Getting manpower-lean
Results from previous moves to reduce the sector's dependence on foreign manpower have been sluggish. Insight looks at what might be in store with the latest efforts
By Joanna Seow, Manpower Correspondent and Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
Six years since the foreign manpower tap was last tightened in the service sector, businesses are being told they need to do more.
While some have heeded the call to become more productive, others have lagged behind, leading Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat to say in his Budget speech that growth in the number of foreign service staff may be on an "unsustainable path".
"Our (local) workforce growth is tapering, and if we do not use this narrow window to double down on restructuring, our companies will find it even harder in the future," he said last Monday.
Thus the service sector Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) - the proportion of foreigners on work permits or S Passes a firm can employ - is being cut from 40 per cent to 38 per cent and then 35 per cent over two years.
The sub-quota for S Pass workers - mid-skilled foreigners paid at least $2,300 a month - will also drop from 15 per cent to 13 per cent and then to 10 per cent.
What does this mean for companies? Now, if a firm needs 20 staff to operate, it can hire 12 locals and eight foreign workers.
Come Jan 1, 2021, if it needs 20 staff to operate, it will need to hire another local worker to replace one foreigner. Or if it manages to operate more efficiently, it can retain the 12 local staff and employ only six foreign workers.
What is holding the sector back?
Insight looks at the challenges businesses are facing and how the quota cuts are likely to play out.
WHERE THE WORKERS ARE
The service sector has been employing more and more workers over the years, even as manufacturing and construction cut back.
In particular, growth in the number of S Pass and work permit holders in services has been picking up pace. It rose by about 3 per cent a year, or 34,000, in the past three years, Mr Heng said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said the increase was broad-based across services, but the segments that will be hit hardest by the quota cuts will be accommodation, food services, real estate services, transportation and storage, and arts, entertainment and recreation.
Results from previous moves to reduce the sector's dependence on foreign manpower have been sluggish. Insight looks at what might be in store with the latest efforts
By Joanna Seow, Manpower Correspondent and Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
While some have heeded the call to become more productive, others have lagged behind, leading Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat to say in his Budget speech that growth in the number of foreign service staff may be on an "unsustainable path".
"Our (local) workforce growth is tapering, and if we do not use this narrow window to double down on restructuring, our companies will find it even harder in the future," he said last Monday.
Thus the service sector Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) - the proportion of foreigners on work permits or S Passes a firm can employ - is being cut from 40 per cent to 38 per cent and then 35 per cent over two years.
The sub-quota for S Pass workers - mid-skilled foreigners paid at least $2,300 a month - will also drop from 15 per cent to 13 per cent and then to 10 per cent.
What does this mean for companies? Now, if a firm needs 20 staff to operate, it can hire 12 locals and eight foreign workers.
Come Jan 1, 2021, if it needs 20 staff to operate, it will need to hire another local worker to replace one foreigner. Or if it manages to operate more efficiently, it can retain the 12 local staff and employ only six foreign workers.
What is holding the sector back?
Insight looks at the challenges businesses are facing and how the quota cuts are likely to play out.
WHERE THE WORKERS ARE
The service sector has been employing more and more workers over the years, even as manufacturing and construction cut back.
In particular, growth in the number of S Pass and work permit holders in services has been picking up pace. It rose by about 3 per cent a year, or 34,000, in the past three years, Mr Heng said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said the increase was broad-based across services, but the segments that will be hit hardest by the quota cuts will be accommodation, food services, real estate services, transportation and storage, and arts, entertainment and recreation.
Mr Heng also noted that the increase in the number of S Pass holders in services last year was the highest in five years.
These are workers who have at least a diploma or a degree qualification, and many work in frontline service jobs like customer service, food and beverage (F&B) management and nursing, recruiters tell Insight.
Others are hired to be information technology (IT) technicians and engineers and programmers, due to growing demand for IT services and the small local tech talent pool, said ManpowerGroup Singapore country manager Linda Teo.
Service staff on S Passes, said PeopleWorldwide Consulting managing director David Leong, are usually from China and the Philippines, and those in technical roles may come from India, Vietnam and Myanmar.
Some likely come from the Employment Pass (EP) segment after the minimum salary to qualify for the pass was raised in 2017 from $3,300 to $3,600.
Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said on Facebook after the Budget speech that if service industries remain very labour-intensive and see too much growth in foreign manpower, jobs may be stuck in the lower-value range and local workers will face poorer wage growth prospects.
Furthermore, firms need to be prepared as the supply of foreign manpower may be curtailed eventually as opportunities in labour-sending countries improve, she said separately in a radio interview.
SLOW PROGRESS
Efforts to lower the service sector's dependency on foreign manpower are not new - the quota was cut from 50 per cent to 45 per cent in 2012 and then to 40 per cent in 2013.
Levy rates - monthly fees paid by businesses to MOM for every foreign worker employed - were also raised over the years.
But the results have been sluggish, said ManpowerGroup's Ms Teo, adding: "This new reduction is sending service sector companies a stronger message on the urgency to transform."
The F&B and retail segments in particular have been unable to shake off their reliance on labour.
According to the Economic Survey of Singapore for last year, productivity in food services grew by 2.7 per cent while that in retail trade grew by just 1.1 per cent, well below the overall 3.7 per cent.
Why is it so difficult to change the situation in these two industries?
Employment lawyer Amarjit Kaur, a partner at Withers KhattarWong, said low barriers to entry and high rates of failure contribute to stunted productivity growth in the service sector, as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often fighting for survival at a fundamental "cost of doing business" level.
"As such, innovation, digitalisation, and training of staff are viewed as frills that add to the operational costs for business," she said.
Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Business Management director Esther Ho said foreign workers typically cost less both in monetary terms like pay and bonuses, as well as in non-monetary terms like leave entitlement, medical benefits and maximum hours they are willing to work.
In F&B and retail, they usually are prepared to accept tougher conditions than locals would.
Also, it is harder to automate service processes that require high levels of human intervention, such as stocking shelves and preparing food, compared with a production line.
F&B companies often depend on personalised service and unique experiences to attract customers, so the take-up rate of technology adoption or standardisation to improve efficiency is slower, said assistant professor of finance Aurobindo Ghosh from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University.
Other service sector segments have performed better in terms of raising productivity - finance and insurance posted productivity gains of 4.2 per cent last year, while information and communications rose 2.8 per cent.
In the accommodation industry, which includes hotels, productivity grew by 6.3 per cent last year.
This could be partly because these outward-oriented segments are more focused on the external market which has a higher growth potential than the domestic market, said DBS economist Irvin Seah.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Heng highlighted the manufacturing sector - also an outward-oriented sector - for having done well to deploy staff efficiently.
Productivity for the sector rose 9.8 per cent last year.
Compared with the service sector, the growth in foreign manpower in manufacturing was much slower. The number of S-Pass and work permit holders employed in manufacturing grew by 4,600 in the last three years, said the MOM spokesman.
Singapore Manufacturing Federation president Douglas Foo said companies have been adopting a wide range of automation and digital solutions. The most common are inventory management systems to keep track of stock, sales and deliveries, and production planning systems to optimise processes and equipment usage.
These are able to increase efficiency by more than 50 per cent and, in some cases, manufacturing costs have been reduced by 70 per cent, said Mr Foo, a Nominated MP.
With the news of the quota cuts, some observers expressed concern about the healthcare industry, which will need to grow to look after Singapore's ageing population.
Healthcare Services Employees' Union president K. Thanaletchimi said that on average, out of every 10 nurses in public healthcare institutions, three to four are foreign. In the intermediate and long-term care sector, about seven or eight in 10 of the workers providing nursing support are foreign.
NTUC Health chief executive Chan Su Yee said, on average, local care staff stay for just 1½ to 2½ years. To attract more workers, the social enterprise has redesigned jobs at its nursing homes and for its home care and senior daycare services to include part-time work arrangements and bite-sized roles.
A Ministry of Health (MOH) spokesman said that since 2012, over 70 public healthcare and community care organisations have benefited from projects to improve productivity, such as through assistive equipment and process redesign.
The MOM and MOH spokesmen said the quota changes will be phased in progressively, and the ministries "will continue to help healthcare providers ensure that day-to-day operations are not affected".
IMPACT OF THE CUTS
The latest round of cuts is less drastic than the previous changes announced in Budget 2012 and Budget 2013 and which took effect in July of those years.
This time, businesses have more time to adjust as the changes take effect in two tiers over the next two years.
There are also schemes in place to help them make the transition to a more manpower-lean operating model. These include the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme, which started in 2015 and provides some flexibility for companies to employ more foreign workers while they train locals to do more high-value jobs. And there are grants such as the Productivity Solutions Grant, which subsidises the cost of off-the-shelf technology to boost productivity. It is also being expanded to support out-of-pocket expenses for training.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry said that technology, where sensibly deployed, can complement the human touch in the service sector to reduce headcount and make existing jobs more attractive for locals.
Companies can tap government support to "decisively re-engineer their business processes for long-term growth", said the spokesman.
Still, economists say the tighter quotas are likely to push up costs as companies raise wages to attract Singaporean workers, which poses an inflation risk.
On the other hand, said UOB economist Barnabas Gan last week at The Straits Times-UOB Budget Roundtable, if firms decide to scale down operations in response to the labour shortage, that could mean potential headwinds to the growth of the service sector.
"That would affect growth in general, especially given that services make up about 70 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product)," he said.
However, Singapore Business Federation chief executive Ho Meng Kit, who was also on the panel at the roundtable, said that the bulk of service companies are not at the ceiling yet.
"We should not overplay the impact of this tightening, it impacts only those at the ceiling," he said.
Observers are undecided about whether the eventual quota of 35 per cent will be a tipping point that will push companies to adopt more efficient business models en masse.
Different service segments are likely to respond differently, depending on the nature of the work.
Ms Kaur added that the broad-brush measure will pose challenges to some segments which are heavily reliant on human capital and do not lend themselves easily to automation and digitalisation, such as childcare and eldercare services.
Ms Irene Boey, vice-president of strategies and development at the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said that it is important to look at the root cause of why SMEs in various segments are not restructuring as fast as others.
"Although we have advance notice... the deferment of lowering certain DRC in certain segments might be necessary," she said last week, during a panel discussion hosted by radio station MoneyFM.
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants' Singapore Network Panel chairman James Lee said during the MoneyFM event that some jobs where the human touch is needed can still be enhanced through technology .
For example, nurses may each need to look after more patients in the future, but they can be more efficient if, for example, their mobile devices can schedule tasks for them such as what time a patient should take medicine and what kind to take, he said.
These are workers who have at least a diploma or a degree qualification, and many work in frontline service jobs like customer service, food and beverage (F&B) management and nursing, recruiters tell Insight.
Others are hired to be information technology (IT) technicians and engineers and programmers, due to growing demand for IT services and the small local tech talent pool, said ManpowerGroup Singapore country manager Linda Teo.
Service staff on S Passes, said PeopleWorldwide Consulting managing director David Leong, are usually from China and the Philippines, and those in technical roles may come from India, Vietnam and Myanmar.
Some likely come from the Employment Pass (EP) segment after the minimum salary to qualify for the pass was raised in 2017 from $3,300 to $3,600.
Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said on Facebook after the Budget speech that if service industries remain very labour-intensive and see too much growth in foreign manpower, jobs may be stuck in the lower-value range and local workers will face poorer wage growth prospects.
Furthermore, firms need to be prepared as the supply of foreign manpower may be curtailed eventually as opportunities in labour-sending countries improve, she said separately in a radio interview.
SLOW PROGRESS
Levy rates - monthly fees paid by businesses to MOM for every foreign worker employed - were also raised over the years.
But the results have been sluggish, said ManpowerGroup's Ms Teo, adding: "This new reduction is sending service sector companies a stronger message on the urgency to transform."
The F&B and retail segments in particular have been unable to shake off their reliance on labour.
According to the Economic Survey of Singapore for last year, productivity in food services grew by 2.7 per cent while that in retail trade grew by just 1.1 per cent, well below the overall 3.7 per cent.
Why is it so difficult to change the situation in these two industries?
Employment lawyer Amarjit Kaur, a partner at Withers KhattarWong, said low barriers to entry and high rates of failure contribute to stunted productivity growth in the service sector, as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are often fighting for survival at a fundamental "cost of doing business" level.
"As such, innovation, digitalisation, and training of staff are viewed as frills that add to the operational costs for business," she said.
Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Business Management director Esther Ho said foreign workers typically cost less both in monetary terms like pay and bonuses, as well as in non-monetary terms like leave entitlement, medical benefits and maximum hours they are willing to work.
In F&B and retail, they usually are prepared to accept tougher conditions than locals would.
Also, it is harder to automate service processes that require high levels of human intervention, such as stocking shelves and preparing food, compared with a production line.
F&B companies often depend on personalised service and unique experiences to attract customers, so the take-up rate of technology adoption or standardisation to improve efficiency is slower, said assistant professor of finance Aurobindo Ghosh from the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University.
Other service sector segments have performed better in terms of raising productivity - finance and insurance posted productivity gains of 4.2 per cent last year, while information and communications rose 2.8 per cent.
In the accommodation industry, which includes hotels, productivity grew by 6.3 per cent last year.
This could be partly because these outward-oriented segments are more focused on the external market which has a higher growth potential than the domestic market, said DBS economist Irvin Seah.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Heng highlighted the manufacturing sector - also an outward-oriented sector - for having done well to deploy staff efficiently.
Productivity for the sector rose 9.8 per cent last year.
Compared with the service sector, the growth in foreign manpower in manufacturing was much slower. The number of S-Pass and work permit holders employed in manufacturing grew by 4,600 in the last three years, said the MOM spokesman.
Singapore Manufacturing Federation president Douglas Foo said companies have been adopting a wide range of automation and digital solutions. The most common are inventory management systems to keep track of stock, sales and deliveries, and production planning systems to optimise processes and equipment usage.
These are able to increase efficiency by more than 50 per cent and, in some cases, manufacturing costs have been reduced by 70 per cent, said Mr Foo, a Nominated MP.
With the news of the quota cuts, some observers expressed concern about the healthcare industry, which will need to grow to look after Singapore's ageing population.
Healthcare Services Employees' Union president K. Thanaletchimi said that on average, out of every 10 nurses in public healthcare institutions, three to four are foreign. In the intermediate and long-term care sector, about seven or eight in 10 of the workers providing nursing support are foreign.
NTUC Health chief executive Chan Su Yee said, on average, local care staff stay for just 1½ to 2½ years. To attract more workers, the social enterprise has redesigned jobs at its nursing homes and for its home care and senior daycare services to include part-time work arrangements and bite-sized roles.
A Ministry of Health (MOH) spokesman said that since 2012, over 70 public healthcare and community care organisations have benefited from projects to improve productivity, such as through assistive equipment and process redesign.
The MOM and MOH spokesmen said the quota changes will be phased in progressively, and the ministries "will continue to help healthcare providers ensure that day-to-day operations are not affected".
IMPACT OF THE CUTS
The latest round of cuts is less drastic than the previous changes announced in Budget 2012 and Budget 2013 and which took effect in July of those years.
This time, businesses have more time to adjust as the changes take effect in two tiers over the next two years.
There are also schemes in place to help them make the transition to a more manpower-lean operating model. These include the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme, which started in 2015 and provides some flexibility for companies to employ more foreign workers while they train locals to do more high-value jobs. And there are grants such as the Productivity Solutions Grant, which subsidises the cost of off-the-shelf technology to boost productivity. It is also being expanded to support out-of-pocket expenses for training.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Trade and Industry said that technology, where sensibly deployed, can complement the human touch in the service sector to reduce headcount and make existing jobs more attractive for locals.
Companies can tap government support to "decisively re-engineer their business processes for long-term growth", said the spokesman.
Still, economists say the tighter quotas are likely to push up costs as companies raise wages to attract Singaporean workers, which poses an inflation risk.
On the other hand, said UOB economist Barnabas Gan last week at The Straits Times-UOB Budget Roundtable, if firms decide to scale down operations in response to the labour shortage, that could mean potential headwinds to the growth of the service sector.
"That would affect growth in general, especially given that services make up about 70 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product)," he said.
However, Singapore Business Federation chief executive Ho Meng Kit, who was also on the panel at the roundtable, said that the bulk of service companies are not at the ceiling yet.
"We should not overplay the impact of this tightening, it impacts only those at the ceiling," he said.
Observers are undecided about whether the eventual quota of 35 per cent will be a tipping point that will push companies to adopt more efficient business models en masse.
Different service segments are likely to respond differently, depending on the nature of the work.
Ms Kaur added that the broad-brush measure will pose challenges to some segments which are heavily reliant on human capital and do not lend themselves easily to automation and digitalisation, such as childcare and eldercare services.
Ms Irene Boey, vice-president of strategies and development at the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, said that it is important to look at the root cause of why SMEs in various segments are not restructuring as fast as others.
"Although we have advance notice... the deferment of lowering certain DRC in certain segments might be necessary," she said last week, during a panel discussion hosted by radio station MoneyFM.
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants' Singapore Network Panel chairman James Lee said during the MoneyFM event that some jobs where the human touch is needed can still be enhanced through technology .
For example, nurses may each need to look after more patients in the future, but they can be more efficient if, for example, their mobile devices can schedule tasks for them such as what time a patient should take medicine and what kind to take, he said.
ManpowerGroup's Ms Teo said the tighter quotas are also a good opportunity for companies to revamp their business strategy, and this push for change may lead to a more vibrant F&B and retail scene.
As they transform, said National Trades Union Congress assistant secretary-general Patrick Tay at the ST-UOB roundtable, firms should share the benefits with workers by providing better jobs and wages.
Ultimately, for the shift to a more manpower-lean service model to take off, businesses need to be able to cut manpower without fearing a loss in revenue if customers turn to competitors with more of a personal touch.
"If everybody is forced to do that because of the DRC coming down... companies will have to compete in what they can offer, rather than in gold-plated service which is not going to be efficient in the Singapore economy," said Singapore University of Social Sciences economist Walter Theseira, at the roundtable.
Consumers may need to pay more for service, or accept a different type of service - one in which they play a bigger role, such as with food orders placed through tablets instead of waiters.
However, at least robots and touch-screens can work round the clock, noted PeopleWorldwide's Mr Leong.
"The flavour of service will change. Nothing wrong, just that the taste will be different."
Foreign worker quota cuts: Uphill task for F&B and retail sectors
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
He may be the owner of his halal eatery, but such is the service sector manpower crunch that on weekends, Mr Feroz Mak has to roll up his sleeves and be cook and cleaner due to a lack of staff.
He has 19 staff including those who do cooking, cleaning, serving and food collection as well as research and development.
But with his eatery Mak's Place - The Hawkerant at Changi being open six days a week and during later hours - 4pm till 1am, this is not enough.
He says his foreign-to local-staff ratio is also at the maximum of the Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) for the service sector. He has 13 local staff and six foreign workers. His situation is symptomatic of the problems that food and beverage companies and retailers will face when the DRC is lowered.
Those in the service industry tell The Sunday Times they will be hit hard with the new foreign worker quotas, in a sector that finds it hard to draw local workers. Mr Mak says: "We cannot afford to pay salaries comparable to those of fancy restaurants." Smaller businesses might have to downsize or close shop, he adds.
Ms Wahida Wahid, director of Hararu Izakaya, a halal charcoal-grill restaurant, says: "Local labour don't stay long in the F&B industry. Most prefer to work part-time until they find their dream 9-to-5 jobs instead of the long hours in this sector, despite benefits and overtime payout."
Jacob's Cafe director Lim Tow Soon says local workers would rather work in IT, finance or business management roles, and have the view that "the service line is taboo and undignified".
The president of the Restaurant Association of Singapore (RAS), Mr Vincent Tan, describes the latest DRC news as a "bitter pill to swallow", saying: "This industry is deemed not as sexy compared with other sectors. Many members have given feedback that the challenge in hiring locals is prevalent regardless of the higher salaries offered."
To cope, Mr Mak says his firm has tried to develop technology for its operations. However, it is costly and cannot completely replace the worker in a sector highly dependent on the human touch. He has tried to use a robotic chef programmed to do repetitive tasks in the kitchen. "But such research work is expensive and it cost around $300,000 over three years, without returning any significant revenue yet. It is a big risk for small companies. It is also a long process," he says.
RAS' Mr Tan says the organisation has been constantly encouraging members to increase productivity with digital solutions, but the process is an uphill climb. "Implementation is challenging to new entrepreneurs due to the capital outlay required and their challenge to be profitable and survive the initial years of operation. Also, there is always the dilemma of investing in technology versus maintaining adequate cash flow."
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
He may be the owner of his halal eatery, but such is the service sector manpower crunch that on weekends, Mr Feroz Mak has to roll up his sleeves and be cook and cleaner due to a lack of staff.
He has 19 staff including those who do cooking, cleaning, serving and food collection as well as research and development.
But with his eatery Mak's Place - The Hawkerant at Changi being open six days a week and during later hours - 4pm till 1am, this is not enough.
He says his foreign-to local-staff ratio is also at the maximum of the Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) for the service sector. He has 13 local staff and six foreign workers. His situation is symptomatic of the problems that food and beverage companies and retailers will face when the DRC is lowered.
Those in the service industry tell The Sunday Times they will be hit hard with the new foreign worker quotas, in a sector that finds it hard to draw local workers. Mr Mak says: "We cannot afford to pay salaries comparable to those of fancy restaurants." Smaller businesses might have to downsize or close shop, he adds.
Ms Wahida Wahid, director of Hararu Izakaya, a halal charcoal-grill restaurant, says: "Local labour don't stay long in the F&B industry. Most prefer to work part-time until they find their dream 9-to-5 jobs instead of the long hours in this sector, despite benefits and overtime payout."
Jacob's Cafe director Lim Tow Soon says local workers would rather work in IT, finance or business management roles, and have the view that "the service line is taboo and undignified".
The president of the Restaurant Association of Singapore (RAS), Mr Vincent Tan, describes the latest DRC news as a "bitter pill to swallow", saying: "This industry is deemed not as sexy compared with other sectors. Many members have given feedback that the challenge in hiring locals is prevalent regardless of the higher salaries offered."
To cope, Mr Mak says his firm has tried to develop technology for its operations. However, it is costly and cannot completely replace the worker in a sector highly dependent on the human touch. He has tried to use a robotic chef programmed to do repetitive tasks in the kitchen. "But such research work is expensive and it cost around $300,000 over three years, without returning any significant revenue yet. It is a big risk for small companies. It is also a long process," he says.
RAS' Mr Tan says the organisation has been constantly encouraging members to increase productivity with digital solutions, but the process is an uphill climb. "Implementation is challenging to new entrepreneurs due to the capital outlay required and their challenge to be profitable and survive the initial years of operation. Also, there is always the dilemma of investing in technology versus maintaining adequate cash flow."
For retailers, the human touch remains the most important. Says Singapore Retailers Association president R. Dhinakaran: "To automate the retail shops totally or partially will not be able to provide the customer service standards expected by consumers."
Meanwhile, hawker stall You Tiao Man which sells dough fritters in Toa Payoh has found a solution by employing mature local workers. Director of the You Tiao Man business Audrey Chew says: "We adjusted our hiring policies to employ more local labour, particularly from the generation aged 55 years and above. They are resilient and gritty, possessing the patience and work ethic required to succeed in today's challenging F&B industry." She has three foreign staff and seven local employees - two of whom are part-timers.
S Pass holder prepared to put in extra effort
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
Forty-five-year-old Mr Zhu Shenggang hails from Shandong, a province in eastern China. But for the past 12 years, Singapore has been home for the S Pass holder, who is a head chef at a halal eatery serving Asian and Western cuisine.
An S Pass worker refers to a mid-skilled foreign employee who earns at least $2,300 a month.
Mr Feroz Mak, founder of the eatery, says he hires foreigners like Mr Zhu because the job hours and conditions make it hard to hire locals. The restaurant opens at 4pm and closes past midnight, including on weekends.
"This set of work hours is not one which Singaporeans like to be involved with," he says, adding that the salary is also not attractive to Singaporeans.
When Mr Zhu started work at Mak's Place - The Hawkerant in 2006, his salary was around $2,500, but is now around $3,600.
"It is high compared with what I would get back home," he says. "I do it so my children get a good education and a bright future."
Mr Zhu - who has picked up a local Mandarin accent - tells The Sunday Times: "I decided to come to Singapore to work because back then, my two children were both six years old and just about to enrol in school.
"I also heard many positive things about Singapore from friends who had started jobs here."
Mr Zhu had trained in Chinese culinary skills. However, he soon realised that the Singaporean's palate was different from what he was used to - in his province, it is "heavier", as he puts it.
With years of experience now under his belt, Mr Zhu helps to cook, maintain the restaurant and train junior chefs who come from countries including China, Malaysia and the Philippines. There are around six chefs in the kitchen he works in.
He works six days a week, from 3pm to about 1am, as the restaurant opens only for dinner.
One challenge of working here is that of missing a large part of his children's lives. They are now 20 years old and in university.
"I call them every day," he says. Mr Zhu returns to his family for about a month every year.
He adds that he is concerned he might have to return to China when his S Pass expires in a few years' time.
"I hope to keep working here because my children still need my money. I also have grown very attached to Mak's Place and Singapore, which has become a part of my life."
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
An S Pass worker refers to a mid-skilled foreign employee who earns at least $2,300 a month.
Mr Feroz Mak, founder of the eatery, says he hires foreigners like Mr Zhu because the job hours and conditions make it hard to hire locals. The restaurant opens at 4pm and closes past midnight, including on weekends.
"This set of work hours is not one which Singaporeans like to be involved with," he says, adding that the salary is also not attractive to Singaporeans.
When Mr Zhu started work at Mak's Place - The Hawkerant in 2006, his salary was around $2,500, but is now around $3,600.
"It is high compared with what I would get back home," he says. "I do it so my children get a good education and a bright future."
Mr Zhu - who has picked up a local Mandarin accent - tells The Sunday Times: "I decided to come to Singapore to work because back then, my two children were both six years old and just about to enrol in school.
"I also heard many positive things about Singapore from friends who had started jobs here."
Mr Zhu had trained in Chinese culinary skills. However, he soon realised that the Singaporean's palate was different from what he was used to - in his province, it is "heavier", as he puts it.
With years of experience now under his belt, Mr Zhu helps to cook, maintain the restaurant and train junior chefs who come from countries including China, Malaysia and the Philippines. There are around six chefs in the kitchen he works in.
He works six days a week, from 3pm to about 1am, as the restaurant opens only for dinner.
One challenge of working here is that of missing a large part of his children's lives. They are now 20 years old and in university.
"I call them every day," he says. Mr Zhu returns to his family for about a month every year.
He adds that he is concerned he might have to return to China when his S Pass expires in a few years' time.
"I hope to keep working here because my children still need my money. I also have grown very attached to Mak's Place and Singapore, which has become a part of my life."
Using tech to resolve the manpower crunch
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
Staff at furniture retailer Scanteak used to spend around two hours a day planning delivery routes.
Not any more, thanks to the adoption of a delivery automation application that plans routes and tracks delivery jobs. Staff can now easily check on the status of deliveries.
This increases productivity and also frees staff up to do other jobs.
The delivery app is an example of how retailers can use technology, following the lowering of foreign worker quotas, to push the service sector to be less labour intensive.
The regional marketing director of Scanteak, Ms Jamie Lim, says: "The challenge is usually in managing change and convincing the team to adopt technology and try new ways of performing tasks."
She says companies also have to find technology that is suitable for their needs and at the right price.
Scanteak's app was developed by a vendor and cost around $20,000.
With such tools, the manpower crunch can be resolved.
About 36 to 38 per cent of the Scanteak workforce now is made up of foreign labour, such as workers from China and Malaysia. Ms Lim says: "This is definitely a reduction from before we used technology and had more manual job roles. Back then, we had to hire more foreign employees to fill those jobs."
By using technology, Ms Lim adds that she has been able to shift employees into new roles. Two employees who used to do data entry have moved to other departments.
A payroll app has also reduced time spent tracking leave and processing payroll by 20 to 30 per cent. The human resource administrator has been retrained for other roles.
However, Ms Lim says the challenges still abound for the retail sector. For one, locals do not want to work in laborious jobs. The firm is also still trying to find useful technology for certain job roles.
"We are still facing the uphill task of trying to automate more mundane duties, such as data entry and data processing, so we can scale back on the lower-value work and restructure some of the jobs to make it more higher-value, and thereby hoping we can engage more locals for the job."
She notes that other creative solutions such as working with interns, outsourcing jobs or re-scoping certain work processes for part-timers can help to resolve manpower issues.
"Government aid in exploring productivity measures via technology, process improvements and automation has also been helpful in finding new ways of overcoming this," she adds.
By Sue-Ann Tan, The Sunday Times, 24 Feb 2019
Not any more, thanks to the adoption of a delivery automation application that plans routes and tracks delivery jobs. Staff can now easily check on the status of deliveries.
This increases productivity and also frees staff up to do other jobs.
The delivery app is an example of how retailers can use technology, following the lowering of foreign worker quotas, to push the service sector to be less labour intensive.
The regional marketing director of Scanteak, Ms Jamie Lim, says: "The challenge is usually in managing change and convincing the team to adopt technology and try new ways of performing tasks."
She says companies also have to find technology that is suitable for their needs and at the right price.
Scanteak's app was developed by a vendor and cost around $20,000.
With such tools, the manpower crunch can be resolved.
About 36 to 38 per cent of the Scanteak workforce now is made up of foreign labour, such as workers from China and Malaysia. Ms Lim says: "This is definitely a reduction from before we used technology and had more manual job roles. Back then, we had to hire more foreign employees to fill those jobs."
By using technology, Ms Lim adds that she has been able to shift employees into new roles. Two employees who used to do data entry have moved to other departments.
A payroll app has also reduced time spent tracking leave and processing payroll by 20 to 30 per cent. The human resource administrator has been retrained for other roles.
However, Ms Lim says the challenges still abound for the retail sector. For one, locals do not want to work in laborious jobs. The firm is also still trying to find useful technology for certain job roles.
"We are still facing the uphill task of trying to automate more mundane duties, such as data entry and data processing, so we can scale back on the lower-value work and restructure some of the jobs to make it more higher-value, and thereby hoping we can engage more locals for the job."
She notes that other creative solutions such as working with interns, outsourcing jobs or re-scoping certain work processes for part-timers can help to resolve manpower issues.
"Government aid in exploring productivity measures via technology, process improvements and automation has also been helpful in finding new ways of overcoming this," she adds.
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