Job Service Centres for Elderly Singaporeans

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Manpower if he will consider setting up a central or decentralised Job Development, Assessment and Placement Service for Elderly Singaporeans for wider job options and proper job matching to commensurate with the job seekers' skills and physical abilities.

The Minister of State for Manpower (BG [NS] Tan Chuan-Jin):

(for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Manpower): Mr Speaker, the Government currently provides job assessment, matching and placement services through WDA's Career Centres at the Community Development Councils (CDCs), the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) and CaliberLink. These service centres are well-equipped, easily accessible and cater to the needs of a wide range of residents living across Singapore, including older workers.

We recognise that older workers often have special requirements and needs. However, rather than a Job Development, Assessment and Placement Service for older workers only, we believe in adopting a functional approach and ensuring that our existing service touch points are sensitive to the needs and requirements of older workers too.

We aim to attract and develop career consultants to have the right experience and personal qualities to assist a wide range of job seekers. The career consultants adopt a case management approach to help each client based on their individual needs. They carry out an in-depth assessment of each client's capabilities and circumstances, before deciding how best to match job seekers to jobs or whether they need more training to become job ready.

For older workers who are job ready, career consultants are careful during the job matching process to find a good job fit and ensure that job seekers are able to meet the demands of the jobs applied for. Career Centres also actively source for a wide range of jobs across different industries that suit the capabilities and needs of older workers. For example, our Career Centres hold thematic job fairs targeted at older workers. These include North East Career Centre's Silver Job Fair and South East Career Centre's Evergreen Job Fair.

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At the same time, we recognise that some older job seekers may not be job ready and require more training to update and upgrade their skills. Career consultants will work with such job seekers to identify their skills competencies and gaps, and recommend suitable training options for them to upgrade and get better jobs.

While the Government will provide quality training and employment facilitation services for older workers, honestly, our efforts will have limited effect if conditions at the workplace are not conducive for older workers. Hence, we have and will continue to encourage employers to adopt age management practices in their workplaces, such as redesigning work processes to suit the physical abilities and skills of an ageing workforce. This will enable employers to be attractive to older workers in this tight labour market. We will also continue to encourage companies to adopt fair employment practices through the Tripartite Alliance on Fair Employment Practices (TAFEP). I would emphasise that especially given the tight labour market, companies should seriously look at older workers, in terms of employment, as they represent a lot of experience and a stable workforce to tap on.

Our concerted and dedicated efforts have helped a number of older workers into employment. Of the 14,200 job seekers placed by WDA's Career Centres at the CDCs and the e2i in 2011, about 35% were individuals aged 50 and older. Nevertheless, we believe that more can be done for this group and we will continue to incorporate feedback and improve on our job matching and placement services for older workers.

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Moulmein-Kallang): Sir, I thank the Minister of State, for his response. I have three questions. Would the Minister of State agree that the typical jobs in which less educated or uneducated elderly Singaporeans are placed, are usually physically demanding jobs like the cleaners in different settings, either in their estates, in the public areas, in school settings or food courts? Second question is, would the Ministry consider proactively setting up a taskforce to look into creatively developing different types of jobs for this age group either by redesigning or ring-fencing some jobs so that they have more options, other than the cleaner jobs that many of us refer them to? Third question is, if that is acceptable, when can we expect some action or deliverables that can be visibly felt on the ground for those of us, and I am sure the Ministry too, who want to help this group?

BG [NS] Tan Chuan-Jin: I thank the hon Member for her concern. This is something that many of us in this House share as we do meet residents who are older, less educated and less skilled and who actually do want to find jobs. Indeed, due to the profile of the older workers, we do find that there are certain sectors that they tend to congregate in. One of the areas that we have highlighted before, in terms of the low-wage workers sector, we also do find older workers there, particularly the cleaning sector as well as the security agencies. Having said that, there are jobs available elsewhere as well – office jobs, administrative jobs – depending on the skill levels.

It is a fair comment to say, given their profile, but this is something that will change over time as education levels have improved. With every corresponding passing of years, you will have older Singaporeans who actually will be better skilled and better educated. So, more jobs will be available. The challenge really is dealing with the here and now. For the older workers today, can we explore more jobs being created in other sectors, whether by ring-fencing or redesigning to provide employment? This is something that the Member has raised, and whether we should set up a taskforce to look at it. We do encourage companies to look at redesigning their work processes to encourage older workers to come back into the job market. Having said that, a lot of these jobs probably may not fit the profile of the older workers that she is talking about, but if the Member has very specific ideas and initiatives that we should pursue, this is something we can discuss further, to see whether it is something feasible to explore, and whether the market could end up creating more jobs in specific areas for this segment of workers.

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Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng: Would the Minister consider setting up a taskforce for this?

BG [NS] Tan Chuan-Jin: As I mentioned, I would appreciate it if we could follow up on this discussion to understand what are the specific ideas that the Member might have. We could explore whether it is something feasible. The main priority right now is identifying workers who do need jobs, and how do we match them. Her concern is whether they should have more options beyond the cleaning jobs and the security jobs. Those are perhaps more onerous. Whether we could create more of these jobs, rather than the ones that she had described earlier. That is something that we could discuss and we could take a look at whether it warrants setting up a taskforce and a specific study on that basis.

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (Nee Soon): I would like to ask the Minister of State what more can his Ministry do to encourage more employers from the current level to come forward. Currently, the issue is the supply side. What else can the Ministry to get more employers to come forward to offer, not just the rank and file jobs, but the whole range up to some of these professional, managerial and executive (PME) jobs?

BG [NS] Tan Chuan-Jin: Generally, in terms of the effort that we have put in, both from the Government encouraging the industries and companies and the response by the companies themselves, we have seen, for example, the employment rate for residents aged 55 to 64 actually rising to an all time high, 61.2% in 2011. We foresee that the numbers would increase.

Broadly, the measures put in place include the Retirement and Re-employment Act that we have just recently introduced this year. We do expect as a result of that employment of older workers would rise across the board. We have also enhanced the Special Employment Credit to provide further incentives to companies to hire and retain older workers. We also have incentives such as to create more age-friendly workplaces and environments through the ADVANTAGE! Scheme. The Scheme will continue to provide generous funding and support to help companies train older workers, and redesign jobs and work processes at workplaces. This is something that might be feasible to help older workers who might be able to be retrained and to be upskilled to take on different jobs. And for some of these companies to design the jobs so that they are actually suitable for these older workers as well. Therefore, by improving the fit between older workers and jobs, companies can, we believe, also maximise productivity and at the same time, with the tight labour market, continue to attract older residents who are not working, into the workforce.

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We provide opportunities for older workers to upgrade their skills, to remain employable. The companies and low-wage workers can tap on the Workfare Training Support Scheme which provides generous training subsidies. WDA also works closely with tripartite partners in industries with a high proportion of older workers to provide targeted training assistance and support for older workers.

There is a wide range of effort. The issue at hand, coming back to Ms Denise Phua's earlier point is whether for particular segments, especially the lower educated, lower skilled older workers, these measures would have sufficient impact. I believe there would be some impact. The question is, whether we are able to, in a very comprehensive way, uplift these workers so that in some sense we can open up the vista to better jobs rather than the present ones that they are looking forward to. We can discuss further and take a look at whether there are more concrete measures we can carry out.

The priority right now is to make sure that the measures we have in place are effective. We are quite happy to take on suggestions and, more importantly, to do the job placements so that those who want to work can find work. The next question is, are we able to qualitatively improve the range of work and jobs available? So that is something we can look at and see whether there are practical measures we can put in place, over and above what we have today.