Ms Lee Sze Yeng, Managing Partner, KPMG in Singapore
Mr Lau Kam Yuen, Partner, KPMG in Singapore
Mr Jeremy Ong, CEO, NTUC LearningHub
Sisters and Brothers,
Introduction
A very good morning to all of you.
I am delighted to join all of you this morning, because a prestigious company like KPMG coming in collaboration with NTUC is a major milestone.
We are happy that we are going to do this MOU collaboration in such a timely manner to explore the many things that Sze Yeng has mentioned we can do together, both as employers and as unions, to move businesses and workers together in the artificial intelligence (AI) era.
Together, we can explore all the different possibilities to make Singapore businesses more competitive and for Singaporeans to enjoy better lives and livelihoods.
In recent times, I am sure many of us have heard that the retrenchment rates in Singapore are peaking again to pre-COVID levels due to a myriad of different factors, one of which could be AI or restructuring of the economy.
And a new phenomenon that is of growing concern is youth see a delay in getting into employment after graduation.
We are operating in an interesting background where the economy is doing relatively well with about 5 per cent growth for the last three years or so, and yet new structural gaps are appearing in the workforce.
We live in exciting times. But I intend to look at these times as times of great possibilities for both companies and workers to launch ourselves into the S-curve of development, after 60 odd years of phenomenal growth in Singapore.
If we, as tripartite partners, are able to come onto this journey and explore the possibilities of AI, and exploit technologies so that businesses and workers can do better, then I think we will have a successful economic story to tell in years to come.
The key question after understanding the current state of AI, as best as we can, is how then do we explore collaboration to essentially grow the pie for businesses and workers?
That will be the billion-dollar question in time to come, and NTUC approaches this with humility.
That is why we are collaborating with Lead Multipliers like KPMG in Singapore to humbly study not just how AI technologies are going to drive businesses, improve personal efficiencies and bottom-line improvements; but in time, completely change mindsets into new business possibilities and paradigms, so that the top-line is also changed.
If you look at what we have been doing in NTUC, we are taking this approach that we do not know it all.
We have some first fruits of success with the Company Training Committees, and we want to scale this.
NTUC will not be able to do this on our own steam, and we continue to rely on the secret sauce that has propelled our economy forward in the last 60 years – tripartism.
Today, we are adding a new inject into tripartism, where we are bringing in Lead Multipliers to help us implement more effective ways with speed and scale, so that we can impact more of what NTUC has been doing in the past three to five years.
In Parliament earlier this year, we suggested to Government to consider NTUC’s AI-Ready SG initiative, which encompasses many of the same values and programmes that KPMG in Singapore has briefed me on today.
We put together a menu of possibilities, and we went to Parliament in May this year to suggest, and to get Parliament’s agreement, that a successful AI transition in Singapore will not lead to jobless growth.
That means that when AI succeeds in driving our economy, every Singaporean will have a share of the growing pie.
AI-Ready SG is a simple idea that I would like to impress upon partners, especially the employers in this room.
Central to AI-Ready SG is the Company Training Committee, when in 2019, we approached Temasek-linked companies to consider how we can move business transformation and workforce transformation in tandem.
Why in tandem? Because business transformation should not happen first, with workers upskilled and jobs redesigned only years later as an afterthought.
So what we proposed is to bring employers and NTUC together for business transformation, so that capital injection in new technologies and upskilling for workers happen in parallel.
That has given some success in the last few years, before AI came to our shores.
Now with AI speeding up changes and possibilities, we want to be able to use this concept and go beyond our traditional space into the timely MOU that we are signing today.
Businesses Must Succeed for Workers to Benefit
How would we grow the pie?
First of all, trust between employers and workers must be the foundation.
The anxieties on the ground is whether AI will take away my job, and whether some bad practices happening overseas, where employees are training AI that will replace them in 12 months or so, will happen here.
When this comes onto our shores, it becomes very real, especially coupled with some of the retrenchments we see happening to our PMEs.
How do we engender the trust then?
I suggest to employers in the audience to come together with NTUC. We have good standing with our workers in Singapore, including PMEs (professionals, managers and executives).
In collaboration with your company and a Lead Multiplier like KPMG, we put together an ecosystem.
Foremost, we hold ourselves to the trust that we must engender for AI to be scalable.
Collectively with employers and workers, we put our best energies into introducing AI in the business paradigm, redesigning jobs, and involving unions and workers.
And to ensure that whoever participates in this transformation will come to share in the success in time to come.
That has been the basis of the collaboration.
It is not difficult to articulate to you as the NTUC Secretary-General, but very difficult to put in place as I have seen around the world, because this fundamental trust is key.
Workers Must Be Part of the Transformation
If you look at the Industrial Revolutions of the last few hundred years, workers were an afterthought.
Over a long period of time, mankind indeed benefits. But in the transition, workers suffered tremendously.
We should not allow that to happen in Singapore.
Therefore, this Lead Multiplier MOU will be important to further engender the possibilities in the Company Training Committee that I mentioned.
How can we go about engendering this trust?
NTUC has been very clear-minded that we do not know it all, and we have been getting partners to help us in this journey.
So in terms of business possibilities, I would rely on the thinking that employers have.
I hope that Lead Multipliers like KPMG in Singapore can add value, engender the trust, overcome the difficulties of technology, and build the datasets required.
If you later visit KPMG’s AI philosophy, you will see that it is only one column. But I can tell that when it comes to transforming NTUC into a digital organisation that is now exploring AI, the dataset is foundational and critical.
With the trust, we must put together the technology base. With the technology base, now we must build the AI tools.
Most people would fully agree that for this to succeed, people in your company must know where they are going, must support what you want to do, and fundamentally must know that they have a share in the success.
Externally, customers must see better products, faster delivery and cheaper perhaps, so that they can enjoy the successes in the company as well.
So for the first step, I would like to urge the employers that are here to take the next step to overcome some of the technology issues, the mindset issues, and build the trust so that together as an ecosystem, we can bring you on the new possibilities of business.
Embrace your workers, with the many wonderful talents in your company, to come on board and to co-own the journey.
And when we succeed, to share the fruits of the labour (with them).
Because the work is very complex, like what KPMG has mentioned, involving workflows and detailing of all the different intricacies.
We need to include AI in work and job redesign so that it can improve work prospects for workers as well.
Therefore, the second step, let us come together to move mindsets of the people that we are leading, including PMEs, to know that AI would be good for you.
And that in our ecosystem design, we will be empowering you not just in the near-term, but setting out a better space for you in terms of work prospects and better possibilities of growth as a country.
At the end of it, if the individual is more relevant and more productive, and the company is doing better business, we can go back to the first question of growing the pie.
When the pie is larger, Singapore can do better. We can have many more new possibilities to ensure that workers have better lives and livelihoods, and that companies can grow and thrive in Singapore.
That must be the formula. But yet the work needs to be done.
Let us put our minds together in collaboration, so that we can seize the moment of AI to create that foundation for us to launch into new possibilities.
We can visualise some of these, and it is already becoming real in our society.
And for others, we are not yet able to see, but (we) know the direction is right.
Let us set out on our journey to drive ourselves forward, explore the possibilities and importantly, in time to come, harvest the fruits of our collaboration and labour.
Closing
Thank you once again to KPMG in Singapore for collaborating with us. You will be a key node to help us in scaling and speeding up the processes, and strengthening trust with workers.
We have our ecosystem in NTUC, and we treasure every Lead Multiplier joining us to scale not just for workers for better lives and livelihoods but also engender businesses and employer partners to grow your businesses, so that we have a bigger pie to share and to create a successful future for ourselves and Singapore.
Thank you very much to all. If there is anything you would like to talk to me about beyond today, or suggestions, I would be very happy to tap on your minds and see where we can bring this exciting AI journey forward.
Yes, there will be challenges no doubt. But the opportunities are immense.
From the state of our economy and Singapore today, after growing in such stupendous fashion for the last 60-odd years, I personally feel that AI can be the game changer for us to launch into the next level of greater economic growth.
Thank you very much.
