Speech at Launch of the Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) Manufacturing Sales & Marketing Programmes
Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Manpower and Trade , Industry, Hilton Hotel Singapore
Mr Renny Yeo, President, Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation
Mr Goh Eng Ghee, Deputy Chief Executive, Singapore Workforce Development Agency
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good Morning and Gong Xi Fa Cai
Introduction
1. It gives me great pleasure to join you here today. I would like to commend the Singapore Manufacturers’ Federation (SMa) for their leadership in and commitment to skills upgrading the manufacturing sector all these years. SMa has been a voice for the industry, and a great champion for continual skill improvement for workers and professionals.
Budget 2010 & Relevance of CET
2. The Minister for Finance has announced in the Budget Statement two days ago a $5.5 billion national initiative to help enterprises and workers raise productivity. This will help to catalyse the transformations within our economy that are necessary to achieve our productivity target of 2 to 3% per annum over the next decade. We will need to restructure our economy towards higher value activities, upgrade individual industries and enterprises, and raise the skills and creative potential of every worker.
3. To support enterprises in this productivity drive, the Government will introduce several initiatives that will benefit businesses that invest in skills and innovation, through lowering their effective tax rates, as well as grants through the National Productivity Fund. These broad-based incentives, together with customised initiatives for specific clusters and industries, will provide substantial support for companies willing to invest in productivity improvements.
CET’s Role in Productivity
4. Continuing Education and Training, or CET, will play a critical role in our productivity push going forward. We must equip our workforce with more and better skills so that we can take on higher quality jobs, and our employers must help to unlock every worker’s potential, enabling them to help their companies create more and higher value.
5. To ensure that we have a first-class CET system that employers and workers can tap on, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean will be leading a national council to oversee and drive efforts to boost productivity and expand CET. The Government is also investing $2.5 billion over the next five years in CET, which is further testament that maximising the potential of our workforce will be a key driver of our productivity efforts going forward.
Outcome Evaluation Survey by WDA
6. More businesses and workers are now recognising the positive benefits that CET brings to them. Earlier this month, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) announced the key findings from its Outcome Evaluation Survey on the positive benefits of CET. The survey found that more than 90% of companies and trainees experienced better work performance after WSQ training, and more than 90% of trainees applied the skills that they have learnt in their work environments. More than 60% of companies also experienced a positive impact on their productivity after training.
The WSQ Manufacturing Sales and Marketing Programme
7. We will need to continuously enhance our CET system so that it enables our workers to acquire new skills that are relevant to industry needs. I am glad that SMa has shown strong support for the productivity drive by being a first mover in responding to the recommendations put forth by the Economic Strategies Committee. SMa and WDA will be rolling out a series of programmes that respond to various needs – providing horizontal skills for greater versatility, sharpening vertical competencies and developing top skills in our professionals. Let me highlight three of the new programmes:
8. The first programme is called the “WSQ Manufacturing Sales and Marketing Programme”. This programme will cater to engineers, technicians and technical personnel who are taking on new responsibilities that require skills in sales and marketing. This will enable them to become more “T-shaped” by equipping them with horizontal skills to venture into new areas of responsibilities. Such cross-disciplinary skills amalgamation will also drive greater convergence of manufacturing and services, moving our manufacturing sector towards the higher value-add end of the “smile curve” of marketing and distribution.
9. In addition, manufacturing sales and marketing executives now need to be able to operate in a globalised world and must be familiar with various overseas markets. Recognising this need, WDA has teamed up with IE Singapore to offer overseas immersion opportunities for trainees who have completed the WSQ Sales and Marketing Programme. This will prepare the programme’s participants to better handle overseas market operations.
10. Acquiring horizontal skills is one way to sharpen competitiveness. At the same time, we must continuously sharpen technical competencies and develop deep expertise in industry-relevant vertical skills. WDA will also be launching a second programme called the “WSQ Graduate Diploma in Product Life Cycle Management (PLM)” and a third programme called the “WSQ Graduate Diploma in Engineering Simulation” conducted by CAD-IT Consultants (Asia) Pte Ltd. Workers with technical skills in product prototyping and product life-cycle management will contribute to our abilities to improve product innovation and quality, as well as increase productivity and profitability for their companies.
11. Driving productivity at the firm-level requires systemic and cultural changes. I am pleased to note that WDA and SMa are working together to bring in international and regional experts including those from Japan to conduct Master Classes and workshops for our local companies to adopt a systems implementation approach to raise productivity levels. In this way, our companies can benchmark themselves against the international best practices for adoption and improvement.
Conclusion
12. Good management practices are closely correlated with higher productivity. Employers should take responsibility in ensuring good workplace practices and send their workers for training to increase productivity.
13. At the same time, workers at all levels should also recognise the value of training in preparing them to take on higher quality jobs. They should continuously seek to acquire both adjacent and deeper skills so that they can be highly adaptable and competitive in a fast-changing world.
14. Thank you.