Productivity, Innovation and CET

Madam, I wish to put on record the good work of the Manpower Minister in chairing the Inter-Ministry Committee on the concerns in residential areas with a high density of foreign workers.  The Committee's collaboration with grassroots leaders in deploying uniformed patrols, for instance, has received very good feedback from the ground.

There are three areas that I seek to draw the Ministry of Manpower's attention to.

One is the plea in my Budget speech for Government's leniency in foreign workers levy and staff ratio at VWO-operated nursing homes and centres for the disabled adults. 

Two,  in the area of CEO engagement and role in the overall drive for productivity and innovation in our country.

Madam, in recent surveys by the Boston Consulting Group, two-thirds of the top executives surveyed identified innovation as a top strategic goal.  When asked, however, why there is a lack of sustained innovation, the two top reasons quoted were (1) lack of time; and (2) lack of management commitment.

Madam, as early as 20 years ago, gurus like Jim Clemmer have long advocated that staff training is only one of the strategies leading to good culture, service excellence cultures, for instance.  In culture changing, Clemmer called for  the "Firing of 12 Cylinders" where CEOs and senior managers must take  planned efforts in other critical interventions like signaling commitment, listening to internal/external customers, job restructuring/redesigning, setting up systems, reward and recognition, standards and measures.In short, more than worker education and training. 

Madam, I urge the Minister to develop specific Learning Roadmaps for the CEOs and their senior managers which appear to be missing in current WDA and e2i efforts.  Knowing their learning profiles may be different, I ask the Ministry to conduct a rigorous Learning Needs Analysis for this group and to put up online learning resources on Productivity and Innovation that would enable them to learn anywhere, anytime; in their homes, at the workplace or the airports.  Ted.com and www.earthacademics.com are good online learning resources for senior management that can serve as reference. We can blend these with face-to-face networking and sharing forums and this blended approach can be looked into.

Thirdly, Madam, I wish to take the ESC's goal for Inclusive Growth seriously and seek MOM's active role to support a specific category of vulnerable workers in Singapore.

My volunteers and I recently conducted a study of the employment of special-needs staff by Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) which has been exemplary in this space.  What amazed us was that whilst KFC received a lot of media attention over the years and piece-meal help for the hiring of deaf, physically disabled, visually impaired, intellectually disabled staff; there is little national effort to drill down to the structure, the systems, the processes and the training programmes.  In short, what really works beneath the iceberg.  If these systems and processes could be codified, customised and communicated; they can be scaled operationally across disability groups and benefit the entire disabled and, perhaps, even relevant able-bodied workers in Singapore.

Madam, it is not sufficient to keep quoting the mini successes here and there, of compassionate disabled-friendly companies like KFC, Starbucks, Holiday Inn, BizLink and Mr Bean.

I ask the Minister to facilitate the setting up of  a formal Continual Education and Training Unit for the Disabled that leverage on the excellent work of the current e2i and the upcoming major CET Centres.  This vulnerable workforce needs lifelong learning like every other typical worker and PMET in Singapore.

Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong has left a legacy in the education of special needs students when he was in MOE. The same children he has helped educate are now growing up or grown up.  Do not let them become one of the dismal statistics of people adults with disability stay at home.  

Let us do the right thing and make a difference to this vulnerable workforce who, like you and I, are sons and daughters of Singapore, not step-children of Singapore.