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The Business Times

Keeping a well-honed edge

Tap CET (Continuing Education and Training) for continual improvement, says JAMES TAY

A KNOWLEDGE-BASED economy is one in which the production, distribution and use of knowledge are the main drivers of growth, wealth-creation and employment for all industries. In a knowledge-based economy, people and their ideas and capabilities are the major source of wealth and opportunity. Investment in skills, knowledge and creativity are necessary to ensure that the workforce has capabilities suitable for a knowledge-based economy.

Something to reflect on: In order to keep pace with changes, the UK is focusing on continuing professional development to propel the economy to recovery

Thus the 'knowledge' element of today's goods and services is vastly more important than it was a few decades ago. There is a broad consensus that human talent has become a growing determinant of productivity and other economic outcomes, and that its role is particularly crucial in today's knowledge-driven economy.

Continuing development

The United States, being the largest economy in the world, boosted spending on education to about 6 per cent of its GDP in 2011. Based on a 10-year forecast, 63 per cent of new and replacement jobs will require further education on top of a basic degree and diploma.

In order to keep pace with changes, the United Kingdom is focusing on continuing professional development to propel its economy to recovery.

China, with average growth of 10 per cent since 1981, is projected to be the leading economy in 2016. Rapid industrialisation and increased demand for qualified employees has prompted the government to nationalise life-long education and establish a sound financial support system to meet the needs of life-long learning for all, to realise the goal of modernising education and building a learning society by 2020.

Singapore has also responded to the strategic need for more life-long learning and has promoted a number of initiatives,
including the Lifelong Learning Endowment Fund, The Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) in 2008, Productivity @ Work and the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme. Strategies include establishing a national council to drive productivity and continuing education and training, in order to provide incentives to catalyse and sustain productivity transformation in the industry.

Scarcity of talent

Based on a recent survey, fresh graduates are getting higher starting pays in 2011, despite the uncertainty in the global economy. As a knowledge-based economy, the next generation of knowledge professionals will be highly sought after. These individuals have talent that all organisations in Singapore are competing for.

Professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) with greater problem-solving and communications abilities should be able to perform better than their less skilled counterparts at any task and will also learn faster. Hence, employees who are trained in specific skills and knowledge can be expected to be more productive than untrained ones.
Although the majority of employers have discovered that the right talent is critical to business success, individuals with the precise talent needed are becoming increasingly difficult to find, thus creating a mismatch between available skills and what is needed by employers.

In the past, for organisations to move ahead and grow their businesses, they needed to attract both local and foreign talent. Now the situation has changed. It matters less whether organisations can attract the talent they need and more on whether they can grow the 'potential talent' they already have in their organisation.

Today, relatively few occupations involve only mechanical physical tasks and a large and growing fraction of jobs are either
reduced to just the processing of information or the application of specialised knowledge and skills to the production of increasingly sophisticated goods and services.

Even more important than the need for better technical skills is the demand for employees with 'softer' management skills - the ability to manage change, the capacity to think strategically, the ability to communicate effectively, and analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

With this in mind and the knowledge that people are the life-blood of a company, most organisations are committed to spending time and resources to hone the softer skills of their employees. These companies understand that for their managers to be successful, they need to have soft skills, such as leadership ability, negotiation skills, self-motivation as well as time management and communication skills.

Taking this further, these soft skills are actually life skills that everyone should have to be successful at specific stages of life and career. However, individuals may not have the abilities or time to develop these skills on their own and thus it is recommended that both individuals and companies look towards CET (Continuing Education and Training) as a means and necessity of continually developing and improving oneself and the organisations' employees.

Talent - as capital once was - is becoming not only a scarce resource, but the key competitive differentiator. To thrive and grow, employers need to ensure that they have updated their assumptions around people practices and work models to fit the reality of the 21st century employment landscape.

Realising that they truly can do more for less, organisations must now become more flexible in how they attract, train and develop their employees - ensuring they have the best possible environment to unlock the creativity, innovation, and passion that are at the very core of what it means to be human.

They must hone these newly gained abilities to ensure they are developing and unleashing the raw potential of their people and must be committed to identifying and investing in their talent strategy for at least the next 5-10 years.

James Tay