Singtel is doubling down on its efforts to build a future-ready workforce. The company, which employs 12,000 people in Singapore, announced that it will invest $20 million a year and create a new learning academy to further enhance its training efforts with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Union of Telecoms Employees of Singapore (UTES) regarding its Company Training Committee (CTC).
With the advent of new technologies accelerating the digitalization of organizations and the nature of work, today’s workers need to be agile and adaptable and take charge of their career development. With its $20 million annual investment, Singtel will continually design and enhance its people development programs with a focus on inculcating the right mindset to drive innovation and address disruption, building an inclusive workplace culture, and developing leadership excellence.
Through its new learning academy, Singtel 8George, employees will be able to absorb such information at their preferred time and at their own pace, in person and on the go, virtually. The MOU will see Singtel and UTES work closely to identify skills gaps, co-create relevant training programs and encourage employees to take full advantage of these training opportunities. These efforts will enable Singtel’s workforce to remain relevant and prepared to meet future demands.
Singtel Group chief executive officer, Yuen Kuan Moon, stated, “One of Singtel’s top priorities is building an agile, digital and future-ready workforce. This is important because we want to empower all our people to achieve their full potential in the digital economy, and to support our efforts to evolve from a telco to a ‘techco’. We will spare no effort to achieve this for our people, through our sustained investment training programmes, and working closely with the union to encourage all their members to participate in those programs. We will complement this with our initiatives to foster diversity, inclusivity, engagement and well-being in the workplace, to ensure we continue to be an employer of choice.”
In the past three years, Singtel has invested $45 million to develop new training programs to train its people on emerging technologies and has sponsored more than 60 employees for part-time courses. It also launched its Singtel Professional Conversion Accelerator program which has equipped close to 1,500 employees in 5G and other in-demand tech skills; employees who have undergone this program have gone on to successfully take up new roles such as data analyst and 5G product development manager. To date, more than 2,500 Singtel employees have benefited from these training efforts, which drove an annual 15% increase in learning places and learning hours per employee between 2019 and 2022.
Singtel signed a CTC MOU in 2019, which was renewed. Unlike most CTC MOUs which are of a three-year duration, Singtel is committing to support the CTC for the long term.
National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng, who witnessed the MOU signing, said, “When UTES and Singtel formed the CTC in 2019, Singtel was among the first employers to come onboard with us to transform their business and workforce. Since then, our UTES sisters and brothers have worked closely with Singtel to successfully upskill over 2,500 Singtel employees, with improvements in employees’ learning hours by 15%. With Singtel and UTES’ CTC MOU renewal, it reaffirms our belief in the effectiveness of NTUC’s CTC programme. When workers can grow in tandem with business transformation, we can ensure that businesses continue to flourish and workers can continue to earn good wages and enjoy better work prospects and welfare. NTUC will continue to champion for all workers, and we look forward to welcoming more companies onboard the
CTC initiatives to support their employees’ training and upskilling efforts.”
UTES General Secretary Thuvinder Singh added, “In the last three years, I saw first-hand Singtel’s commitment to partnering with UTES to train and develop a more digital and tech-savvy workforce, despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. I look forward to working with my Singtel colleagues and my union brothers and sisters as we extend this partnership into the future, to equip all our workers with the digital skills so they can tap on the digital economy’s opportunities.”
