by Suhaile Md
YOU’LL be hearing this pretty often: Preparing tomorrow’s unemployed for tomorrow’s jobs. Sounds catchy but what does it mean?
Tomorrow’s unemployed does not refer to new job entrants. It refers to people who think they’re in a cushy job now. National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) chief Chan Chun Sing thinks today’s employed, including professionals, have to start asking themselves if they would still have a job tomorrow.
Like the accountant who knows only book-keeping, which can be done more cheaply elsewhere.
Or the sales assistant who can be replaced by an online ordering platform.
Or the real estate agent who finds that more people are buying and selling apartments on their own steam.
Maybe not hair-dressing, Mr Chan said semi-seriously. “How to cut hair through the Internet?” It is a service restricted by distance and geography.
So if you’re doing a job that is routine and can be traded through “the wire”, that is, done online by someone else or something else like a computer programme, you’ll be watching your wage being “competed downwards” and your job will eventually disappear.
So if you’re doing a job that is routine and can be traded online, your job will eventually disappear.
This isn’t far-fetched. Nearly 8,500 workers were retrenched in the first half of this year – the highest since the financial crisis in 2009. The number stood at 5,840 last year and 4,600 the year before for the same period.
Finding jobs soon after is not easy. Only 45 per cent of residents who lost their jobs in the first quarter were employed by the end of the second quarter in June.
The bulk (68.7 per cent) of the 4,800 who lost their jobs in the second quarter were professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMET). Nearly 40 per cent were degree holders and 64 per cent were above 40 years old.
Guild the lily
It’s a knotty issue for the NTUC because the people most at risk belong to a category of workers who aren’t allowed to have union representation.
Which is why it has been offering associate memberships to professional associations. There are 40 such members so far, including the Youth Work Association (Singapore) and The Institute Of Internal Auditors Singapore .
It is a return to the system of guilds, with an emphasis on getting the guilds to dive deep into their core-skill set – think T-shape – while amassing a breadth of “wrap around” skills so that they can offer more than the “standard package”.
This is why, he said, those employed by the Big Four accounting firms will have a secure job, because the companies offer a lot more than just book-keeping.
The smaller firms however don’t have the same breadth of services. “Today you cannot survive on the deep narrow skills, you must provide value added services”, he said. While the professional associations will help them develop the depth, NTUC helps to increase their breadth by connecting “professionals to professionals to widen their competencies”.
Lost in transition
The trouble is, while people can see the looming problem, not many think it will happen to them, said Mr Chan, referring to his discussions with real estate agents and accountants.
The real estate agent who told him his own job was secure thinks he can always post more pictures of his client’s house. But this middleman role will be beaten by the home owner who puts up a video or gives a virtual reality tour of his own home, Mr Chan noted.
If, however, he gives buyers and sellers value by offering them financial advice or helping them with their legal documentation, his job would have a better chance of survival. “The computer still cannot do all these kind of personal concierge kind of services”, said Mr Chan. In short, don’t be a “one-trick pony”.
Technological disruptions are changing the nature of work and placing jobs on the global door-step. It means that working people will have to keep thinking about whether they have the skills to expand their job scope or change line – and at a more rapid place.
Mr Chan praised the cultural mindset of the Germans and the Swiss who take stock of their skills every few years because they want to stay employed.
Here, SkillsFuture and the various G initiatives like professional conversion programmes (PCP), place and train, and so on, comes in.
A bus driver for instance, in anticipation of driverless buses, can enrol in courses and learn how to operate and manage bus scheduling systems. A sales person might want to pick up skills to operate an e-commerce platform. Even as front-line jobs vanished, new jobs are created at the other end of the supply chain, he said.
This is where “provision of information is important”, said Mr Chan. Singaporeans are “very clever”: Once they sense their jobs are threatened, they will look for opportunities. Inform them where and how they can be trained, they will go for it, he added.
There are practical difficulties, he admitted, for those with families. A person trying to move from one type of work to another must expect a bumpy ride. It would not be a straight-line progression with higher and higher salaries. Pay cuts must be expected during the transition.
Continuing education
Then there is the difficulty of predicting the types of new jobs that would be created.
While there used to be the Vocational and Industrial Training Board in the past to prepare a workforce for whatever the Economic Development Board has managed to bring on shore in terms of jobs, things are just happening so fast these days.
“Investment comes in, can start up in three months, six months” and waiting “two years” for workers to be trained is not feasible. There’s a need to “identify new industries, new skill sets, new businesses.”
Which is essentially what the Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) is addressing. Mr Chan is the deputy chair of the CFE. It looks into five broad areas: future corporate capabilities and innovation, future growth industries and market, future of connectivity, future city, and future jobs and skills.
So how do you prepare for this new economy where you will have multiple jobs in your career and you’re required to learn and relearn? Adopt the mindset of “continuing education” and not “compulsory education”, where you anticipate the next challenge and prepare for it.
“Why would today’s employed start to embrace this culture and say that… the kan cheong index better go up a bit. Tomorrow somebody might move my cheese,” he added.
We interviewed Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and head of the labour movement, on the profound changes affecting the job market and the NTUC’s role in the new economy. This is the first of three parts. Coming up tomorrow: Freelancers aren’t for free.
Featured image by Natassya Diana.
If you like this article, Like The Middle Ground‘s Facebook Page as well!
For breaking news, you can talk to us via email.
The post Chan Chun Sing: Your job is NOT safe appeared first on The Middle Ground.