Developing people power

Most people in Singapore are familiar with NTUC LearningHub. For the benefit of our Asia-Pacific-wide audience, how would you describe the organisation’s raison d’être?
NTUC LearningHub is one of the largest continuing education and training centres in Singapore. It is set up to help adult learners upskill and re-skill, particularly for emerging or in-demand job roles and functions.

Our team at NTUC LearningHub creates the courses and helps adult learners to get the necessary skills or certifications that enable them to do their job better and advance in their career.

Over the years, we have moved in line with the government’s direction for training outcomes. We have starting to move into job placement, as well as to assist with job redesign and provide business transformation advisory.

In order to know what to train, we need to understand how businesses need to transform and how job roles need to be redesigned. Once we figure out what the skill gaps are, we can embark on necessary training.

From job-seekers’ point of view, understanding what jobs are in demand and their own skill gaps will enable them to decide on the certificates they should obtain.

We get support from our sister organisation, NTUC (National Trades Union Congress), and we plug ourselves into NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) ecosystem to facilitate job search and employment.

One of the common things I hear from department leaders is that companies must match productivity-driven job restructure with better wages. How do you approach such conversations about job redesign with equitable wage changes?
Businesses are all about revenue and cost. When a company develops the capability of its people, it is with the intention for employees to grow revenue.

The purpose of optimisation, digitisation and automation is easy to communicate to business leaders, but this may not be easy to execute because the process comes with many other considerations, like investment and people management.

I will say that the new conversation about job restructure is built upon the shortage of talent. Businesses are starting to understand and appreciate the fact that to attract talent, they must position themselves as a progressive organisation.

We have customers who, after going through basic training, come back to ask us about drawing a career journey for their people. Business leaders know that people seek employers who will invest in them.

Obviously, larger enterprises have more resources and are better able to answer to this call. It is generally tougher for SMEs (to adjust wages upwards with job restructure), but there are some very progressive SMEs setting great examples in multi-skilling and growing their talents.

There is also more talk about helping companies with implementation-led training, where talent development efforts are not limited to training the individual, but expanded to include mentors who will help staff implement new projects. This is very much like capstone projects in school, with the professor mentoring and guiding students.

How does NTUC LearningHub’s work fit into Singapore’s travel and tourism workforce?
The travel and tourism sector was hit hard by the Covid pandemic. Companies working to recover also had to cope with changing traveller demands and requirements. They had to recruit people all over again while updating their training programme and learning how to adapt to a new world of travel and tourism.

NTUC LearningHub works with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the travel and tourism sector to identify emerging skills and jobs. NTUC LearningHub offers the most number of courses in the city centre across many disciplines. Our technology team, hospitality team, and tourism team allow us to bring together all the necessary skills and knowledge across the spectrum and curate courses based on needs of the travel and tourism sector.

As jobs change post-lockdown, is the human resource (HR) function changing as well?
HR is seen to play a more critical function now. HR officers not only need to meet the emerging demands of their company and the workforce, they also have to address the norms of remote work – such as managing staff who work from home, ensuring their mental wellness, etc.

If you think about it, the HR function is a big anchor in business transformation.

So, two things are happening on the national level. One, we are working with the Institute of Human Resource Professionals to get HR practitioners to upskill themselves.

Another initiative is related to career health, where we not only work with individuals but also through the HR function to help individuals take charge of their own career development. We’re providing toolkits to facilitate conversations with individual staff, so that they know where to look for information, what their options are, and how they can upskill themselves towards a better career.

You said companies are a lot more aware of the importance of training. But where difficulties still exist in convincing business leaders of the need to invest in talent development, what are the common causes of concern?
The challenge of SMEs is that they are resource-tight, so the issue is not about convincing them of the need to upskill their people. They face constraints in meeting everyone’s needs in time – the customers’ need to be attended to and employees’ need to be trained. SMEs will have to decide which business need is more important. If a customer says the company must have a certain certification to do business with them, then the company has no choice but to set aside time for staff training and certification.

Obviously, money is also an issue and that’s where NTUC LearningHub can help. We should be able to find some ways to get training programmes funded. Most of our programmes, if not all, are funded in one way or another. We have the NTUC Education and Training Fund for NTUC members to defray part of their expenses, as well as other programmes on the national level. For example, there are schemes that subsidise salaries of employees who are sent for training.

Does training resistance exist among employees?
It is not so much resistance towards training, but the lack of understanding and awareness.

If we were able to have a conversation with individuals for them to understand how changes were impacting the business and their role, most would have no issues with embarking on training.

However, training follows the 70-20-10 model, where 10 per cent of one’s learning comes from classroom-based training; 20 per cent of retention is through group sharing and experiential learning; and 70 per cent is from on-the-job training, subject to the culture and leadership of the line manager.

Hence, the real retention and positive habit-forming can only take place in the office and at work. The culture of the company and peer support is important.

Let’s talk more about the hiring landscape in Singapore. What roles and skill sets are most in demand among local travel and tourism businesses, and do we have enough locals wanting and able to meet that demand?
Based on our recent Tourism Industry Insights report, digitalisation and sustainability are the two big skill sets needed today and going forward. About four out of five employers say they need or are looking for people with digital skills. About 50 per cent of employers say they are looking for people with sustainability knowledge and skills.

As the society gets more productive, you can see that there is greater interest in how to do things better with technology and to do things more sustainably.

You also asked if Singaporeans have these needed skill sets. There are huge offerings in the training landscape (to teach emerging skill sets), so there are certainly many opportunities to upskill oneself. The challenge with training is that the business environment will keep evolving, so people must not only learn new skills but also how to keep expanding their sources of information, build their network, and cope with changes that come their way.

How successful has NTUC LearningHub been with its continuing education push and job placement efforts?
NTUC LearningHub has always been supporting the travel and tourism sector, however we started focusing on in-demand and emerging skills specifically for this industry last year. Between then and now, the number of supported organisations has grown by several folds. These organisations include SMEs.

NTUC LearningHub is able to get many organisations on the training bandwagon because the team works closely with the unions, associations, and industry partners. Moreover, being part of the labour movement, we are able to reach out to companies to raise awareness on training and available schemes to help business owners.

At the same time, we also work closely with funding agencies to provide optimal funding to such in-demand and relevant training programmes.

While travel and tourism companies used to just send their people for mandatory courses, more are recognising the need to upskill their team on emerging skills to respond to the changing demand of the customers. We therefore see increasing frequency of training and wider variety of courses subscribed by their staff.

I spoke earlier about implementation-led training. In our work with travel and tourism customers, we also introduce implementation-led training programmes that include developing implementation plans that address a practical problem statement with actions plus a follow-up three months on so that we can review progress. This approach has its merits, as organisations often worry that training investment is lost once trained employees leave the company. However, corporate implementation plans will not be lost with staff attrition.

Looking through the newly published Tourism Industry Insights, I cannot help but notice that more than half of surveyed tourism leaders (52 per cent) consider customer service to be only average or below. What are the issues and can training alone resolve this?
Covid created a gap of three to four years when many people had to stay at home, thus reducing interaction between human beings and impacting the art of serving people.

Furthermore, as the Singapore society gets more affluent, it has also become harder to understand how to serve others.

Customer service concerns also stem from the whole host of new visitors that are coming into Singapore post-lockdown. There is a shift in major tourist markets, moving from China to India and Vietnam. Hence, there is a need for travel and tourism organisations to understand the different cultures of our visitorship and how these new visitor segments wish to be served.

Hospitality is complex. Organisations have to consider how the world is changing, customers’ expectations around digitalisation and sustainability, and the many emerging needs of customers and the workforce.

Can training improve customer service standards? Well, my answer goes back to the 70-20-10 training model. Training can solve 30 per cent of the problem, but the real test is in the environment the staff has outside of the classroom. Is there a supportive work culture of continuous learning and mentorship? Is there a feedback mechanism? Organisations must not only teach skills but facilitate mindset and habit changes.

Travel and tourism businesses beyond Singapore often turn to academic institutions here for educational support. Does NTUC LearningHub provide any learning support for foreign firms?
NTUC LearningHub’s courses are offered in partnership with local and overseas professional associations, so the approach is global in nature. However, these courses are conducted in Singapore, and attendees need to be here to undergo them.

Both local and overseas travel and tourism organisations are welcome. We have had travel and tourism professionals from Hong Kong, the Philippines and Malaysia attending our courses.

So, the short answer to your question is yes, NTUC LearningHub does support foreigners and foreign firms that want to partake in our training programmes.

There are also occasions where NTUC LearningHub brought certain programmes overseas for specific organisations, but such arrangements are not something that we actively pursue.