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A recent parliamentary motion on the future economy saw MPs from both sides of the aisle raise a slew of ideas on how to keep Singapore’s economy inclusive and dynamic.
To me, the linchpin for both economic inclusivity and dynamism is the role and quality of the workforce.
An inclusive economy must benefit its people. While there is a need to consider new ways to strengthen social support and step up redistribution for more equitable outcomes, Singapore must continue to prioritise employment and good jobs. Workers thrive when they have the skills and opportunities to contribute to the economy, and are rewarded for their contributions.
Three factors are critical. First, workers must be nimble and adaptable. Second, organisations must transform to activate skills and unleash the potential of workers. Third, we need a refreshed work and learning ecosystem – enabled by public policy – to support workers and organisations and help them thrive.
Nimble and adaptable workers
Singapore tops the world in test scores of 15-year-olds, but can we top the world in the skills and learning agility of 45-year-olds? The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Survey of Adult Skills suggests, however, that Singaporeans are only in the middle of the pack relative to OECD economies in adult literacy and numeracy.
Framing our ambition is important. Singapore should aim not just to have the world’s best students, but also to have the world’s most agile, adaptable and innovative workforce.
This means reaffirming that people are Singapore’s key competitive advantage, and not just technology or infrastructure. The maxim that people are our only resource has underpinned sustained public investment in education and human capital development through the years.
Today, it is not just about developing hard skills and competencies. The human skills, or critical core skills, are coming to the fore, and the meta-skill of learning to learn is perhaps the most important of all. The emphasis must be on learning agility and adaptability amid disruption, and dynamic innovation beyond static excellence.
Artificial intelligence and automation will analyse and execute, but it is human beings who will set the agenda, prioritise tasks, frame the questions, weigh up the options that AI suggests, make decisions and take responsibility for outcomes. All this requires judgment and creativity, rooted in continual learning.
Individuals must get out of their comfort zones to seek new opportunities to learn and grow.
No one should be limited to the role of just a student, employee, freelancer or employer at any one time. Everyone can be a worker-learner and a worker-entrepreneur. As learning never stops, there should be no hard boundary between pre-employment training, and continuing education and training. And everyone – regardless of occupation – needs to have the mindset and instincts of an entrepreneur to contribute and succeed in the future economy.
Transformed learning organisations
Organisations must transform to activate the skills of their workforce and unleash the creativity of their people. Otherwise, the gains from training and reskilling will not be fully realised.
A body of research, including findings from the Institute for Adult Learning’s Skills and Learning Survey, suggests that much of what people learn in formal training is not applied at work, often because there is no opportunity to do so, or because the workplace is not conducive. Learning must therefore be dovetailed with organisational strategy, and not treated as a standalone activity. Enterprises must become learning enterprises, where learning is embedded in corporate DNA.
Leaders, HR professionals, line managers and unions all have a role to play in enabling learning by activating mindsets, securing training resources, embedding learning in work, and creating conducive environments for learning and experimentation. It should also be a priority for organisations to adopt skills-first practices – where skills, rather than credentials, become the key consideration for hiring, career development and advancement. This would give employers access to a larger pool of talent, while workers would enjoy greater career mobility without being constrained by their previous educational qualifications or work experience.
Finally, organisations should encourage ground-up innovation, by looking to the workforce as a source of insight and innovation. In a complex and uncertain environment, workers must make sense of the evolving context and be empowered to co-create solutions, with opportunities to hone their instincts and build their confidence. Involving workers in redesigning work can also lead to greater ownership and better outcomes.
Refreshed work and learning ecosystem
An agile workforce needs a refreshed, integrated work and learning ecosystem, and a labour market characterised by quality jobs and strong labour mobility.
Under SkillsFuture, there is already generous support for training and reskilling, a common skills taxonomy, and a Careers and Skills Passport that together facilitate skills certification, recognition and portability. There is also a network of training providers whose quality standards are continually monitored. Labour market intelligence is made available to individuals, firms and training providers via a suite of online tools and dashboards.
Still, there is more work ahead to strengthen the work and learning ecosystem.
First, we should make skills-first practices more prevalent, and indeed, the default for firms and organisations. The Institute for Adult Learning will be launching a Skills-First Framework for Action in October, which will set out concrete actions and behaviours that we hope will become widely adopted by individuals, employers and training providers.
Second, there is a need to develop robust skills credentialling. Today, there is a gap in the Careers and Skills Passport in that it primarily captures formal training and credentials, along with work experience. As workplace learning becomes an increasingly important part of lifelong learning, we need to be able to assess and recognise skills acquired on the job and demonstrable at the workplace. This is important as a more complete skills passport would enable and encourage adoption of skills-first practices. Institutes of higher learning, too, could support this by designing student testimonials to better reflect skills acquired through courses, internships and co-curricular activities.
Third, there is a need to support enterprises in becoming learning organisations by providing practical toolkits and resources to strengthen organisational capabilities, while helping leaders, HR and organisation development professionals place learning at the heart of organisational strategy and unlock the potential of their workforce.
Fourth, there is scope to further invest in personalised career guidance and job-matching capabilities – not recommending jobs based just on skills, but also on values, aspirations and personality fit. A good job fit is likely to result in personal fulfilment, more engaged and energised workers, and higher productivity and creativity.
Fifth, support for micro-entrepreneurship could be strengthened. By enabling business ideas and lowering the cost of market entry, AI is making one-person companies increasingly viable. The Government could review what more can be done to support such ventures – whether through financing, access to AI compute, business networks and mentoring, or other targeted forms of support – to encourage entrepreneurship as a viable career pathway or source of supplementary income.
Finally, we need to invest significantly in understanding the nexus among technology, adult learning, employability and business performance. One of the central challenges facing every organisation today is AI and its impact on work and their workforce. In the emerging AI age, no organisation or government has all the answers. We need to experiment, test, iterate and scale up what works in AI-enabled learning, work redesign and employability across a range of sectors and organisation types.
Just as we have built up considerable expertise in pedagogy that has placed Singapore at the forefront of global education for school-going children, we need to similarly build up expertise in lifelong learning and employability. We should bring to Singapore the world’s leading experts – not just academic researchers but practice-oriented academics who can bridge the world of academia and industry with timely research that informs practice in a fast-changing landscape. By building up our research and practice ecosystem, Singapore can be at the cutting-edge of learning and employability in the AI age. Our ambition for the workforce must be matched with sustained investment in expertise and capability.
The overarching aim should be to give Singaporeans the best chance of succeeding and contributing in the AI age, which is critical to a dynamic and inclusive economy, and fundamental to renewing Singapore’s social compact.
The commentary by Associate Professor (Practice) Terence Ho, Executive Director, Institute for Adult Learning was first published in The Straits Times on 22 August 2026