A recent Future of Jobs Report published by the World Economic Forum detailed that workers today do not yet have the core skills needed to help them be competitive in the workplace come 2020.
Beyond the obvious technical skills, social and collaboration skills such as negotiation, effective communication, teamwork and problem-solving have been identified as important and will be highly sought-after by hiring managers.
Making Future Skills Accessible
With a view to equipping working Singaporeans with these necessary skills, NTUC LearningHub and NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) have collaborated with global research, learning and publishing company John Wiley & Sons (Wiley) to co-develop a series of training programmes.
The partnership was formalised with a memorandum of understanding signed between all three parties on 12 June 2018. It has been described as a means of supporting industry transformation as detailed in the Government’s Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs).
“Wiley is a renowned research and education organisation. My intention is to leverage Wiley as a hinterland of new knowledge to support the new skills demands of Singaporeans as the national economy transforms. With change happening so much faster than before, we must be able to keep pace with the speed, and create new programmes just as fast.
“This is an important partnership for us as it will accelerate our ability to curate and contextualise new programmes leveraging on the diversity and scale of Wiley authors,” said NTUC LearningHub CEO Kwek Kok Kwong.
For a start, LearningHub will introduce a tranche of five Singapore Workforce Skills Qualification courses developed together with Wiley by July 2018. Each course has been structured to span just two days and comprise 20 participants.
The first set of five courses will cover topics such as critical thinking, negotiation, infographics storytelling with data, and presentation skills. LearningHub hopes to train up to 2,500 individuals annually under this collaboration.
Mini Series and Masterclasses
Additionally, LearningHub will also be introducing a series of bite-sized courses under the UTAP Development Series. Designed for quick and easy learning, these new Mini-Series half-day courses are funded by e2i and made available to everyone, where NTUC members enjoy a subsidised rate of $20.
A third component of the collaboration will also see LearningHub offer a series of curated masterclasses that bring expert knowledge on various industry domains to support working people in their learning and transformation.
“The Labour Movement stands ready to co-create relevant programmes with our partners for the progression of our workforce. The new training courses that are borne out of this collaboration is one of the many ways in which NTUC is helping our workers stay relevant amidst industrial transformation.
“We need to involve different stakeholders, including unions and associations, workers, employers, tripartite partners and the Government to take collective action today in order to future-proof our workers and our businesses for tomorrow,” said NTUC Assistant Secretary General Patrick Tay.
Click here to browse the courses available under this collaboration.
Union Training Assistance Programme (UTAP) funding is also available for union members. To find out more, click here.
