Workplace Learning & External Courses - An Effective Upskilling Blend for Companies
Editor’s note: We’re glad to co-author this article with Ms Florence Yuen, a freelance certified learning/process facilitator, certified workplace learning consultant and digitalisation consultant with more than 30 years of operational excellence, digitalisation and change management experience in the service and support of the technology sector.
Singapore’s Budget 2024 continues to encourage Continuous Education & Training (“CET”) for our workforce.
For individuals – A significant top-up to SkillsFuture Credits of Singaporeans aged 40 and above was announced, alongside enhanced subsidies for mid-career workers pursuing certain diploma-level courses.
For businesses – The SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit was extended till June 2025, continuing to cover up to 90% of out-of-pocket expenses for supportable enterprise capability development and workforce transformation programmes.
The rapidly-changing industry landscape requires each and every one in the workforce to periodically upskill so we have the right skillsets for our work roles, which would necessarily change with time.
To their credit, many companies already have training programmes for their workers
When too much choice leads to no choice
Firms often seek to send workers to SkillsFuture-subsidised courses, to which there are many providers offering many courses in many disciplines.
Therein lies one key issue: when there is too much choice, there is often no decision, because our brains find it difficult to process so much information all at once. That is why the best websites often have one single message and the best user menus give users 3 options.
The plethora of market course offerings available makes it cumbersome for companies’ Human Resource and Learning & Development teams to properly curate training opportunities for staff. So despite the best intentions, workers may not necessarily be sent to courses most suitable for them.
Additionally, given that many such courses are only 3-5 days long (to minimise work disruptions), more than one employer has questioned how effective these short courses are in improving employees’ skills, and ultimately contributing to the company.
That is partly what Budget 2024’s SkillFuture Level Up programme seeks to address, through support for Diploma-level courses that are longer and presumably more business/career outcome-focused.
Who often knows best? The company (and senior workers)
External training is often useful in improving learners’ skillsets, especially if taught by highly-experienced trainers who focus on application back in the workplace. However, trainers’ experience and calibre do differ, so this is not always a given.
Irrespective of trainer standards, most off-the-shelf training courses are not 100% applicable to individual companies.
To have a good fit, the trainer must do more to understand the business and customise their training offering accordingly, presumably at higher cost (which is fair for the additional work done). That is no different from consumers choosing a jacket off-the-rack (cheaper but not 100% fitting), or having a good tailor make-to-measure (individualised fitting but higher price).
But what if we can have the best of both worlds – training that fits the individual company, but at not too significant a cost increase?
One solution is Workplace Learning – helping workers to acquire skills or knowledge by formal and/or informal means AT THE WORKPLACE.
Workplace Learning such as On-the-Job Training (“OJT”) are especially useful for frontline / deskless / blue-collar job roles, where external courses in an “academic” setting, e.g. at an Institute of Higher Learning (“IHL”) may not be optimal in imparting the skills needed for the job.
Learning at the workplace offers benefits to both organisations & workers – as workers can now participate in training right in the work environment, taught by senior colleagues who know exactly how the work is done. Time is saved, and contextual application is improved.
Workplace Learning (“WPL”) is not costless. Senior workers who are tapped to be the workplace trainers need to be taken out of their job responsibilities temporarily, so this does affect short-term work output. These new de facto trainers themselves also need training in how to train colleagues effectively.
But overall, the costs are outweighed by the benefits in the medium-to-long term, through the entire workforce’s improved job performance and contribution to the company bottom line.
Workplace Learning in Practice
One of us worked with a company who needed to add a new consultancy business area to increase the firm’s profitability. The team hence needed new skills to undertake this new area of business.
Driven by this business need, a Workplace Learning programme was put in place, complemented by Job Redesign and Digitalisation. The following was done:
1. Senior staff were roped in to train younger staff to perform business diagnosis, which was useful for clients’ consultancy projects. This training was conducted via OJT where learners looked at internal business and performance gaps, and co-created solutions, facilitated by the senior staff.
2. Job Redesign was done for Training Administrators to become fuller-scope Service Administrators, including defining measurable Key Performance Indicators and a new Standard Operating Procedure, co-created with staff.
3. The IT team formulated new workflow automations such as digital scripts to auto-generate work accounts for new consultants, as well as implementing microlearning for onboarding and training. The entire process was driven by senior staff, guided by one of us as the Workplace Learning Consultant, and with the full support of Company Leadership.
The entire firm gained from the Workplace Learning. Senior workers were able to hone their leadership skills, while the IT team applied their technical expertise. Everyone in the firm improved their problem-solving skills, collaboration skills and communication skills.
Supporting Workplace Learning
The great news is – companies do not need special training or infrastructure to put in place a Workplace Learning programme.
However, for companies who require assistance, The Institute for Adult Learning (“IAL”) currently provides support through its Centre for Workplace Learning and Performance (“CWLP”).
Through targetted projects, CWLP consultants (many of whom are industry- professionals) work with companies to diagnose business needs and co-create training interventions that can be implemented by company staff in-situ. In fact, IAL also offers a Graduate Certificate in Workplace Learning for companies interested to deepen in-house Workplace Learning expertise.
To ensure sustainability such that it is built into the company’s culture, companies who deploy Workplace Learning can consider the following:
1. Send 1 or more senior workers from individual work sections for the Advanced Certificate in Learning & Performance 2.0 (“ACLP 2.0”), administered by IAL. This SkillsFuture-subsidised course trains them to be Adult Educators, effectively upskilling these senior workers.
2. These trained senior workers can then be roped into a company-level internal training unit, or sent back to their work section as Lead trainer for the rest of the team, and/or other units’ team members for cross-training. This improves each worker’s breadth of skills and increases organisational redundancy.
3. Build in the training work into these senior workers’ core job roles & compensation. i.e. make training core to their job as part of their career progression. In this way, conducting training for co-workers is no longer viewed as “extra work”, but rather part of what gets these senior workers promoted.
For greater accessibility – digital approaches like mobile learning can also be utilised to design in-house training programmes and SOPs that can be accessed by workers on their smart devices anytime, anywhere when they require job aids for a refresher or quick reference. These job aids codify the tacit knowledge and experience that many of these senior workers apply in their work, which can now be shared with the entire workforce to improve skill, productivity and output for the company.
To promote inclusivity in learning – Mobile learning platforms like ArcLab also offer in-built translation features so workers can consume training in their desired language. In this way, workers who are not proficient in or comfortable using English can also be upskilled, creating a more inclusive training and work environment.
Companies’ institutional knowledge base often reside in their senior workers, which many more companies can and should tap on, to upskill the rest of their workforce in the flow of work.
Through an optimal blend of practical external training and effective workplace learning, Singapore’s workforce can be continuously upskilled, improve their companies’ output, and ultimately drive Singapore’s growth to uplift livelihoods and lives.