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The Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU) has formed a Company Training Committee (CTC) with local brewery, Asia Pacific Breweries (Singapore) Pte Ltd (APB Singapore), a subsidiary of Heineken to help their employees take on new or reconstructed jobs as APB Singapore transits into the future economy.
As APB Singapore and FDAWU recognise that the future business landscape and digital transformation will shape the company’s directions and plans, there is a need to help the employees be future-ready as well. In view of this, management representatives and union leaders will work together through the CTC to operationalise the Employee Training Programme and the Jobs & Skills Steering Committee.
Andy Hewson, Managing Director, APB Singapore said, “Our passion and trust to drive talent and workforce development stem from our core values that people are at the heart of our business. A strong core of workers helps to drive our brewery forward and this is the reason why we continuously work with the Union to jointly identify target training needs so as to upskill our workforce. The signing of the MoU between us and FDAWU will strengthen and bolster the existing training programmes we have proactively put in place since 2017, and will help further power our ambition of being a world-class connected brewery of the highest standards while creating a conducive learning environment for our workers.”
The Employee Training Programme will prepare and align the employees’ skillsets in meeting the future needs of APB Singapore so that they can continue to contribute to the company’s growth. The programme will complement APB Singapore’s current training and development programmes, which have been formulated and implemented with both management and union’s deliberation and inputs.
The Jobs & Skills Steering Committee will review current training plans; identify skills and training gaps; develop training initiatives; and plan for reskilling and training, and career progression for the employees, under the Employee Training Programme. Up to 100 employees would benefit from this programme by 2020.
"Mr Tan Hock Soon, General Secretary of FDAWU shared that good labour management relations between APB Singapore and the Union has been instrumental in the collaborations on employee-related matters such as training, and to include employees’ aspirations and needs as part of the conversation while planning new initiatives. We are happy to formalise this Company Training Committee with APB Singapore and to work together towards enhancing wages, work prospects and welfare of APB Singapore employees."
The commitment by APB Singapore and FDAWU to form the CTC reflects the efforts of the NTUC in encouraging every worker across all industries to accept and adopt the use of technology at work so as to bring about real business impact for their companies in the future.
Christopher George, Brewing Officer, APB Singapore said, “Through the company’s Brewing Competency Training Programme, I have learnt so much more about the trade despite being in the industry for more than 35 years. It was also a great opportunity for me to showcase to my colleagues that learning never stops even at the age of 61 and a promotion is still possible. With the right mindset and strong support from the company, you can go as far as you want in your career here.”
This morning, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between APB Singapore and FDAWU for the formation of the CTC at the APB Singapore headquarters. The signing ceremony was hosted by Heineken’s President in APAC, Dolf van den Brink and APB Singapore’s Managing Director, Andy Hewson and witnessed by NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng, senior management from APB Singapore and union leaders from FDAWU.
Following a visit to APB Singapore’s facilities and speaking with APB Singapore’s employees, NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng said, “I am very glad that APB Singapore and FDAWU have already been collaborating on the training and reskilling of APB Singapore’s employees and the results show. The formation of the CTC today further solidify their efforts. Looking ahead, there is more to be done to ensure that our workers continue to pick up new skills and take on jobs that would keep changing as the companies evolve. We all need to work together so that our companies would continue to grow and our workers would continue to have better wages, welfare and work prospects.”
This new partnership will further formalise APB Singapore‘s existing talent development vision, that is to create a Learning Organisation for lifelong learning and continuous improvement to ensure the sustainability of its business is in order.
A key recipe to ensure the alignment to APB Singapore’s business sustainability is to have a quality, reliable and flexible high performing workforce. APB Singapore’s workforce competency development framework will focus on areas such as functional competency, cross training, new technology & processes and train the trainer.
The formation of the CTC in APB Singapore’s existing training framework will provide feedback from the ground through the regular conduct of pulse surveys. Through these surveys, the Jobs and Skills Training Committee will review the training plans and identify skills and training gaps based on the framework.
The structure of the training programme was jointly developed by APB Singapore and the Union to identify targeted training needs and enhance our training efforts to upskill our workforce. The 4 focus areas of competency development/training that we have for our employees are functional competency, cross training, new technology/process and train the trainers.
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