The Big Read: Despite much fretting about jobs, lots of vacancies go a-begging
By
Kenneth Cheng
kennethcjw@mediacorp.com.sg
.
Published: 12:25 AM, November 19, 2016
Updated: 12:39 AM, November 19, 2016
SINGAPORE — Jobs, jobs, jobs. If there is one thing on Singaporeans’ minds these days, jobs would be it — but it is not the lack of work per se that is keeping policymakers up at night.
In fact, tens of thousands of vacancies across the island need to be filled, in both traditional and new fields, as economic restructuring and technological disruption create new jobs while making some old ones redundant.
The manpower situation has shot to the top of the national agenda as Singapore’s economy moderates and leaders plot the way forward.
Based on preliminary estimates, the number of layoffs has surged to more than 13,600 in the first nine months of the year, the highest since the global financial crisis some seven years ago. The total number of workers laid off for the entire year is projected to surpass last year’s figure of 15,580 workers. In the meantime, the mismatch between jobs and skills has reached a level as bad as that during the financial crisis, underscoring persistent calls in recent months by government leaders for workers to go for retraining.
Despite the rising number of layoffs, a survey published last month by global human resource (HR) consultancy ManpowerGroup found that employers here were struggling to fill positions, with the shortage particularly acute in sales, accounting and finance, engineering, and among technicians.
While some jobs have been traditionally shunned by Singaporeans because of unattractive pay or shift work, for example, the mismatch between demand and supply has spread to other fields, and the problem goes beyond jobseekers’ pickiness.
As of June, there were a total of 50,500 job vacancies in Singapore, with the bulk (83.4 per cent) in the services sector, latest available statistics from the Ministry of Manpower showed. There is a worrying concoction of factors that have left workers trailing, experts say: An economic slowdown, the trends of disruptive technology and the digitisation of manufacturing, as well as the rapidly changing needs of various sectors.
There is no quick, one-size-fits-all solution to the predicament. Ms Selena Ling, who heads treasury research and strategy at OCBC Bank, said that on their part, workers must keep pace with rapid advances in their fields while the Government and businesses address specific challenges sector by sector. All this, while policymakers take the lead in shifting mindsets, and providing the necessary education and infrastructure for lifelong learning. “Gone are the days of lifetime employment and a university education being sufficient to last you through your career,” she said.
The Government has rolled out massive initiatives to transform jobs and industries, including sectoral manpower plans and the S$4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme, which will develop roadmaps for 23 sectors to augment skills, boost productivity and innovation, as well as to help companies spread their wings overseas.
But on the ground, a variety of issues are bogging down the sectors facing the most acute manpower crunch, as TODAY found out.
TECHNICIANS: HARD WORK, LOW PAY
On any given day, Ms Ng’s job as an aircraft maintenance technician requires her to loosen or tighten, with a hand tool, six to seven aircraft components which are torqued to a certain value. The components must be secured tightly to ensure they do not come loose during flight, and she spends about two to three hours each day doing this.
“It’s all done manually … it requires quite a lot of strength, depending on how tight it is,” said the 25-year-old, who declined to give her full name as she is not authorised by her company to speak to the media.
For a monthly wage of about S$2,100, including basic pay and shift allowance, she works a nine-hour shift each day — from the late afternoon till the wee hours of the morning.
“Working in the daytime is already quite tiring, and at night, it’s even worse, because the body clock’s all mixed up,” she said. At the end of the work day, her arms would “feel a bit sore, like after a gym workout”.
At Certis Cisco, technicians who maintain cameras and alarm systems must not only be well-versed in technical systems, but they must also be prepared to be on the move and work outdoors.
Its spokesperson said that many Singaporeans, including those with technical expertise, prefer working in comfortable office environments.
The company’s technicians earn a basic monthly salary of between S$1,800 and S$2,400. If it includes overtime pay, they could draw up to S$2,800. “The salary package is the most important for this group of people … We’ll continue improving our pay package and training,” the spokesperson said.
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) runs two primary manufacturing sites in Jurong and Quality Road, as well as a vaccine facility in Tuas. A GSK spokesperson told TODAY that the need for technicians to work shifts and the location of facilities in far-flung areas could be unattractive for some applicants.
While GSK has a steady flow of applications, it is also working with partners to build a future talent pool and a strong pipeline of technicians and engineers.
Its Tuas vaccine facility, for instance, takes in trainees without relevant experience for a two-year programme to equip them with both theoretical and on-the-job training, in the hope of having them join the biologics sector.
Mr James Goh, the Association of Process Industry’s immediate past president, said that the shortage of technicians has persisted for the past decade, despite higher wages. “They opt for easier and less demanding jobs,” he said.
The issue of vocational education came under the spotlight in 2014, when the Applied Study in Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education Review (Aspire) Committee recommended a new education and career guidance programme for polytechnics and ITEs.
It also proposed that more officers trained in this area be deployed to schools, polytechnics and ITE colleges. The recommendations followed its visit that year to Germany and Switzerland, where the committee saw, among other things, the need for early career guidance to help students discover their interests and understand prospects in vocational education.
Ms Ng believes technicians like her should be better paid, given the risks involved on the job, such as having to work at a height, albeit with a safety harness and precautions in place. Despite the drawbacks, she believes that there are opportunities to grow. “We can’t say there’re no prospects at all, but it’ll take time for me to see it happen,” she said.
SALES: FALLING COMMISSIONS ADD TO HIRING WOES
As the economy slows, the sales industry is facing a quagmire: Purchases have dwindled and this means commissions — which form a significant share of a sales professional’s income — have dipped, deterring prospective hires from joining the sector.
The problem is compounded by the long hours that sales executives have to clock each day to meet targets, a feat that sometimes calls for aggressive hard-selling. Retail workers also lament the poor prospects for advancement and stagnating wages.
Latest data released by the Department of Statistics on Tuesday showed that retail sales, excluding vehicles, dipped 1.9 per cent in September from the same period last year, as shoppers cut back on discretionary spending.
The difficulty in filling retail positions is so acute that the Dairy Farm Singapore group, which runs brands such as Cold Storage and 7-Eleven, has nearly 500 vacancies in store operations, its HR director Jocelyn Chan told TODAY. About nine in 10 (85 per cent) of these openings are for sales assistants and cashiers.
Ms Chan said the “challenging” hours, long periods of standing, and occasional strenuous tasks such as moving and stacking products, make it difficult to woo applicants.
While the firm does hire those who ask for higher wages, the “attrition rate is high due to the working hours and physical-work requirement”, she said.
At Wing Tai Retail, which manages brands such as Topman and G2000, societal attitudes towards service-related jobs — including parental expectations — are an obstacle to hiring, a spokesperson said. Applicants tend to avoid “customer-facing roles”, the spokesperson added.
A survey of Singapore Retailers Association (SRA) members last month showed that almost eight in 10 retailers had been unsuccessful in recruiting staff in the past 12 months. SRA executive director Anthony Gan noted that frontline sales workers were the hardest to hire, despite wage increases — the association’s estimates put it at between five and
10 per cent on average — for retail jobs over the last three years.
A Singaporean part-time employee at a stationery retailer, who gave her name only as Ms Ifa, 23, said she has turned down offers to join full-time.
The salary offered by the shop, where she has worked for nearly three years, was “not appealing”, she said. Employees are also expected to work full 12-hour shifts — most of the time on their feet — for up to three days a week.
“(There’s) not much progression … it’s either you’re the (store) manager, full-time staff or part-time staff,” she said. As a part-timer, Ms Ifa does not get any commission and she earns between S$800 and S$900 a month.
In comparison, a 26-year-old full-time sales executive at a handbag and accessories retailer told TODAY she earns up to S$2,000 a month, including commission totalling about S$400 on average and overtime pay.
A 39-year-old senior manager in the retail sector, who declined to be named because of her company’s media policy, said attracting young Singaporeans into sales is a perennial challenge. Pay is a big factor, and commissions have dropped quite a lot, she said.
ENGINEERING: CUSHIER JOBS BECKON
Despite investing several years pursuing an engineering degree, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) final-year mechanical-engineering undergraduate Siang Xuan Yu plans to try his hand at other fields, such as business consulting, when he graduates.
“Engineering students have analytical skills that can be helpful to business consulting, as engineers can somehow predict trends like where the market’s going,” the 25-year-old said.
He added: “I don’t mind it, but if I can avoid a shift job, that will be better.”
Mr Edwin Khew, president of The Institution of Engineers, Singapore, said intensifying competition with other sectors for talent, as well as the rising demand for engineers, have made such roles harder to fill.
Engineers’ versatile skill-sets and problem-solving abilities are prized outside the sector.
“Many of them are offered attractive job opportunities by (firms in the) business and finance sectors after a few years of practice,” he said.
Also, the Republic’s increasing technological focus as it strives to become a Smart Nation has opened up more engineering vacancies in both the public and private sectors, creating further demand.
For some companies, the shortage extends beyond general disciplines such as mechanical and electrical engineering.
At Changi Airport Group (CAG), more specialised engineering roles, such as in baggage-handling and airfield systems, pose hiring challenges, said Ms Justina Tan, managing director of CAG’s people team.
But its strong referral network has helped spread the word, and many Singaporeans chose to return from “overseas projects” to join the group, said Ms Tan.
As with the accounting and finance sectors, the engineering manpower crunch has hit smaller players harder than larger corporations.
When supply-chain security solutions firm Ascent Solutions tried to hire three development engineers recently, its job advertisements on platforms such as online portals yielded many more foreign applicants than Singaporean ones.
For every four foreigners who applied, there was only one Singaporean applicant, said its chief executive Lim Chee Kean. Still, the firm, which has more than 10 engineers on its payroll, failed to draw the right people via the advertisements, and it took about four months to fill those jobs through headhunters. The problem, said Mr Lim, is that many want jobs in bigger companies instead of the smaller ones, which they consider a risk.
KTC Civil Engineering and Construction CEO Rajan Krishnan said it took three to four months to identify suitable Singaporean engineering hires, and even then, the take-up rate was slow.
The inability to find engineers well versed in the heavy civil-engineering and infrastructure fields was a concern, in light of the number of infrastructural projects being rolled out, he said. The shortage, Mr Krishnan suggested, has to be tackled on three fronts: Salaries, the working environment and the general perception of the sector.
“The challenge lies in improving the perception and status of the industry when compared with other opportunities available,” he said.
ACCOUNTING & FINANCE: NICHE SKILLS IN DEMAND
In contrast to engineering, the appeal of a career in accounting and finance has not diminished over the years, with universities here continuing to see a steady stream of students taking up the relevant courses. But the fast-evolving economic landscape has opened up opportunities which firms are struggling to fill.
At NTU’s Nanyang Business School, there has been a 7.5 per cent increase in the take-up rate for its accountancy programmes over the past five years. The National University of Singapore Business School has also seen its intake of accountancy undergraduates rise from 172 to 250 between the 2011-12 and 2015-16 academic years.
Still, Mr Joseph Alfred, accounting body ACCA Singapore’s policy and technical head, said the growth of businesses locally and regionally will “result in an ever-widening gap between supply and demand if supply were to diminish or remain stagnant”.
Industry observers said there was no lack of “generalist” accountants, but highly specialised roles, such as tax and cost accounting, were hard to staff.
Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants president Gerard Ee said that more than two-thirds of its members were company accountants — performing general financial accounting — or entrepreneurs. The lack of awareness beyond the “narrow view” that the profession involves only financial accounting or auditing must be addressed through education, he added.
Bigger firms, which have the ability to pay higher wages and offer brighter career prospects for new hires, face fewer hiring difficulties, compared with the smaller players. Accountancy firm Foo Kon Tan, for instance, said it had to compete with the big four — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers — as well as multinational organisations that are “usually at the top of new (accountancy) graduates’ list of potential employers”. Its head of people and culture,
Ms Ann Hum, said the continued influx of multinationals setting up regional hubs here, and the increasing regulatory and compliance requirements have seen demand surge for qualified and experienced accounting and finance professionals, making them even scarcer.
Mr Ee said the institute has been urging mergers among smaller firms so they can achieve a scale that would make them attractive to prospective employees.
Amid greater global scrutiny on money laundering and terrorism financing, there is also an urgent need for niche skills in areas such as compliance. However, the compliance function is dogged by perception problems. “I have the impression … that compliance is dull and boring, and (involves) a lot of paperwork. That deters me from going in,” said a financial analyst, who wanted to be known only as Ms Lee, 25.
A comparatively smaller talent pool makes it a challenge to staff such specialised positions, said Mr James Loo, DBS Bank executive director of HR. The bank seeks to hire those with the right fit and calibre, but also considers those outside the compliance field with the necessary knowledge, experience and qualities, he added.
Lawyer Nizam Ismail, who co-founded RHT Compliance Solutions, said there would be a “systemic problem” if Singapore does not have enough compliance workers. “There may be significant risks of regulatory breaches and criminal liability, leading to financial and reputational risks if the demand for good compliance is not met,” he said.
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