Mr Douglas
Foo, President of Singapore Manufacturing Federation
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and
Gentlemen,
Good Morning.
Introduction
I am pleased to join all of you at the 2nd SME
Centre Conference today.
Importance of Human Capital
In today’s competitive business environment, the
ability to attract, retain, and develop talent, is crucial to success. In that
light, the focus of today’s conference on “building the winning team” is timely
and very relevant.
Having an engaged workforce is crucial for enterprises
to improve their productivity and grow their businesses. A 2013 survey[1] by
the global consultancy company Gallup, found that engaged employees are 20 per
cent more productive than unengaged employees. Companies with engaged
workforces have higher earnings per share, and recover more quickly from downturns.
In addition, organisations that have highly engaged workers have lower
absenteeism and turnover, fewer safety incidents and fewer quality incidents. Employees
also benefit from high workforce engagement as they rate their lives better. Actively
engaged employees are more than three times as likely to report that they were
thriving in their overall lives as those who were disengaged.
Promoting Lifelong Learning through SkillsFuture
The Government is committed to building a more engaged
workforce. The SkillsFuture initiative announced in Budget 2015 aims to build
the necessary skill-sets and mind-sets to take our economy to the next level.
SkillsFuture focuses on empowering our workforce with skills mastery that will enable
them to actively chart and shape their careers. Under the initiative, support will
be provided from an individual’s schooling years all the way through their working
life. This will inculcate a culture of lifelong learning and self-improvement. For
this to be realised, the government will complement this support with
assistance to our enterprises, so that they can offer opportunities for their
employees to grow and thrive with their companies.
Government Support for Building HR Capabilities
To support our businesses, the Government has been
providing strong support, particularly to SMEs, to help build up their HR
capabilities. In particular, SPRING has in place a suite of funding schemes
which SMEs can tap to undertake HR improvement projects.
One beneficiary is SH Cogent Logistics, an integrated
logistics management service provider, which implemented various initiatives in 2014 to improve HR management and
development of their employees’ careers. With support from SPRING, the company embarked
on a project to formulate structured career development pathways for groups of jobs
that require similar knowledge, skills and abilities. This enabled employees to
identify the skills and knowledge needed for their growth within the
organisation, and identify relevant training needs.
We have augmented these support schemes based on
feedback from companies. For example, we recognise that SMEs also need support
in the form of knowledge and expertise about best practices in workforce
development. Hence, as announced in Budget 2015, SPRING will be working with industry partners to develop a
shared pool of SkillsFuture Mentors to help SMEs develop the potential of their
workforce. These SkillsFuture Mentors will help SMEs to implement measures to
deepen the skills of their workforce, and help their supervisors and managers
develop their coaching skills. We aim to build a pool of 200 mentors over the
next two years, starting with Food, Retail and Logistics.
In Budget 2015, I
announced SPRING’s HR shared services initiative. SMEs, especially
micro and small enterprises, often do not have the scale to have a specialised
unit to support their HR needs, and may find it costly to tap on external
consultants. To address this challenge, SPRING has appointed a pool of HR
service providers to offer micro and small enterprises shared access to
professional HR advisory and management systems. Through this HR shared
services initiative, micro and small enterprises can outsource HR operations such
as payroll processing and employee data administration, allowing them to focus
on their core business and strategic HR functions. Interested SMEs can approach
any of the appointed HR service providers listed on SPRING’s website to sign up.
SPRING will also provide funding support of up to 70% of qualifying costs,
including a one-time set up cost and up to a year of subscription costs for the
service.
SME Centres as
a first-stop advisory centre for SMEs
Many SMEs require guidance to learn about what steps
they can take to strengthen their businesses, and where the government can come
in to help. This is where our network of 12 SME Centres comes in. The SME
centres serve as a first point of contact for SMEs, providing business
diagnosis and advisory services, and helping SMEs identify the government
schemes that best meet their needs. As Mr Foo pointed out earlier,
over 36,000 SMEs were directly engaged through the SME Centres in one year
alone.
For example, Feinmetall Singapore Pte Ltd
is a service centre for wafer probe cards used for semiconductor testing. As
the company grew, Feinmetall approached SME Centre@SMF for assistance on
improving their existing HR policy and systems in 2014. The business advisor at SME Centre@SMF recommended tapping on the Singapore
Workforce Development Agency’s (WDA) Enterprise Training Support (ETS) scheme.
Through the ETS Scheme, the company was able to conduct enterprise-wide
industry salary benchmark reviews.
This led to a
restructuring of
its employee wages to better attract local talent and retain
existing staff in the company.
In a move to provide more targeted assistance to SMEs
and build their workforce’s capabilities, we will be further enhancing the services
provided by the SME Centres. As an example, the SME Centres have collaborated
with WDA to place a dedicated business advisor at each of the five main SME
Centres to provide training advisory services and information about the WDA
manpower development schemes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Government is committed to
building a high quality workforce that has deep skills under the SkillsFuture
effort. This can only be accomplished if businesses also invest in human
capital development and work to build and strengthen the capabilities of their
teams.
I would also like to take this opportunity to
commend our Trade Association and Chamber
Partners as well as SME Centres staff for their strong and dedicated support
throughout these years. The government looks forward to working closely with
you to continue to engage our SMEs, identify their key needs and develop
programmes to help them grow and become successful.
Thank you.