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As the Committee on the Future Economy’s (CFE) seven strategies guide Singapore’s future steps, the Labour Movement has taken proactive steps to support one of them – deepening and diversifying international connections. To do so, the Labour Movement engaged multinational corporations (MNCs) and formed a community – the Labour Movement’s U Circle of Friends (U Circle) – to strategise ways to help groom globally competitive Singaporean talents.
Comprising regional chief executives and managing directors of large MNCs based in Singapore, the U Circle community would work closely with the Labour Movement to assess gaps in the local talent pool; develop our local talents; and further strengthen the Singaporean leadership core. In time to come, the Labour Movement hopes that the partnership with U Circle will help set a trend on how MNCs could groom their talent so that their businesses would remain competitive.
To help our working people future-proof themselves, the CFE acknowledged that workers need a deeper understanding of regional and global markets. Lacking overseas exposure, many Singaporeans are not chosen to head MNCs’ regional or global offices. To reverse this trend and help our talent be on track in the leadership succession pipelines of their companies, the Labour Movement is collaborating with U Circle and the Government to equip our working people with more regional and international exposure through the U Future Leaders Global Programme (UFLGP).
Jointly created by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and the Economic Development Board (EDB), and supported by U Circle, UFLGP was developed to groom aspiring Singaporeans to helm future leadership roles in their companies. Launched in August last year, UFLGP aims to identify young and promising mid-level management Singaporeans from five participating MNCs under U Circle; provide them with international exposure and opportunities; and develop relevant leadership attributes and competencies to facilitate their career progression. Over the next three years, UFLGP aims to send some 30 participants overseas.
In addition, to help cultivate the growth mindset in our working people and encourage them to think out of the box, the Labour Movement teamed up with our U Circle MNCs to open their innovation labs to the working people. Innovation Exchange (IEX) will bring participants on a journey of innovation where they will visit leading innovation labs of seven MNCs and engage the MNCs’ key innovators in roundtable sessions. In just this year alone, some 100 working people have benefitted from IEX.
Mr Vivek Kumar, NTUC Assistant Director-General and Director of U Future Leaders said, “U Circle and U Future Leaders Global Programme are testimonies to the Labour Movement’s dedication to help our working people meet their needs. Through creating these new opportunities with leading MNCs, we want our Singaporean talents to be in the succession pipeline for these leadership roles. As such roles are highly visible, not only will it help to raise the profile of Singapore’s economy, it will also signal to the rest of the world, the quality of talent we have here in Singapore.”
The Labour Movement is also in the business of creating thought leadership while working with these MNCs. Collaborating with LinkedIn, one of our U Circle partners, the Labour Movement is able to gain insights into job trends, talent movements and training and skills acquisition to better understand the changes in the labour market. These insights can then be further shared with other U Circle partners to co-create suitable programmes to groom Singaporean talents.
Talent Blueprints 2017 Report
Talents Blueprints, an annual report powered by analysis from LinkedIn and NTUC, aims to provide such insights to the fast-changing labour market. The report conducted in 2016 shed light on the importance of cross-functional experience and international experience for C-suite roles, and this helped to shape the development of the above initiatives.
This year, Talent Blueprints 2017 assessed the fastest-growing digital skills in Singapore and the adoption of these skills across industries. The report also examined if technology-enabled learning is a way to keep up with the pace of change.
While digital skillsets were previously more prevalent in the internet technology (IT) and marketing industries, with interconnectivity and the rise of e-commerce, possessing digital skillsets is now a must in most industries. It is heartening that of late, these digital skillsets have proliferated across different industries like banking, financial services and even restaurants with more individuals, especially those senior management level and above, making effort to acquire these skills through online courses.
Mr Olivier Legrand, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, LinkedIn, said, “It’s clear that the future economy will be dramatically different, and this has significant implications for the workforce in Singapore. While we are encouraged to see bright spots in the talent and skills marketplace here, the accelerating pace of digital disruption is a forcing function for all of us to adopt a mindset of continuous learning to re-skill and up-skill so that we can secure our future. We are pleased to partner with NTUC to release the Talent Blueprint report to identify key skills professionals in Singapore need to acquire today to remain employable in future.”
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