DAVOS - A tight labour market may be a good thing, as this motivates companies to look at marginal candidates more closely and find ways to upskill them rather than overlook such prospects out of hand, Minister for Communications and Information Josephine Teo said on Monday (May 23).

Such conditions also support the three labour market outcomes the Government wants: high employment, low unemployment and sustainable wage growth, she added at a panel discussion about creating a global skills framework. It was held on the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"When employers have obviously a very large pool to select from, they are much more likely to want plug-and-play," she said.

However, a tight labour market prompts employers to look at candidates more closely and make the effort to top up their skills - out of necessity as they seek to meet their manpower needs, added Mrs Teo, who previously held the manpower portfolio.

Agreeing, fellow panellist and chief executive of management consultancy Bain & Co Manny Maceda said the world's rapid pivot in recent months to tight labour markets meant firms have had to get much more creative in where they look for potential hires.

"The recruiting side of this then becomes very important to be able to find new sources of talent," he said.

He noted that 50 major firms in the United States, such as IBM, Nike and Walmart, have committed to hiring over the next decade a million black Americans who do not hold a degree, and that reassessing job requirements is a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Earlier this month, Singapore's Manpower Ministry said it would support the hiring of mature workers who have not worked for at least six months, people with disabilities and former offenders, by extending the Jobs Growth Incentive for employers to September.

Employers can also tap programmes such as the SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways Programme to provide mature workers with on-the-job training and evaluate their suitability for the role.

At the discussion, panellists said there is growing recognition from both employers and workers on the need to shift to a skills-based approach of looking at competencies and job fit, not least because jobs are changing faster than ever.

LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue said that the networking platform found from its 830 million users' profiles that since 2015, the skills composition for jobs has changed by about 25 per cent. The pace of change is expected to double by 2025, he added.

Besides more equitable hiring for those who have acquired their skills through non-traditional ways such as apprenticeships, a skills-based approach shows that there is more similarity between jobs than most people think, he added.

"The difference between a bartender and a customer service representative is only about 30 per cent of your skills," he said. "So basically, you need to add a little bit and then you can do that, because a lot of the soft skills you have are already in place."

Ms Shobana Kamineni, executive vice-chairman of integrated healthcare conglomerate Apollo Hospitals, noted the growing consensus that even staying in one profession will require a constant upgrading of skills, such as for doctors.

She said: "They constantly have to reskill, change as technology keeps changing (including) those that are not at the cutting edge, and leading it.

"If we have doctors that don't know how to use robotics, then they get outdated very fast."

Mrs Teo said firms in Singapore have in the past decade come around to the need to map the skills and competencies of their workforce, and that the alternative is falling behind the competition.

But no amount of persuasion by the Government or labour unions will get workers to move on skills upgrading unless employers show that they value such training, she said.

"Employers have to link whatever training intervention is being invested into their changing business strategies, and the new kinds of ways in which they expect to succeed," she said.

"When workers can see that, then they will really be motivated to acquire the competencies."