The current process of economic restructuring has led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to grapple with two major manpower issues. First, they have to cope with the reduced inflow of foreign human capital. Second, they need to attract and retain suitable human capital that can help the company innovate and be more productive. Ensuring that SMEs have sufficient and innovative human capital is critical because without it SMEs would struggle to implement the necessary changes to sustain and expand their businesses.
Over the past few years, the government has introduced a wide range of human resource (HR) schemes and programmes to tackle the manpower problems. The SME Talent Programme, Wage Credit Scheme and the Enterprise Training Support scheme are a few examples of the government assistance available for use to improve companies’ HR capabilities and equip their employees with the relevant set of knowledge and skills.
Notwithstanding all that has been done, businesses, especially SMEs, still struggle to attract and retain human capital. Unless this problem is arrested, manpower business costs in Singapore would most likely continue to increase, while the economy would struggle to make significant progress on the restructuring front. In the long run, Singapore may lose its competitive advantage over other countries.
At this Closed-Door Discussion, Mr Victor Mills, Chief Executive of Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, will make a presentation on Singaporean talent. He argues that the need to nurture Singaporean human capital into talented executives for the top jobs in their companies has become more pressing with the tightening inflow of foreign human capital. Singaporean human capital has the potential for development and would be a more cost-competitive proposition compared to hiring foreign human capital. However, due to the “comfort zone” syndrome, one of the hurdles faced by HR managers is the reluctance of Singaporeans to accept overseas assignments as part of their career development — that will eventually enable them to compete for top jobs in their companies.
The discussant, Mr Francis Koh, Managing Director at Capita Pte Ltd, will draw on points from the presentation and comment how those issues affect SMEs in particular. This will be followed by a discussion amongst the participants.
The session will be moderated by Mr Manu Bhaskaran, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and Partner and Member of the Board of Centennial Group Inc, a policy advisory group based in Washington, DC.
Please click here to view the programme.
The series of CDDs focusing on issues confronting the SME sector in Singapore includes: