating from university with engineering skills does not necessarily make a person a digital talent – they need to be groomed. “They need experience, and they need playgrounds to try and do things, because it is through learning that they become better. And ideally, the playground includes other people within the community so that everyone can learn together.”
Goki Muthusamy, Senior Vice President, Head of People, Asia Pacific, Visa, concurred that students fresh out of school tend to not perform as well if they didn’t have in-organisation experiences. “You can’t sit in a classroom and learn technology; you have to work with it.” She shared that VISA’s Technology Traineeship Program ensures that attachment experiences are interspersed with in-classroom lessons, and it was something the organisation found to be extremely effective in building up the capabilities of their hires.
Saw Ken Wye, Singapore Business Federation (SBF) Digitalisation Committee Chair and CEO, CrimsonLogic, said that to increase the tech capabilities in the industry, active intervention is necessary. He added that given the huge tech crunch in Singapore over the last few months, just-in-time learning has helped a lot in addressing the urgent need. However, he also brought up a worrying trend. “People are job-hopping to get a salary that is 30% higher, and companies end up paying more for someone who can do less. This tension needs to be released, to enable companies the freedom to be more deliberate in what they want to do.”
Citing a high leakage among polytechnic and ITE students, MOS Tan said that Singapore’s issue goes beyond the sheer lack of numbers in tech talents. Almost one in two of those who studied technology in polytechnic and ITE end up in other industries. In addition to having many other options available to them – from selling properties to being a Grab driver – these potential tech workers were unmotivated by the lower, and stagnating, pay in the tech industry. “But it’s not just about wages; we also have to make sure that there is a structured skills upgrade pathway for these polytechnic and ITE graduates, and it needs to be one that adds to a company. We want to build productive workers, because the companies cannot be paying more for someone that simply continues doing the same thing. So there is a need to design a pathway for them to grow in skills, and enable them to contribute back to the company.”
Addressing the practical worries of mid-career professionals
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are now much more comfortable to adopt digital channels and hence, they are pushing the digital agenda much faster. A consequence to this accelerated speed of digitalisation is that a large number of mid-tier professionals become redundant and will soon be losing jobs unless they reskill and/or upskill to stay relevant.
Osman Ershad Faiz, Chief Information and Operating Officer, AMTD Digital, said, “Everything is moving to the cloud these days, which is also becoming cheaper and more reliable. Companies are moving to outsource their production support services, and this makes the people who traditionally work in the IT infrastructure services redundant or not employable.”
There is therefore a need to take more proactive steps in uplifting mid-career professionals by upskilling or reskilling them for the new digital economy. “But the question is, how do we make it easier for these mid-career individuals who want to do a career switch? They have inertia – not because they don't want to - but because of financial burdens,” said MOS Tan.
Raja Gopal, General Manager, ST Engineering, agreed that the main challenge when it comes to mid-career professionals is not training, but that of personal matters. “These are people who have started a family, and they will have commitments, such as family, children, mortgages, and so on. So the question is, how do we support these while at the same time offering them an alternative career option?”
Ng Nam Sin, CEO, The Institute of Banking & Finance (IBF), added that in order to help these mid-career individuals close the gap, there is a need to offer them sufficient compensation to take care of their commitments while they invest in a career transition. “When it comes to this group of people, I think we have a sizable number because technology is impacting jobs in so many areas. A lot of PMETs are trained engineers, so it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to pick up tech skills. No doubt, it’s still a challenge for a 40-year-old to learn coding, but I think the potential to convert this group is there.”
No one-size-fits-all solution to manpower crunch
To be able to address the diverse needs of the industry, the training programmes and pathways created have to address the real, practical pain points that organisations face, many of which could be unique to the companies and their missions. Dr Ow Chee Chung, CEO, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital, shared about the digital divide that his organisation experienced, and the difficulties they had in finding the right fit for the tech manpower they require. “We don’t need people with deep technical competencies. In doctor’s terms, we don’t need a ‘specialist’ – rather, we want to hire a ‘GP’ who can advise us on general IT management such as the type of devices we need, the processes that require outsourcing, and to manage the outsourcing. It would be good if NUS-ISS, as well as the polytechnics, could create programmes that can assist us with the training. We can work together to create a career path for these people, such as getting them to take on more critical functions such as data protection, cybersecurity, and risk management in the future.”
Change management was another key issue brought up by the roundtable attendees. Karmjit Singh, Chairman, The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport (CILT), shared that over the last two years, CILT observed that within organisations, the sharp understanding of what digital transformation entails is not there. “You cannot digitise a company if the CEO and general manager has not internalised the deep meaning of digitalisation and what its components are.” Many SMEs also do not see digital transformation as a priority as they are preoccupied with simply ensuring their businesses stay afloat during this challenging time. Karmjit Singh added that even though there are now more people willing to take digital modules, which is an encouraging sign, the pace is not moving as fast as it should. “I think this is where we need to think of a creative way to engage the industry through case studies, so that they understand that this digital learning supply chain is critical to Singapore's future.”
Bahren Shaari, CEO, Bank of Singapore, agreed that it is not just about bringing in new, cutting-edge technology into the organisation. “Sometimes people leave the industry not only because of salary, but also due to an inability to integrate with the changes that are happening. Digital talent leadership within an organisation is important; you can’t just hire digital natives and expect them to work together perfectly well with everyone else. Even if the C-suite understands how digital transformation works, the middle managers may not be able to cope with the new breed of talents that we are hiring. They don’t know how to manage these new people, new demands, new skill sets, and the new work environment – because they have been so used to the old ways of operating.” Engaging the mid-level managers is therefore key to a successful change management process to help digitalisation take off.
Ng Wai Kit, Chief Technology & Organisation Development Officer & CSO, Certis, shared on Certis’ approach to addressing its tech manpower crunch. “We began by acknowledging that there's no way we're going to be able to hire all the STEM graduates that we need. To build up our tech core, we partnered with NUS-ISS to upgrade our ICT workers in areas such as cloud, cybersecurity, and secure coding. But beyond the tech core, we also found that training the general management to do tech has been very useful for us. We trained some of our non-STEM employees to become our citizen developers in data analytics, and Microsoft Power BI. When COVID struck we rolled out an internal app that was created by a team of citizen developers to over 16,000 employees.” Certis was also mindful about not leaving the rest of operations employees behind; the organisation invested in their upskilling to help them be more productive, and also for the sake of their own career progression. “Those are really the people whom, when we give them a digital tool, they would come back to us and say, ‘I don't have a smartphone, I have never used a smartphone.’ But we know that this is for their own good, because going forward, they will need to have some digital skills to remain relevant.”
Establishing an ecosystem within ASEAN
Raja Gopal, General Manager, ST Engineering, said that in the longer term, the industry needs to look into creating capacity by investing in both mid-career professionals as well as polytechnic and ITE graduates, and building up their deep competencies in specific functional areas. “But in the shorter term, we may not have a choice but to go offshore in order to elevate some of the immediate pressure.” Ramanathan Krishnappan, Managing Director, NTT Data Singapore/Australia, added that the two ways in which offshoring really comes in useful is in sectors where they have become a way of price augmentation, and where skills are not available locally. “If we can identify the exact needs in these cases, then we can craft targeted training programmes to cross-train PMETs or even fresh graduates to fill those gaps.”
A glaring issue that has popped up since a few years ago, is that companies need to adopt a holistic approach to training tech talents. Specifically, they need to understand that there is a need to train beyond their own organisation, said Neo Beng Tong, Director, GovTech. “We need to have this willingness to train people, and then let go of them, to allow that talent to go out there – whether they continue to work in Singapore, or elsewhere in the region. This is how we can become a hub for tech talents within Southeast Asia.”
Pointing out that Singapore’s limitation is its size which makes it unable for companies here to scale, MOS Tan suggested the “Singapore Inc. approach” to offshoring, in which organisations work together with other economies within the ASEAN region to support their growth and build up the digital economy. “We need to extend our connections beyond our shores by marshalling our resources to work with overseas companies as part of the same ecosystem. It's not just a business-to-business, or government-to-government linkage, but also to establish connections between the education institutions and create an ecosystem – one that benefits the countries and their citizens. Beyond the flow of physical goods, we want to collaborate and work on the flow of talents as well.”
Creating a people-centric digital learning supply chain
Moving forward, MOS Tan noted that he is keen on inviting key industry partners to form a tech taskforce to develop a talent incubation hub for the industry, with an initial focus on creating a career pathway for polytechnic and ITE students. “In Asian societies, parents expect you to get a degree, and understandably so. The industry therefore needs to take into account the personal aspirations of the people. We want to work with organisations to help the polytechnic and ITE graduates working in their companies to find ways of stacking up something to a degree equivalent. I think this makes a real difference for both the employees and the company, because there is now loyalty to stay with you when you support them through their aspirations. I think it's a win-win situation.”
Most importantly, the solution to the shortage of digital talent must go beyond being organisation-centric, MOS Tan said. Companies also need to adopt a human-centric approach and consider the personal challenges and aspirations of various groups of people – from fresh degree holders to polytechnic and ITE graduates, and even mid-careers. “If collectively we can put ourselves in their shoes and design programmes and pathways benefit not just companies, but also these individuals, then I think we have found a way of creating bonds within a community,” he said in summing up the roundtable.
To view photos from the Industry Roundtable, please click here.