SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package
1 Budget 2020 announced the Next Bound of SkillsFuture to support Singaporeans in their pursuit of lifelong learning and skills mastery, by enhancing the role of employers and enterprises and enabling individuals to realise their potential. In particular, more support will be given to workers in their 40s and 50s (“mid-career workers”) through the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package.
SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package
2 The SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package will be jointly implemented by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). It will create more career transition opportunities for mid-career workers, enhance their employability, and help them move to new and better jobs or roles.
- More Placement Opportunities
WSG, SSG and sector-led platforms like Tech Skills Accelerator (TeSA) already offer a wide range of reskilling programmes that lead to placement in a job. These include Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs), Place-and-Train (PnT) programmes, Career Transition Programmes at CET Centres and TeSA Mid-Career Advance.
The training cost of such programmes are heavily subsidised, with some programmes receiving up to 90% training subsidies.
PCPs and PnT programmes also offer salary support during the period of training. Such programmes will enjoy enhanced salary support of up to 90% during the period of reskilling for mid-career workers.
We aim to double the number of mid-career workers who enter new jobs through these reskilling programmes to around 5,500, by 2025.
- Hiring Incentive
In addition, after the reskilling and retraining is completed, we will provide employers a further 20% salary support for the next six months, capped at $6,000 in total.
This is to encourage and recognise employers that offer placement opportunities to mid-career workers aged 40 and above.
- Additional SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career)
Every Singapore Citizen aged 40 to 60 (inclusive) as at 31 December 2020 will receive a one-off SkillsFuture Credit (SFC) top-up of $500 to improve their access to career transition programmes. This is in addition to the $500 SFC top-up for eligible Singapore Citizens.
SkillsFuture Credits empower mid-career workers to reskill on their own initiative.
- Volunteer Career Advisors
We will build up a pool of volunteer career advisors from professional communities to provide peer support to mid-career workers who may face career uncertainties or anxieties in navigating the ongoing economic transformation. We will start with the Information & Communication Technology and Finance sectors.
SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit (SFEC) and support for Job Redesign under Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG-JR)
3 Other changes under the Next Bound of SkillsFuture will also support enterprises to undertake enterprise and workforce transformation in tandem. All workers, including those in their 40s and 50s, stand to benefit from improved jobs.
- SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit (SFEC)
Employers can use the SFEC to invest in business transformation and also to invest in transforming the capabilities of their workforce. Eligible employers will receive a one-time credit of $10,000 per company to cover up to 90% of qualifying out-of-pocket expenses for eligible government programmes.
- Job Redesign Consultancy Now Supportable under Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG-JR)
The PSG will be expanded to support job redesign consultancy services. Workforce Singapore (WSG) will pre-approve job redesign consultants who can work with companies to redesign work processes, tasks and responsibilities to meet business transformation needs.
4 More information on the Next Bound of SkillsFuture measures and the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package can be found in the attached Annexes and at www.skillsfuture.sg/nextbound. More details will be released as each initiative is ready for roll-out.