STAYING COMPETITIVE
To help businesses upskill their workforce, a new SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant will consolidate existing schemes administered by Workforce Singapore and SkillsFuture Singapore.
Apart from simplifying the application process for companies, the grant will provide higher funding support of up to 70 per cent for job redesign activities.
For freight forwarder Union Air Freight, moving from manual to digital operations has helped keep them competitive.
“Freight forwarding is a very competitive industry, and technology changes all the time, so we also have to keep pace with the changes,” said Mr Tan Liang Jian, managing director at Union Air Freight.
“In the past, a lot of our roles were very paper-based, very manual,” he noted.
“After the redesign and also with the customisation of our software, things are a lot more automated, and that frees up a lot of time for our team to focus more on communicating, talking to customers and other departments.”
But for some employees such as 62-year-old Richard Lee, the shift could be challenging.
“We have to go for training if we need to, and the (simpler) it is, the better,” said the operations manager.
He added that he believes job redesign efforts can help make better use of his time at work, so he can focus on other tasks and find new ways to improve on operations.
To help more seniors stay employed, the Senior Employment Credit – which provides wage offsets to employers that hire Singaporean workers aged 60 and above, and are earning less than S$4,000 (US$2,995) a month – will also be extended to end-2026.
