More Assistance for Low-wage and Elderly Jobseekers and for Students Majoring in Aerospace, Aviation and Hospitality

Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Manpower in view of the slowdown in the aviation sector, how will the Ministry help students majoring in aerospace, aviation and hospitality who are graduating in 2021.

Mr Sharael Taha asked the Minister for Manpower by the end of the Job Redesign Grant in March 2020 (a) what is the total number of applications received and how many jobs have been successfully redesigned for elderly workers; and (b) what are the lessons learnt that have been incorporated into the Job Growth Incentive to increase the participation of companies to redesign jobs for the elderly.

Mr Speaker, I thank Members for their concerns about different groups of workers and jobseekers in the current economic climate.

The Government is providing substantial employment support to help Singaporeans stay in work, such as through the Jobs Support Scheme and programmes to help them be re-skilled and redeployed to new roles.

Through the National Jobs Council, we have curated about 117,500 jobs and skills opportunities under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package to help local jobseekers acquire new skills to move into new careers or sectors. Around 33,100 jobseekers have been placed thus far and the efforts are continuing. In this period of weakness in the job market, these efforts have been a very useful supplement to the normal recruitment activities that take place on their own.

Ms Joan Pereira asked whether more personalised support can be given to jobseekers, especially low-wage workers. We appreciate this is not an easy time for jobseekers. To help them in their search, we have very quickly expanded the touchpoints to be readily accessible in every HDB town.

When they first visit our touchpoints, jobseekers are provided with basic career advisory and job search assistance, and are also invited to take an assessment on their career readiness. Jobseekers may be assessed to require more intensive support before they are ready to start the job search, or may request for more support even if they are assessed to be ready. Such jobseekers are provided with one-to-one career coaching.

Our career coaches provide tailored support to these jobseekers, which may include referring them to supplementary programmes, such as motivational or interview training workshops. At an appropriate time, career coaches will help them be matched to suitable opportunities. This process takes longer for some jobseekers than others. Our career coaches will hand-hold the jobseekers while helping them find their footing and gain independence. Post-placement, our career coaches conduct check-ins to ensure that they are settling well into their new workplaces.

WSG has also been proactively reaching out to all applicants for the COVID-19 Support Grant or CSG and, together with the MSF and the People's Association, to families living in rental housing. Households that need employment assistance are referred to WSG. Through these targeted outreach efforts, about 6,000 individuals have taken up our career matching services, which may include one-to-one coaching for those less job-ready.

Mr Sharael Taha asked how many senior workers have benefited from the WorkPro Job Redesign Grant or JRG. From scheme enhancement in July 2016 to grant closure in March 2020, the JRG benefited over 2,500 companies and 24,000 senior workers.

With employers today having a better appreciation of job redesign to create more inclusive workplaces, we have discontinued WorkPro JRG. This does not mean there is no longer a need for job re-design, but it can be equally well-supported through the Enterprise Development Grant and Productivity Solutions Grant or PSG. In fact, the PSG will be further expanded later this year to support job redesign consultancy services, on top of companies' own job redesign efforts.

Whether through the JRG or other programmes, the Government will provide a higher level of support to employers of seniors to help such workers stay in work.

For example, the recently announced Jobs Growth Incentive provides employers of new hires aged 40 and above double the wage support for other new local hires. The Government will underwrite 50% of their salaries, up to the first $5,000, for 12 months. This comes on top of the Special Employment Credit for workers aged 55 and above.

Where seniors need skills top-ups to be recruited or retraining to support business transformation, the level of funding is generally higher. Employers that formalise a higher retirement age or part-time re-employment in their HR policies can also enjoy grant support.

These initiatives together help to address employers' concerns about the cost of seniors in their workforce and the practical adjustments they must make to have age-friendly workplaces. In every way possible, we will try to enhance the attractiveness of seniors so they can keep working if they wish.

Mr Desmond Choo is looking ahead to next year. He asks what is being done to prepare students majoring in aerospace-, aviation- and hospitality-related disciplines who are graduating in 2021.

Like Mr Choo, we are closely monitoring the employment outcomes of graduating students. MOE's Graduate Employment Survey for graduates in 2020 will be published in the first quarter of 2021. This will give some indication as to the prospects for the cohort graduating in 2021.

In the meantime, the Institutes of Higher Learning or IHLs have started comprehensive career guidance and assistance programmes to prepare students who are graduating next year. In particular, they will get help to navigate adjacent career opportunities. Meaning, those that are not specifically targeted at their disciplines but adjacent to it. We are organising career fairs that feature job openings in adjacent sectors which will make good use of the graduates' education and skills. The IHLs are also introducing new electives for students to equip them with emerging cross-sector skills such as data analytics and visualisation, programming as well as digital marketing – skills which are sought after generally.

As a pre-emptive move to supplement job availability, the Government introduced the SGUnited Traineeships Programme which has curated more than 21,000 traineeship places from about 3,300 host organisations. In general, employers are open to accepting good candidates across a range of disciplines. Candidates will also have better opportunities if they are open to trying out positions outside of the disciplines they are trained in, or look beyond positions that many applicants have focused on. We will continue to watch the situation closely and adjust the programme accordingly.

Mr Speaker, I understand the challenges that workers and jobseekers are facing at this time. Advance estimates for the third quarter show a rebound in local employment. Although there may still be retrenchments and job losses, it is not all gloom and doom.

Pockets of businesses are recovering and hiring, and we will make every effort to help affected Singaporeans get back to work. This is what they usually want and central to how we sustain support for Singaporeans on an on-going basis.

I thank the Minister for her reply. I have two supplementary questions. First, could MOM supplement the SGUnited jobs initiative with more manned hotlines, where jobseekers can dial in for career advice and job-matching? This would be very helpful for our workers. Second, again to help our older low-income workers, it would be helpful if the Ministry makes provision for career coaches to be conversant in the mother tongue languages and even dialects, if this is not already done.

Mr Speaker, I thank Ms Pereira for her two questions. The second one, our career coaches are already equipped with a number of languages. So, if they come across a client whom they have difficulty conversing with because of the language barrier, they will certainly refer the client to another colleague, in order to be able to provide the requisite assistance to the jobseeker.

To the question of hotlines, WSG has manned phone lines for jobseekers who would like to dial in for more information or who wish to seek further assistance. These are available from Mondays to Fridays between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm, as well as on Saturdays from 8.30 am to 1 pm. Jobseekers may also submit their enquiries via WSG's feedback portal.

But I would like to thank Ms Pereira for her suggestion and that is to make this line more readily known so that jobseekers know that this is an avenue that they can also look for. So, I thank her for the suggestions and I will work with WSG to see how best to do so.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank Minister Teo for her reply. I appreciate the efforts of the Government in supporting re-employment and in redesigning jobs. While we have been encouraging companies to redesign job for seniors through various grants and schemes throughout the years, the pace at which companies are proactively redesigning jobs, I think that can be improved.

At present, with 16.8% of population above the age of 65, what more can we do to nudge companies to proactively redesign jobs to ensure gainful employment for our ageing population. And also, can both MOM and MTI consider including job redesign for seniors, including work-from-home, job-sharing, micro jobs as one of the key elements in the Industry Transformation Map. So, jobs for seniors become actively designed for the transforming industries.

Mr Speaker, I really thank Mr Sharael Taha for his concerns about our senior workers. They have been very much a focus of my Ministry's work. The hon Member mentioned that in the Industry Transformation Maps or ITMs, can we make special emphasis and give special consideration to this group of workers. In fact, the ITM has a very deliberate track called the jobs and skills track that looks at different segments of our workforce, whether they are the low-wage workers or seniors or PMEs or women. Actually, there are specific work programmes that are targeted at enabling each of these segments to stay productive at work and also to upskill them so that, if they so wish, they can remain in the workforce. There are specific work streams to address each of these workforce segments.

To his question about whether we can get the employers to step up their redesign efforts, it is very much aligned with the Government's thinking. Our experience is that for the companies that already have a very large segment of their workforce that are in their 40s, 50s and perhaps even older, these companies do recognise the need for them to step up in terms of redesigning the work. They know very well that when their seniors retire and if the seniors retire because not enough effort has been put into redesigning the workplace, then they stand to lose a very valuable part of the workforce. I have actually visited a lot of companies that are quite deliberate in how they go about doing so.

The issue is not so much willingness; the issue is much more about the ability to do so, which is why under the Productivity Solutions Grant, we decided to add in an additional element. Meaning that the companies need not only depend on their own understanding of how to do job redesign. We are actually prepared to fund a consultant coming on board to help them think through the job redesign process.

So, we will continue to look for opportunities to strengthen our companies' abilities to conduct job redesign because, if you look at our senior employment rate, it has actually improved over the decades. We want to make sure that we build on these gains. Seniors also tell us that they wish to continue working and job redesign is one part of it; skills enhancement is another part of it. And another very practical thing that seniors also tell us is that whilst they want to continue working, it may not be to the same intensity as before. So, in addition to job redesign, we have also invested in efforts to ask companies to see how those jobs can be designed in such a way that even on a part-time basis the seniors can continue.

So, we will continue to look out for more opportunities to enhance senior employment.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for sharing what the Government is doing in terms of the salaries for senior workers, but could I ask whether MOM has detected any pay gap between what a senior worker is getting for the same job as compared to a younger worker?

Mr Speaker, if at all, many employers are worried about the higher cost of keeping the seniors in their workforce simply because, over the years, as they have gained in experience and if the company has been doing reasonably well, usually, there are wage increases. It has tended to be more of that sort of nature of difficulties.

There are, of course, also certain reasons why some seniors may not be able to move on to jobs that pay higher. That could be a question of their skills deficits. And one of the things that we have noticed, for example, is that when we were carrying out the work for the Tripartite Workgroup on Older Workers, more so than other segments of the workforce, seniors are very dependent on what their employers indicate to them are training needs. And apart from what the employers indicate as training needs, seniors are less likely to initiate training on their own. That may be one reason why it has been harder for them to access a wider range of jobs. But for the same work, actually, the bigger risk has been that the seniors, not necessarily having a lot more skills and competencies, earn more.

So, we have, over the years, worked very hard to try and encourage companies to move towards a competency-based wage structure rather than a seniority-based wage structure. A seniority-based wage structure certainly gives an individual the sense of comfort that, as he advances with the company, he is being recognised. But it can also work against him later on when the companies then look at the entire workforce and find that, perhaps, compared to their younger colleagues, the senior workers are much more highly paid and, if they do not make a concerted effort to work with the unions to restructure the salary accordingly, then, later on, when it comes to continued employment, that actually could be a difficulty.

It is also why, instead of just raising the statutory minimum Retirement Age, we have chosen to complement it with the Re-employment Age because, in re-employment, you can get a person to stay in work but not necessarily in the same job and not necessarily at the same pay. This way, it allows for the employer and the senior workers to reset the terms upon which they can continue this employment.

Mr Speaker, I thank Minister Teo for clarifying the efforts by the Ministry to support our elderly jobseekers. If I may riff off the Member Mr Sharael Taha's question. I am wondering what the Ministry in particular has done to support older jobseekers who have lost their jobs at an age relatively close to retirement. So, perhaps something like in 61 or 62 but who still wish to continue working not so much in a different job which requires redesign but actually within the same job and they may be facing certain kinds of discriminatory practices because they are close to the retirement age.

Mr Speaker, if the Member, Assoc Prof Jamus Lim knows of instances where an older person has been discriminated against for jobs, I would encourage him to refer them to MOM. We will certainly investigate. By and large, if you look at how we help jobseekers, whether they are younger or not so young, if they want to get back into the same job role or same sector which has already seen quite a lot of displacements, then the barriers will be quite high because the fact that they were displaced does suggest that, in that particular sector, it is already not doing so well. So, it is not targeted specifically only at more senior jobseekers. All jobseekers will benefit from keeping an open mind and being willing to consider transiting into other sectors.

One thing that we have found to be quite encouraging is that where the senior workers are willing just like any other jobseeker or jobseekers of any other age and the employees can see the enthusiasm and the willingness to learn, actually, quite a large number of them have been able to take part in our conversion programmes and to enter new job roles or new sectors. I have very often encountered participants in our Professional Conversion Programmes or our Place-and-Train programme who are in their late 50s and even in their early 60s. The oldest participant in a PCP programme that I have encountered, if my memory serves me right, was something like 67 years old. So, more and more, we also find that employers recognise that if they are open to hiring people who bring with them very rich experiences, then, in fact, they serve as a mentor to the younger colleagues in the organisation and they actually work well together.

But having said that, I do recognise that seniors have concerns about ageism. And whenever there are cases where they felt that they were not fairly considered, we would encourage them to approach MOM and we will reach out to the employer to understand how to support them better so that all jobseekers know that they are being considered fairly.

I thank the Minister for the reply. I have just two points of clarification. For the students who are still studying, naturally, I think they are quite worried about the employment situation when they come out. Just two points.

One, for those who are still studying, they have reflected that there is a lack of internship and attachment opportunities. So, that might affect their employability when you come out. They are naturally worried that when they come out, would they still be able to have as good a set of skills in the marketplace and will going to adjacent sectors erode their competencies over time.

The second point is that they will come out in 2021, competing with existing workers with experience and they do not have those. I wonder if the Ministry can come up with programmes that will allow them to not only just maintain their current competency but also to catch up with their assisting peers in the industry so that we do lose our aviation, aerospace and hospitality competency over time.

Mr Speaker, I appreciate Mr Desmond Choo's concern. I was in MOT when we encouraged many Singaporean youths to take up opportunities in this sector because we considered the growth prospects to be very promising. Singapore is booming as an air hub and we are working very hard to allow our air hub to recover and I certainly hope that the situation stabilises to the point where there is better clarity to all the young people who have taken on opportunities in these sectors for training.

The situation is quite interesting. Since Mr Choo asked, I had also enquired what about internships right now as they give a useful indication as to the adaptation that we can make. If we take Aerospace Engineering, for example, for the current cohort that need to go for internships, about half have still been able to secure internships that are related to their discipline of study, meaning that they are interning in roles that are related to Aerospace Engineering. So, that is a good thing. Of course, it would be better if all of them were to be able to do so. But, given the circumstances where the companies' activities have gone down a lot, that would not be realistic. But half of them still being able to get such an internship is not bad. The other half, what have we done? We have not given up on helping them.

Their skills in engineering are actually very widely usable in other sectors. In manufacturing. for example, there is great value in applying the disciplines of Aerospace Engineering. So, with the combined efforts of different agencies coming together, in fact, all of them have been able to secure internship positions, not all of them in Aerospace Engineering but, in the other areas, it is also very meaningful way for them to acquire experience before they graduate. This is on Aerospace Engineering.

In Aviation Management, not bad, too. About 60% have got useful skills that allow them to intern in roles that tap on their understanding of business management, for example. So, they have been able to get meaningful internship opportunities even if it is not directly involved in Aviation Management. So, that gives us a sense as to how the collective efforts of the agencies involved, together with the students' own willingness to step out of their comfort zone, they have been able to secure meaningful internships which, we believe, will enable them to be better positioned for the job market. And if jobs continue to be in short supply for such students then, certainly, we will look at how the SGUnited Traineeship Programmes can be continued. This is in relation to how these students can be taken care of.

Mr Desmond Choo had a second part of his question and, that is, subsequent to these opportunities, supposing these students would like to return to their areas of study or return to an area of work that is more related to their discipline, will there be opportunities to do so? I think our record has been that whenever the industry has a need and there are people who would like to join the industry, then we will make available career conversion programmes and, if there is a demand for such students to return to the sector and some top-up is required, then I would like to assure Mr Choo that every effort will be made to avail such programmes to them.