Opening Address by SPS Shawn Huang at Singapore Polytechnic HR Learning Fest 2026
Mr Shawn Huang, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Manpower, Singapore Polytechnic Convention Centre
Mr Soh Wai Wah, Principal & CEO, Singapore Polytechnic
Ms Shirley Lim, Deputy CEO, Institute for Human Resource Professionals
Ms Low Peck Kem, Chief Human Resource Officer, Public Service Division, Prime Minister's Office
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good afternoon,
1. It is a pleasure to be here at the HR Learning Fest 2026. I thank Singapore Polytechnic and Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) for organising this important platform, bringing together leaders across our ecosystem to advance how we support, develop, and invest in our most vital resource: our people.
2. This year’s theme — Resilience, Relevance, and Reinvention in the AI Era — could not be more timely. As AI reshapes the workplace, many roles will require new digital competencies, making continuous upskilling a necessity. A 2023 OECD study shows that adults who actively participate in continuous learning earn 7% higher wages on average. And as our lifespans grow longer, continuous learning helps us stay relevant and stay employed, as long as we are willing and able to. These are the tangible outcomes we want for every Singaporean worker and every business in this AI era.
Government’s Commitment to Fair and Inclusive Growth
3. The Government is committed to achieve fair and inclusive growth in tandem with the integration of AI in our economy. We must ensure that AI supports, rather than replaces our workforce, so that it enhances productivity while keeping people at the core.
4. Resilience means ensuring that workers can adapt to new technologies so that they can achieve more, or do things which they could not before. We must learn to augment human potential, while ensuring our workplaces remain inclusive.
5. Relevance means ensuring that our workers’ skills continue to matter and evolve. For businesses, this involves redesigning jobs so that workers can focus on tasks that machines cannot fully replace. This allows businesses to retain valuable expertise while benefiting from productivity gains, and moving up the value chain.
6. Reinvention is something that Singapore has always done well. We have navigated waves of technological change before, and time after time, the willingness to reinvent has been what carried us through. AI is no different. The question is not whether work will change, but whether we reinvent proactively, with our workers at the centre, or reactively, when the moment has passed.
Human Capital Development
7. Helping workers upskill and reskill is a long-term priority for the Government, and we have various programmes and grants for this. But companies will need to play a part to support workers who want to upgrade themselves. This is where our HR professionals and business leaders as people managers play an indispensable role.
8. HR Professionals are central to building our future workforce. Your value lies in three critical areas, strategic workforce planning, job redesign, and supporting workers to grow in their current roles, and more importantly, move into better ones – not just as enablers of change, but as architects of how work is transformed. At the same time, HR must also lead by example — transforming its own function to better support business and workforce transformation.
9. Recognising this, the Government has established the Tripartite Workgroup on Human Capital Capability Development, or TWG-HC, bringing together our HR leaders, unions and businesses, to uplift human capital management and HR capabilities here in Singapore.
- One initiative I would like to highlight is the Singapore Opportunity Index, or SOI. It is a first-of-its-kind national index that measures how well organisations create career opportunities for their workers, across several dimensions such as pay, progression and retention. The SOI sets a common yardstick for what good human capital looks like. I encourage business and HR leaders to use it as a strategic benchmarking tool to identify areas for further improvement.
- Knowing what good looks like is only the first step – the harder question is how to get there. We are working with our tripartite partners to bring together more coordinated support and resources to help organisations and HR professionals accelerate people-centred AI adoption. The TWG-HC will share the full suite of recommendations later this year.
10. Today’s HR Learning Fest is an opportunity to learn how organisations are rethinking workforce strategies, redesigning jobs, and supporting career mobility in an increasingly AI-driven economy. I am excited to hear from our distinguished speakers on how we can rise to this challenge that the world is facing.
Launch of Human Capital Collaboratory (HCC)
11. To empower HR professionals to drive job redesign and workforce planning effectively, we need data-driven insights and strong ecosystem support.
12. Today, I am pleased to witness Singapore Polytechnic launching the Human Capital Collaboratory (or HCC). The HCC is a cross-sector platform designed to scale workforce transformation, arising from earlier efforts to engage close to 1,000 organisations, particularly our SMEs. The HCC focuses on building sustained capabilities over time, moving away from one-off workshops that we are used to, into long-term development.
Celebrating our Partners
13. Achieving fair and inclusive growth for both workers and businesses is a massive undertaking which requires collaboration between the Government, businesses, education institutions, and our workers. I want to thank the Singapore Polytechnic and close partners such as the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), NTUC-Food Drinks and Allied Workers Union (NTUC-FDAWU), and IHRP for championing this initiative.
14. In closing, I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to the IHRP on your 10th anniversary -- a notable milestone representing a decade of dedicated efforts to elevate and professionalise the HR sector. And I am pleased to share that in collaboration with SP, IHRP will also be releasing the 4th edition of the Jobs Skills Insight Report, which will provide insights on capability development, job redesign, and workforce reskilling to help organisations remain competitive in a rapidly evolving economy.
Conclusion
15. The era of AI brings immense opportunities, but capitalising on them requires an ecosystem built on trust, foresight, and capability.
16. Finally, let us also remember that learning does not only take place in classroom settings, or through formal courses. Most of the time, we learn from unstructured means, through interactions with friends and colleagues, during our travels, and even on our mobile phones, through micro-learning content. We must continue to stay open and build a culture around continuous learning throughout our lives.
17. Thank you, and I wish everyone an inspiring and productive Learning Fest.