Speech at Second Reading of Skills and Workforce Development Agency (SWDA) Bill

Minister Tan See Leng, Parliament House

Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

2. At Budget 2026, PM announced that we will merge SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG) into a new statutory board jointly overseen by MOE and MOM. 

Recap of achievements 

3. A decade ago, we restructured the Workforce Development Agency into two agencies.  WSG remained under MOM to focus on strengthening employment facilitation services and programmes.  SSG moved under MOE to enable it to work more closely with our institutes of higher learning (IHLs) to drive the SkillsFuture movement.

4. Since then, both agencies have come a long way in providing individuals and employers with more comprehensive support. 

a. SSG has built a vibrant CET landscape, ramping up offerings by private training providers and establishing the IHLs as a key pillar in the ecosystem. Through the SkillsFuture Credit, SSG has mainstreamed the culture of lifelong learning in Singapore. The number of individuals participating in SSG-supported training each year has grown from 418,000 in 2016 to more than 600,000 in 2025. That is about one-fifth of the resident workforce. SSG has also introduced the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme, extending significant support for mid-career Singaporeans to pursue a substantive skills reboot.

b. SSG has expanded its reach in supporting individuals and employers through employment facilitation, reskilling and job redesign. The number of individuals assisted by WSG and its partners has tripled from 127,000 in 2017 to 355,000 in 2025. WSG helped many Singaporeans to overcome episodes of economic slowdown, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. WSG also expanded the range of support, with the introduction of the Polaris programme to support individuals in long-term career planning in an increasingly fast-changing labour market. 

Context and impetus for the merger 

5. The 2016 restructuring substantially delivered what it set out to do. But over the past ten years the world around us has shifted, and the next ten years will certainly not in any way resemble the last ten.  

a. First, technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. ChatGPT did not exist five years ago. The capabilities of artificial intelligence we see today would have been science fiction in 2016. But the technological wave is now here, and it is picking up speed and momentum.

b. Second, geopolitical shocks are reshaping the global economy in ways that were difficult to imagine a decade ago. Since 2016, we have lived through a global pandemic that shuttered economies overnight. Wars in Europe and now the Middle East have upended energy markets, and a rupture in US-China relations is redrawing the map of global trade and investment. The more predictable world that our 2016 framework rested on is now gone.

c. Third, demographic change continues relentlessly. In 2015, roughly 1 in 8 Singapore Citizens was aged 65 and above. Today, it is more than 1 in 5 – crossing the threshold of a super-aged society. By 2030, it will be 1 in 4. While we had seen this demographic change coming, we are now feeling its impact more acutely. This further sharpens the imperative for us to strengthen the career longevity of our workforce.

6. In short, we live in a different world from ten years ago. What worked in the past decade will need significant transformation, to be more predictive and anticipatory as well as be more responsive and targeted moving forward. To stay ahead of change, we must therefore be able to continuously adapt with the times and with new realities. 

7. That is why we are bringing SSG and WSG together, combining the strengths that both agencies have built up over the past decade into a single upgraded engine for skills and workforce development, ready to support Singaporeans and employers to navigate an age of unprecedented change. 

8. We will call the new agency the “Skills and Workforce Development Agency”, or SWDA in short. The name reflects the agency’s mission to develop and to advance Singapore’s human potential.

Uplifting Individuals, Employers and the Ecosystem 

9. SWDA will focus on better serving individuals and employers, and better partnering the broader ecosystem of providers of career and employment services and training. Let me elaborate on each in turn. 

10. First, individuals. In the world we live in today, many of us are worried about whether our job will still exist in time to come; whether we can find another job with the same pay and seniority if we lose our job; whether our skills built up over an entire career may become obsolete faster than we can keep up. These are legitimate and valid concerns. But our collective response must be one of proactive action, not passive anxiety. 

11. SWDA will enable Singaporeans to take purposeful action to stay adaptable and resilient in a fast-changing and uncertain economy. It will support you to build up your career health consistently, strengthening immunity to disruptions and instilling agility to seize new opportunities. It will help you to make better training and career decisions in support of your longer-term career goals. It will help you to bounce back after facing career setbacks. SWDA will do these by bringing the capabilities of SSG and WSG together, integrating them to deliver timely and trusted career and skills insights and smarter training and career services, and do that even more than before. 

12. SWDA will build a more comprehensive offering of tools, services and programmes to journey with individuals through different life stages. 

a. For fresh graduates navigating your first steps in the job market, SWDA will expand opportunities for you to gain real work experience and secure your footing. We will partner companies to provide attachment and traineeship programmes that will give you concrete work experience and exposure, which then create pathways to enter growth sectors with strong manpower demand.  We will develop new or expand existing programmes like the BioPharma Talent Builder programme, which equips you to take on jobs in leading biomedical firms. For those still uncertain about your career trajectory after graduation, SWDA will offer career guidance to help you identify potential career pathways in line with your aspirations, your goals and your values. 

b. For mid-career workers – whether facing mid-career stagnation, feeling apprehensive about being displaced, encountering retrenchments, or returning to work after a caregiving break, or simply planning ahead – the hardest part is often not knowing where to start and when to take the first step. SWDA will enhance career guidance, job matching and reskilling support to provide more transition pathways. This includes expanding partnerships with private career service providers and employer networks to deliver more resources for you to navigate the labour market, make personalised career plans and connect to new prospects. In partnership with GovTech, we have rolled out an AI advisor, Career Kaki, that serves as a personal digital concierge for careers and skills, available at any time of the day to help those who are unsure of their next steps. SWDA will continue to expand and improve on these service offerings. 

c. For senior workers who have much to contribute with your networks and experience and are keen to do so, SWDA is part of the Tripartite Workgroup on Senior Employment that is developing an integrated approach to support longer careers. Working with progressive companies and human resource professionals, SWDA will develop and scale solutions for longer, multi-stage careers, and promote age-inclusive jobs and workplaces. 

13. Preparing our workforce for AI is a key priority. At Budget 2026, PM announced the latest addition to SWDA’s offering – free access to premium AI tools for those who take up selected training courses. This is one of the priorities that SWDA will deliver in the coming months, as part of a holistic suite of efforts to help workers future-proof their skills and strengthen career health in an AI-enabled economy.
 
14. SWDA will offer individuals a more seamless journey through an integrated touchpoint. Instead of navigating programmes offered by two agencies, individuals will have a single interface to the full suite of career guidance, skills training and job matching support offered by SWDA. It will offer an enhanced digital experience, with AI-powered personalised career guidance, recommendations of in-demand training courses, and exploratory tools for employment opportunities based on one’s portfolio of skills.

15. Second, the other part of our equation – our employers, SWDA can provide support for their recruitment efforts. For those employers or businesses looking to fill job vacancies, SWDA can help to accelerate hiring of suitable candidates from its pool of jobseekers and trainees, leveraging the Careers & Skills Passport as a common verified information source on the work experience and skillsets of candidates. 

16. SWDA will also be a stronger partner to employers in workforce development. By unifying skills intelligence with labour market data, it will give businesses sharper, more actionable insights and modalities to support skills-first workforce planning, hiring and internal mobility. It will support the delivery of training that is more relevant to the needs of employers. SWDA’s suite of programmes can help employers reskill employees to transfer to new job roles, hence expanding the pool of available candidates beyond external hires. 

17. Beyond recruitment and training, SWDA will support employers through the challenges of deeper workforce transformation. As AI continues to reshape job roles and business models, SWDA will provide employers with integrated support across workforce restructuring, job redesign and capability development. Through the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package, SWDA will bring together workforce transformation schemes from SSG and WSG in an integrated enterprise digital portal to support holistic workforce transformation. The recently implemented SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+) is a key resource that employers can tap on to redesign job roles, build internal capabilities and adopt workforce tech solutions for workforce transformation. In the second half of this year, employers will be able to invest in workforce development with greater ease through the redesigned SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit. Overall, the aim is to help businesses plan more effectively, hire more confidently, and adapt their workforce more quickly to evolving needs. 

18. This will build on ongoing work. In the Financial Services sector, WSG, MAS and Institute of Banking and Finance launched a Jobs Transformation Map (JTM) on Generative AI for Financial Services, partnering 11 financial institutions to unpack what AI adoption means for specific job roles and showcase the opportunities for employees that job redesign and reskilling can potentially bring. The JTM showed how finance and insurance companies can reshape roles in customer service, relationship management and risk management, improving productivity and enabling employees to move up the value chain. It also highlighted new job opportunities in areas such as AI governance. SWDA will bring this approach to support transformation in other sectors, including adoption of AI and managing its impact on jobs.

19. In sum, whether you are dealing with urgent manpower issues for the here and now, growing your team to expand operations, or restructuring your workforce to support a pivot in your business, SWDA will work with you and partner you to transform your business and workforce.

20. Third, SWDA will strengthen the ecosystem of service providers of career and employment services and training. SSG has already built up a strong training sector over the past decade. SWDA will bolster other parts of this ecosystem that serve workers and employers on their career and workforce needs. This includes recruitment agencies, staffing agencies, career coaching and career guidance providers, HR consultancy and technology firms, online job portals, and the like. 

21. SWDA will work with industry to raise quality standards, improve accessibility and develop new solutions by spurring both innovation and collaboration. Our goal, ultimately, is a vibrant private sector, complemented with public employment services and programmes, that will be a catalyst and enabler for broad-based workforce transformation and adaptation, amid rapid changes in the labour market. 

22. This work has already started. Last year, we launched the Alliance for Action on Advancing Career & Employment Services (AfA ACES) comprising representatives from this ecosystem. Nine pilots are already underway, testing innovative models targeting under-served groups, including fresh graduates, families with complex needs, and those returning to the labour force after a period of absence. There are also pilots to work with employers to design more flexible work models and adopt skills-based practices. These pilots may give rise to new programmes and services. More importantly, through these pilots, we are discovering together the strengths of our ecosystem today and opportunities to take it to the next level tomorrow. Later this year, the AfA-ACES will release its recommendations, which will chart plans to transform the ecosystem to serve individuals and employers more effectively. 

Championing a Culture Continuous Learning and Career Health

23. Mr Deputy Speaker, beyond the structures and services that SWDA will put in place, our deeper ambition is to shift the culture and mindsets around careers and learning. This is something I would like to appeal to everyone, because it requires a whole-of-society approach. 

24. In an era where AI is transforming job requirements at a pace that no single institution can fully anticipate, lifelong learning and career health must become the norm and a practical reality. It must be something that Singaporeans can and should invest in and take ownership of throughout their entire working lives, and not a resource that you turn to only when circumstances compel you to do so. Employers too should continuously invest in your employees’ career health, so that your employees are well-equipped to contribute to the success of your business. The aspiration is to build a Singapore workforce that meets change with confidence – one that is oriented not merely towards managing disruption, but towards seizing the opportunities that come with it. Not one that is responsive and reactive, but one that is pre-emptive and proactive.

25. SWDA will work with tripartite partners to catalyse this shift, building on the SkillsFuture movement and the Career Health SG initiative under it. This entails talking about lifelong learning and career health regularly, including at the workplace, internalising it, and promoting good career health habits. This requires training and career guidance to be very accessible to the broad middle. 

26. Our assurance to every worker and every employer is this: work with us, and we will walk with you. The Government and our tripartite partners will be with you, every step of the way. 

Key components of the SWDA Bill

27. Mr Deputy Speaker, the priorities I shared set out the mission of SWDA. To give effect to them, we have tabled the SWDA Bill. I will now outline its key components. 

28. Part 1 of the Bill introduces the terms used in the Bill. Part 2 establishes SWDA as a statutory board and describes the functions and powers of SWDA. SWDA’s functions will cover the existing functions of SSG and WSG, and extend them to include promoting the development of career and employment services and training in Singapore. 

29. Parts 3 to 6 set out SWDA’s governance structures and requirements, which are aligned with the Public Sector (Governance) Act 2018. They cover the membership, appointment and decision-making procedures of the SWDA Board, as well as personnel and financial matters. 

30. Parts 7 and 8 set out the enforcement powers necessary for the administration of the Bill and its general provisions, including the power to make regulations and to issue codes of practice or guidelines for providers of career and employment services and training. 

31. Part 9 provides for the transfer of undertakings and employees from WSG and SSG to SWDA. Employees of WSG and SSG will be transferred to SWDA on terms that are no less favourable than their present ones. We have been closely engaging and supporting all officers, to ensure that both their well-being and career aspirations are well-cared for amid this transition. The refreshed mission of SWDA will provide new growth opportunities and career pathways for staff. We will also provide opportunities for officers to reskill to equip themselves for new job roles, so that no one will inadvertently fall through the cracks. 

32. Parts 10 and 11 repeal the SSG Act and the WSG Act, and make consequential and related amendments to other Acts. Key amendments are to the Private Education Act and Skills Development Levy Act, which will be administered by SWDA. 

Conclusion 

33. Mr Deputy Speaker, Singapore has consistently demonstrated a willingness to adapt its institutions to meet the demands of each new era. The establishment of the Workforce Development Agency in 2003, its subsequent restructuring into SSG and WSG in 2016, and now the creation of SWDA reflect the same underlying commitment: to invest in our people and to ensure that our institutions remain best positioned to do so.

34. The Bill presented today sets out the legislative framework to establish the Skills and Workforce Development Agency. If the Bill is passed, SWDA will be established in the third quarter of 2026 as a cornerstone in answering our workforce challenges in the decade ahead. It will support every Singaporean across a career that may be long, multi-staged, varied and non-linear. It will help employers navigate transformation and meet their workforce needs with greater confidence. It will bring coherence and quality to the full ecosystem of career and employment services and training that our workers and businesses can depend on.

35. At its heart, the Bill affirms a conviction that this House has long held: that every Singaporean, at every stage of his or her working life, deserves support to grow, to adapt, and to contribute to the nation’s continued success. 
 
36. With this, Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to move.