PMETs Assisted Under Career Support Programme

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Career Support Programme (CSP) provides short-term wage support of up to 18 months with support levels that can go up to 50% to encourage employers to hire mid-career Professional, Manager, Engineer and Technician (PMET) job-seekers who have been retrenched or unemployed for six months or more. This helps to address mismatches in wage expectations and provides mid-career PMET job-seekers more opportunities to regain employment, especially the long-term unemployed. The CSP also helps employers to tap a wider pool of mid-career PMETs to meet their manpower needs. In fact, around half of CSP employers are small and mediaum enterprises (SMEs).

Since its inception in October 2015, over 1,100 PMETs have been supported through CSP. More than 90% were aged 40 and above, and more than 80% were long-term unemployed at the point of placement. Placements have steadily picked up, from about 200 in the first three quarters of 2016, to more than 800 in the same period in 2017.

The retention rate of the 2015 and 2016 cohorts is encouraging. Within 12 months of CSP placement, about 70% remained in employment. Majority remained with the CSP employer and the rest found new jobs with other employers. Those who are still seeking employment can return to Workforce Singapore (WSG) or NTUC-e2i centres for assistance.

Apart from CSP, PMET job seekers can also benefit from other Adapt and Grow programmes. For example, PMETs with skills mismatches can tap on the Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) to reskill and move into new occupations and sectors with good prospects and opportunities for progression. Momentum for the PCPs has also picked up. In the first three quarters of 2017, about 2,700 PMETs were placed under the PCPs, and this is up from 900 in the same period in 2016.

Thank you, Sir. I thank the Minister for her comprehensive reply. Just a few supplementary questions. If I understood the Minister correctly, to date, for the CSP about 70% of the employees have remained in the CSP employer, and 30% have moved on to another employer, or have left the CSP employer. Is that right?

Deputy Speaker, to clarify, 70% remained in employment. But as it turns out, of those who remained in employment, 70% remained with the same employer and 30% moved on to another employer. But so as not to confused matters, we just stick to 70% remained in employment.

I thank the Minister for her clarification. So, my supplementary question will be, to date, based on these figures, I suppose a minority of them, I mean there was a certain amount of attrition – about 30% – have there been any insights gleaned into the reasons behind that? Were there any employability gaps that were discerned after the PMET was placed with the CSP employer which suggest that there are some training gaps that need to be fulfilled? Because anecdotally, I have come across such feedback that that may be the case occasionally. And if so, what kind of solutions can be put forward or deployed to meet those training and employability gaps.

I thank the Member very much for that supplementary question. Mr Deputy Speaker, the CSP is one of many programmes that the WSG, together with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), leverage on to help jobseekers, whether they have been unemployed for a short period of time or if they have been employed for extended periods of time. Obviously, the needs differ, and so, we do not use one programme exclusively.

In the case of the CSP, it is very targeted. It addresses a specific issue with wages. In other words, the person is more or less job ready. The employer is quite keen to take him or her on. But the salary remains something that they cannot find agreement on. So, the CSP comes in specifically to address this issue.

The Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) addresses a different set of issues. Under those circumstances, the jobseeker may be attractive to the employer, but there is a certain gap in the range of skills that he has that causes the employer to think a little bit harder. And so, the PCP comes in to intervene and encourages the employer to give the jobseeker an opportunity to close that skills gap. So, CSP takes care of wage gap; PCP takes care of skills gap.

Within the whole range of programmes under the Adapt and Grow Initiative, there are yet others. For example, the P-Max programme deals specifically with the needs of SMEs. For some PMETs that are transiting from different work environments, the cultural context of operating in an SME may require them to have a longer period of adjustment. So, the P-Max programme does that.

I should add that at the Careers Connect centres, which WSG operates, there are a whole range of other programmes that deal specifically with issues that jobseekers may have, and they are not confined to training intervention. So, for example, there may be jobseekers who are struggling to cope emotionally with job loss and they have to cross that barrier before they be effective in job search. The Career Recharger programme does that for them – it is one-on-one counselling. There are those who have overcome that barrier, but they want to share tips with other jobseekers who are looking for work in the same field. The Career 360 programme does that for them. Then, there may be those who have not quite sorted out what they really want to do at that stage of their career. The Career Catalyst programme again provides one-on-one counselling to help them to do that. So, there are a whole range of programmes available, and we remain very open to what other interventions will help jobseekers regain employment more quickly, and we will continue to improve upon them.

I thank the Minister for the answer. Just two supplementary questions. Firstly, from my knowledge of the CSP, I think there is still quite a number of SMEs as well as human resources (HR) staff and employers in those SMEs who are not aware of the CSP. Just two suggestions. Firstly, can MOM strengthen its outreach, particularly for all SMEs in Singapore, through various collaterals where MOM or other public agencies interface with these SMEs? Secondly, will the Ministry consider, instead of having the employers tap on the CSP prior to hiring the person or before they are allowed to claim the funding, whether it can be made automatic, in the sense that you can detect whether they do hire people who are earning $3,600 and above, and who are above or under 40, and who are unemployed and retrenched?

Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank Mr Patrick Tay for the feedback. It is well noted. The CSP has been on-going for just about two years. We accept the fact that we can improve on outreach and enable more employers to know about the help that is available to them, and will certainly strengthen the outreach, particularly to SMEs.

As it stands right now, the outreach to the SMEs, or at least if you look at the numbers, SMEs take-up is not too bad – it is about half.

To his question, if I understand correctly, on whether we can detect that a person has been employed and so, automatically provide a CSP assistance to his employer. The difficulty with that is: how do we know that there was a wage gap? It is only when, if the person has been employed, one assumes that the employer was happy to pay whatever was finally agreed upon. So, it is not something that we can presume, and there are so many cases where people have entered into jobs, and the employers are happy to settle on a certain level of payment. So, we should not assume that there was a wage gap to begin with.

At the same time I think, given what has been discussed in this House in the last couple of days, when disbursing grants, even in terms of wage support, we want to make sure that it is in cases that are really deserving. Can we improve on the application and the processing; can we make sure the employer does not have to wait too long? The answers to those questions are indeed, yes, but always maintaining a certain rigour in the assessment.