About 40% of SG workers claim future readiness of companies: Hays

Government-led initiatives kept Singapore at the forefront of workplace development.

Forty percent of Singaporean workers claim that their organisations are future-ready, whilst 39% said they were unsure, according to a regional report by recruitment and human resources leader Hays.

“A number of government-led initiatives around infrastructure, education, digitalisation and skills development have kept the city at the forefront of workplace development,” said the report, which was based on two discrete surveys done from January to February and August to September.

In increasing the future readiness of Singaporean organisations, respondents said that digitalisation of processes (72%), openness to change (72%), and more training and development opportunities (67%) could help.

Notably, the second study on which the regional report was based showed that 44% of Singaporean respondents were actively seeking new opportunities, whilst 42% were passive in doing so.

“Whilst the high number of active job seekers can be attributed to the unemployment rate in Singapore reaching an all-time high in August this year, the high number of passive job seekers is a warning bell for organisations to ramp up their offerings if they are to retain their top talent,” commented Hays.

Though remote working is not a new concept to Singapore, a significant number of organisations have shifted to it amidst the pandemic. According to the regional report, remote working options (83%), flexible hours (77%), and employee wellbeing programs (69%) have been Singaporean respondents’ top priorities. Concurrently, 41% cited the newfound importance of having the option to work in-office.

Meanwhile, 58% of Singaporean respondents expressed confidence in their organisations’ digitalisation journeys to maintain relevance in the next three to five years.

Another indicator of an organisation’s future-readiness, according to the regional report, was learning and development. Eighty-eight percent of Singaporean respondents said that upskilling was important to them, with technical skills development (67%) and leadership training (65%) amongst the key areas.

“After the pandemic, however, priorities have somewhat changed; whilst digital skills have been in shortage (and demand) for some time now, reskilling is a topic that has seen a resurgence since the pandemic,” Hays added.

However, the number of employers who provide training in digital skills (29%), reskilling (18%), remote orientation training (32%), and remote leadership training (13%) remained low, except e-learning (47%).