Money Talks Podcast: How to overcome time and resource constraints in learning new skills

Here’s an excerpt from the conversation: 

Andrea Heng, host: 
What about (SMEs) in other industries? I’m thinking logistics, manufacturing, things that tend to be quite labour intensive. What kind of challenges do they face?

Xu Wenshan, SkillsFuture Singapore: 
We have (done) a survey of SMEs across the economy … and we found out that there were essentially three common problems that SMEs face. So the first one is no time to send people for training. How do companies, especially SMEs, when resources are needed (for) day-to-day operations, how do they take time off to send people for training? And how can we help SMEs in this area?

The second one that they are concerned about is no money. Cost is one thing. How do we find ways to elevate the cost of training for the SMEs, particularly where the cost may not be very low for some of the sectors or skill sets (as) they could be very specialised or niche. 

The third (challenge) is no clue … There are many skills that we’ve all talked about – digital skills, green skills, customer service related skills, technical skills.