DPM Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the Switzerland-Singapore Business Forum: SkillsFuture - Developing a Future Ready Workforce

This is a very useful forum because we have a meeting of two countries, Singapore and Switzerland, both small in a world with much larger countries, and both knowing they only survive and do well by the wits and skills of their people.

We share much in common. But you are a much older society. You built your systems of skills training starting from the Middle Ages as President Schneider-Ammann mentioned. We are a much younger society, with an education system that is barely 50 years old. We had schools and a few post-secondary institutions before then, but they were not part of an integrated system, bringing students together in a public school system and linking training to jobs. So we’ve gone through tremendous change in education in the last 50 years.

But we continue to evolve and change, because like you, we face new challenges, in a new economic and social environment. First of all, we are in an environment   where we can no longer prepare people with essential skills at one stage of life, and expect that it equips them for the rest of their lives. Technologies are changing jobs more rapidly, changing in ways where more jobs are disappearing completely, and sometimes whole industries are disappearing. It is a new phase in the global economy, particularly with the advances in the digital revolution, artificial intelligence and advanced robotics. They will keep changing the world of jobs. This means that employers want people with new skills, but the paradox is that those skills will not last very long.

The second challenge, already very much present with us in Singapore, is a shortage of labour. Our labour force growth has slowed down very significantly. So if you think of those two challenges, constant change in the skills requirements of a modern economy, and second, the fact that we’re short of people. It means we have to invest in each and every Singaporean, not just when they are young, but as they go through life. It also means that we evolve our system of education and training in significant ways.

First, and here we can learn from Switzerland, we need a model of education and training which blends the academic and the practical in much more concerted fashion. Not the same way in every course and every institution, but in general we need a deeper blend of theoretical and real world learning.

Second, we must have a continuum between what you learn before you start employment, and what you learn after you get employed. That needs to be a more structured continuum, between pre- and post-employment training, and it needs to be part and parcel of how our universities, polytechnics, our ITEs, think about their mission. It’s no longer just about preparing people when they’re young, it’s about enabling people to learn at different stages of life.

Third, it means evolving our culture, and it’s probably in this area that we have the most to learn from the Swiss. It is not easy because we can’t start from the Middle Ages like them, but we have to evolve from where we are. That involves two dimensions.

First, the ownership that employers take in education and training. This ownership is an essential feature of the Swiss system. And second, the culture of society where everyone feels that they can improve continually, step by step, and become a master of their trade, master of their craft. Whether it is in banking, or accountancy, or as a machinist, whichever field you are in: you can master it by learning continually, by learning in small bites all along the way. That dual culture – employers taking ownership of training, and individuals feeling that they can keep learning and can become masters of their trade – that is what I think defines the Swiss skills culture, and it is what we must aspire towards.

Many of the examples of this system and culture in Switzerland are here in this room today, Peter Voser is a very good example. He started as a vocational apprentice, and he eventually became one of the leaders of Swiss business and society. There are many other examples.

Each time I visit a Swiss company, and I’ve visited several over the years, typically small and medium sized companies, you see the same. One company I visited a few years ago was Forster Rohner in St Gallen. Not many people around the world will recognise the name, but it is one of the leading makers of embroidery in the world.

It is a hundred year old company. The family who founded it are still there. But I was impressed too by the ordinary workers in Forster Rohner. Ordinary men and women, who like Mr Schneider-Ammann mentioned about the Swiss practice, they came out of school into apprenticeship, and they stayed with the firm. Step by step, they became masters of their trade. And today, in their 40s and 50s, working with completely different technologies compared to when they started out.

Forster Rohner is also an example of how firms in very old, traditional trades can embrace new technologies. I went to their ‘library’. They had every piece of embroidery that had been designed in Europe for much longer than 100 years. Why were they keeping this library?  They told me that when they start on every new design, they go back to the old designs, sometimes over a century old, they get ideas to inspire new creations. They have also taken a leap forward. They are creating ‘e-broidery’ now - smart textiles, with electronics embedded in the fabric, machine washable, for sportspersons and others.

This spirit of constant innovation among the Swiss mittlestand is impressive. So it’s not just about the techniques, the specific skills, but also this culture of continuous improvement, and of embracing innovation even in the most traditional areas.

We are making progress in SkillsFuture. It is a major strategy for our future, not just an economic strategy but a social strategy. It is still early days, but we are making good progress. Let me mention three areas relevant to the Swiss.

First, we are intensifying internships. Starting from when people are in polytechnics, ITEs, universities – deeper, more structured internships. Second, the Earn and Learn Programme (ELP), like an apprenticeship after you graduate - a dual model, where you learn while you work in a firm, and you get a qualification. Third, in our universities now, the dual or cooperative model of university education – for eg, where you spend the semester at work and another semester back at college. Different models for doing this, different experiments, but we’re going to evolve this - starting with SIT and UniSIM.

So these are specific initiatives in education, but what is equally important is what must we must do in industry. We have to develop that collaborative culture in industry if we are to make headway. We are beginning to develop this, and I’m hopeful that we can.

The precision engineering industry took the lead, with leading forms collaborating to develop a vocational and continuous education and training system. The supply chain and logistics industry has just started an Academy (SCALA). The firms are collaborating to train workers, and to train mentors for workers.

We have to evolve our system to deal with these challenges of the future. And collaboration between employers is critical. It doesn’t come naturally, because the traditional attitude of employers, in Singapore and many other parts of the world – is you train your own people. Why should I train someone else’s employees? Why should I have my skilled mentor train someone else’s employees?

In Switzerland, I visited a very interesting facility, LIBS, which is run by a consortium led by ABB, to train workers for a large number of companies in their industry. ABB as the lead member of the consortium is investing in workers that are not going to be employed at ABB.

What’s the logic of it?  Firstly, for your own people, you hope that when you invest in them, they will stay with you. That is the direction that we have to go. We need this virtuous cycle where individuals see that their employer cares for their career and development, they decide to stay with their employers and their skills move up in the trade. We need that virtuous cycle. Employers taking responsibility, and employees committing themselves. We do not quite have it yet, not on a wide scale, but it can be developed.

But employers also know that not all the people whom they train will in fact stay with them. Here too, there is still some benefit, as Swiss industry has found. You may lose this employee after training, but you gain another employee who has been trained up to the same standards. What goes around, comes around. And the whole industry moves up.

That’s a culture we must develop in Singapore. There are many initiatives that we are embarking on, achieving some momentum on, but the culture is very important.

We cannot become Swiss. It is a different, much older society. Their institutions and practices evolved from the Middle Ages. It is a society where two-thirds of young people even today go through the vocation path. You learn skills first, and you get qualifications somewhere along the way. In Singapore, it is the other way around, like in many other Asian societies. You get your qualifications as quickly as possible, a diploma, a degree, and then you think after that about what you want to do and what skills you gain in the course of your career.

We cannot change the system completely, because you can’t change culture completely. And you certainly can’t change it quickly. But we can move in that direction. And we have to move in that direction - by making it possible for people, regardless of whether they are at the ITE, or a polytechnic or university, making it possible for them to encounter the real world early. Infuse practical learning into academic learning, early.  And reduce the distinction between pre- and post-employment training, so that we have a continuum. And encourage people by evolving the reality of the workplace, so people can see that it does pay to follow the skills path. We have to move in that direction.

We cannot change the desire on the part of many families and individuals to get a degree or diploma. But you can change how you get the degree and diploma, how much practical learning you get. And whether you get it all upfront, or you get it along the way as you develop your interests and skills? The desire for credentials will be there in our society, but it is alternative pathways to achieving credentials that we need, and are developing.

We can make progress. There’s a lot to learn from countries like Switzerland, but all of us are facing the same challenges of continuing learning through life. SkillsFuture is a real opportunity to reshape not just our educational institutions and our training practices, but also our culture.