One of my friend KKH is a computer engineer working in a research institute.
He always complain that IT is a sunset industry and always infested with cheap foreigners who flood the market and that his rice bowl is not steady once his institute runs out of funds.
In Israel, studying IT is a robust industry. Many Israelis excel at Mathematics and programming and many IT companies such as Qualcomm are founded in Israel.
In addition, many MNCs such as Motorola, HP, IBM and Google also locate their R&D activities in Israel because they are very good in creating things.
Compared to Singapore, most MNCs will close their offices in Singapore and relocate them to cheaper locations once EDB Singapore withdraws their tax relief and subsidies to them.
Part of the reason is because they find Singaporeans and foreigners in Singapore to be uncreative.
Many bosses in Singapore prefer foreigners because they are cheaper and also more obedient and more willing to be "Yes" Man and just follow orders.
However, in Israel, the bosses there are quite the opposite. I suppose they love their employees to be challenged and are more engaging.
I have the experience of working in a Singapore SME too.
The workplaces have the WSQ Framework to help boost productivity and are also certified People Excellence Awards to ensure that lifelong training is in place. The organisations are also able to claim Productivity Innovation Credit (PIC) due to this.
However, despite all these measures, something is lacking.
Most of the time, these workplaces are still very top-down driven and junior employees hardly have any say or input in the companies' direction or existing problems. With such a rigid hierarchy in place, most workers can't apply what they learnt in WSQ to their job scope.
Recently, I attended some National Conversation dialogues in Education, Housing and Healthcare. The facilitators were from HDB, MOE and MOH. They used diagrams, mind mapping and allowed us to present our views as though we were the centre of attention.
Although they had no concrete solutions to complex problems, I was also quite satisfied that at least I felt respected.
If I were an employee, it would be an honour to work in such an engaging environment. I believe that if this is a company, it can troubleshoot any problem and not rely on cheap foreigners to do the work.
I recommend that government assistance grants such as Productivity Innovation Credit, Corporate Income Tax, Wage Credit, Technology Adoption Grant and Market Assessment Grant incorporate these learning pedagogies as a benchmark for all companies to implement and to claim tax relief.
I also recommend that these companies should consult NIE or NUS or NTU or SMU to help spread these learning pedagogies to their workplace.
Only then can we truly believe in ourselves and do away the notion that being a Yes Man mentality is a good trait in an organisation.
CJ
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