Jobs growth highest in five years, but unemployment inches up as well
A former marketing and advertising associate director, she stopped working for several years due to health reasons and to take care of her son.
When Ms Lim Su-Lin, 47, rejoined the workforce as a cashier at sports retailer Decathlon in 2016, she did not expect to find a second career.
But she now takes care of the welcome desk at the Bedok outlet, leads membership recruitment for Singapore and is keen to undergo more training.
With the quality of jobs like Ms Lim's getting better, there is a need to invest in training and skills upgrading to bridge the skills gap, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said at the launch of a job redesign place-and-train programme for retail workers on Monday.
UPTREND
Speaking to the media after a tour of Decathlon Singapore Lab in Kallang, Mrs Teo said there is a clear uptrend in professional, manager, executive and technician (PMET) vacancies over the past five years, despite fluctuations quarter-on-quarter.
But the job and skills mismatch, which flash estimates in October suggested was widening, will not go away.
"If we are transforming our economy at a fast enough rate, then the job-skills mismatch must actually enlarge and we must see that as an opportunity," Mrs Teo said.
Releasing the third quarter labour market report yesterday, the Manpower Ministry said while job vacancies have fallen, job opportunities remain available, particularly for PMETs in the service sector.
To that end, the job redesign place-and-train programme has been launched to help train and upskill retails workers to take on new roles in the digital economy.
Workforce Singapore will work with retailers to customise their training plans, which can comprise a mix of classroom and on-the-job training, and will provide up to 70 per cent in salary support for employees on the programme during the training period.
The programme aims to support 200 workers over two years and Decathlon has taken up half of these places for current and future employees.
Decathlon Singapore Lab deputy store leader Tan Ping Yong said the company is transforming the way its workers behave in stores and have redesigned their job roles to be omnichannel.
Repeating a phrase she used last month, Mrs Teo described the current manpower landscape as "persistent showers with pockets of sunshine".
"Far from retail being a sunset industry, actually we see companies like Decathlon innovating to do something very different," said Mrs Teo.
"The training programmes that we try to put in place is precisely an attempt to be win-win, because they have a vacancy (and) if we have people with the right sort of attitude, then we can train them so they can perform the job roles effectively."
It took Ms Lim two months before she applied for the cashier job as she feared rejection and not being able to learn fast enough.
But with Decathlon giving her autonomy to plan her own training, including digital marketing and even some data analytics, the omnichannel sports leader said she feels young again.
"I didn't think I would have progressed this far."
A former marketing and advertising associate director, she stopped working for several years due to health reasons and to take care of her son.
When Ms Lim Su-Lin, 47, rejoined the workforce as a cashier at sports retailer Decathlon in 2016, she did not expect to find a second career.
But she now takes care of the welcome desk at the Bedok outlet, leads membership recruitment for Singapore and is keen to undergo more training.
With the quality of jobs like Ms Lim's getting better, there is a need to invest in training and skills upgrading to bridge the skills gap, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said at the launch of a job redesign place-and-train programme for retail workers on Monday.
UPTREND
Speaking to the media after a tour of Decathlon Singapore Lab in Kallang, Mrs Teo said there is a clear uptrend in professional, manager, executive and technician (PMET) vacancies over the past five years, despite fluctuations quarter-on-quarter.
But the job and skills mismatch, which flash estimates in October suggested was widening, will not go away.
"If we are transforming our economy at a fast enough rate, then the job-skills mismatch must actually enlarge and we must see that as an opportunity," Mrs Teo said.
Releasing the third quarter labour market report yesterday, the Manpower Ministry said while job vacancies have fallen, job opportunities remain available, particularly for PMETs in the service sector.
To that end, the job redesign place-and-train programme has been launched to help train and upskill retails workers to take on new roles in the digital economy.
Workforce Singapore will work with retailers to customise their training plans, which can comprise a mix of classroom and on-the-job training, and will provide up to 70 per cent in salary support for employees on the programme during the training period.
The programme aims to support 200 workers over two years and Decathlon has taken up half of these places for current and future employees.
Decathlon Singapore Lab deputy store leader Tan Ping Yong said the company is transforming the way its workers behave in stores and have redesigned their job roles to be omnichannel.
Repeating a phrase she used last month, Mrs Teo described the current manpower landscape as "persistent showers with pockets of sunshine".
"Far from retail being a sunset industry, actually we see companies like Decathlon innovating to do something very different," said Mrs Teo.
"The training programmes that we try to put in place is precisely an attempt to be win-win, because they have a vacancy (and) if we have people with the right sort of attitude, then we can train them so they can perform the job roles effectively."
It took Ms Lim two months before she applied for the cashier job as she feared rejection and not being able to learn fast enough.
But with Decathlon giving her autonomy to plan her own training, including digital marketing and even some data analytics, the omnichannel sports leader said she feels young again.
"I didn't think I would have progressed this far."
Although being a cashier is still an honest livelihood, there is really nothing there to glorify it unless one is besotted with the PAP.
