With the many changes in today’s job market, employers face various challenges in hiring, retaining, and managing talent. In highly competitive industries like the tech or finance industry, talent retention is a crucial concern for employers, especially as employee expectations of job roles shift from salary-focused to career development opportunities.
Rapid technological advancements may also render certain job functions obsolete, requiring employees to take on new job roles or even acquire new skills. So, what is being done to address these challenges?
Julia Ng, Assistant Chief Executive of Workforce Singapore, weighs in on the importance of job redesign.
How can job redesign help employers?
Ng: Job redesign can help employers improve their ability to attract and retain talent, apart from benefits such as improved productivity, cost savings, increased agility in responding to changes in the market and better customer satisfaction.
It is a dynamic and ongoing process that involves analysing, restructuring, and optimising roles to meet the evolving needs of both the organisation and its employees.
Many employers have a misconception of what job redesign entails or are unfamiliar with it. As such, they may find it challenging to embark on job redesign.
Against this backdrop, the Job Redesign Centre of Excellence (JRCoE) was launched to broaden awareness of job redesign and support enterprises in their job redesign journey. Workforce Singapore has appointed the Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) to drive job redesign initiatives by serving as a one-stop resource centre to direct enterprises to available job redesign resources, best practices, job evaluation tools, sectoral playbooks and grants so that they can be better equipped and supported to drive business transformation through job redesign.
The job redesign journey allows employers to identify skills gaps within their workforce so that they can provide targeted training opportunities to employees, allowing them to acquire new skills and stay relevant. In the process, they could develop a more diverse and skilled workforce that is more adaptive, engaged and resilient.
What is JRCoE?
Under the Job Redesign Centre of Excellence (JRCoE) initiative, launched by Workforce Singapore (WSG) in collaboration with the Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP), organisations in Singapore can now access a one-stop resource centre to support their workforce transformation journey through job redesign.
With the backing of over 20 trade associations and chambers, and guided by a Job Redesign Expert Panel consisting of leaders from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF), as well as academics and industry-recognised professionals, JRCoE is poised to accelerate workforce transformation in Singapore.
Steps to developing an effective job redesign strategy
Ng: To achieve successful job redesign, top management and HR professionals need to actively engage employees in career conversations on the rationale behind job redesign and its benefits. This way, they will buy into the process and can look forward to contributing positively to the firm’s success.
Next, employers need to be clear about the intended objectives – be they to improve productivity, improve staff retention, or increase job satisfaction, for example – as these objectives will drive how the redesign is approached and what solutions will be developed.
In addition, job redesign should not be seen as just a paper exercise. Resources such as time, money, and manpower should be clearly spelt out and invested in the job redesign process.
Employers should also engage their employees on the skills needed for the redesigned job roles and support them in reskilling. Just as learning is a lifelong journey, job redesign should also be viewed as a regular and necessary process for every organisation to respond quickly to changes in the business environment, technological improvements and employee demographics.
Lastly, allocate the necessary resources, including budget and the creation of a cross-functional team, to support the successful implementation of the job redesign project.
It is also advisable to establish a robust monitoring and evaluation system to assess the impact of the changes so that adjustments can be made along the way. Firms tapping on PSG-JR grant support can utilise Workforce Singapore’s National Job Evaluation Tool with support from pre-approved consultants to assess the job enhancements and related productivity improvements for each job role redesigned.
This article was first published on HRMAsia.
