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Work

If you could choose, what sort of work would you do as you get older? 
How would you get the skills you need to do the job?

PRODUCTIVE LONGEVITY

PRODUCTIVE LONGEVITY

In future, work would not be work as we know it today and no two paths to success would be exactly the same.

Instead, everyone would have to chart their own course and decide how best to spend their time as life expectancy increases.


What would give you a reason to wake up each day and look forward to the next 15 hours or so? Would it be the same job that you’ve always been doing? Or something entirely different?

Is now perhaps the time to start thinking about your encore career?

A career that may not offer you as much money or prospects, but more flexibility, fulfilment and a sense of mission.

Use these resources to get you thinking about how it is you want to spend the rest of your life.

SkillsFuture

SkillsFuture will enable seniors to take ownership of their training and career needs and embrace lifelong learning. The range of SkillsFuture initiatives includes:


Skills-Based Modular Courses

  • Skills-Based Modular Courses offered by Post-Secondary Education Institutions (PSEIs).

  • These provide more flexible, bite-sized and targeted learning opportunities at PSEIs for working adults to acquire relevant skills without necessarily pursuing a full qualification programme.

SkillsFuture Mid-Career Enhanced Subsidy

  • Since the second half of 2015, all Singapore Citizens aged 40 and above enjoy higher subsidies of up to 90% of course fees for Singapore Workforce Development Agency-supported certifiable courses.

  • They also enjoy at least 90% of programme cost subsidy for Ministry of Education-subsidised full-time and part-time courses (Nitec to postgraduate courses) at the Institute of Technical Education, polytechnics and publicly-funded universities.

For details on SkillsFuture, click here to find out more.

WorkPro

The government will continue to support employers to re-design jobs for seniors and create age-friendly workplaces.

Under WorkPro, there are various grants to support employers to re-design their workplace practices, processes and jobs. WorkPro was extended and enhanced in 2016 to catalyse companies’ efforts to re-design jobs for older workers.

To build capabilities, the tripartite partners have worked with Institutes of Higher Learning to further develop a training programme specific to the management of older workers in Singapore.

The programme covers core topics including human resource management, sociological aspects of ageing, workplace safety and health, and job re-design. In addition to building local capabilities in age management, we are developing a job re-design toolkit to provide practical guidance to companies on re-designing jobs for a mature workforce.

In addition to building local capabilities in age management, the Workforce Singapore (WSG) introduced customised support for sectors with a higher concentration of older workers through curating lists of jobs redesign solutions and setting up sectorial job redesign clinics to raise awareness among employers about ready solutions that they can adopt to redesign their jobs. Click here to find out more.

Workplace Health Programme

The Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Health Promotion Board will bring healthy lifestyle activities to the doorstep of mature workers. The workplace health programme is implemented across different sectors targeting mature workers aged 40 and above. As part of the programme, workers are surveyed to understand the key health issues that they face, provide health screenings at the workplaces and design workplace-specific preventive health programmes to address the health issues most salient to them. As of December 2017, 44,000 mature workers have been reached.

Centre for Seniors

Some voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs), such as Centre for Seniors, have developed programmes to help older workers seeking a career transition as well as those preparing for retirement.

Centre for Seniors will help seniors better understand government schemes in housing, healthcare and retirement adequacy.

There will also be a programme to train union leaders to be effective advocates of re-employment and retirement matters. After the training, they will be able to coach older workers in their respective sectors on related topics, such as how to plan for retirement or switch to a new career.

Bite-sized job opportunities

MOH hopes to partner community organisations and companies to provide more bite-sized job opportunities for seniors within the community.



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