Singapore’s hotel industry launches Jobs Transformation Map

Singapore’s hotel industry launched the Jobs Transformation Map (JTM) on May 18 during the Human Capital Conference 2023 at PARKROYAL on Beach Road. The event was organised by the Singapore Hotel Association and showcased how the JTM could enable Singapore’s hotel sector to continue to grow in a world as technology and global trends reshape hospitality roles and skills.

The PTM was jointly developed by the Singapore Tourism Board and Workforce Singapore in consultation with 105 hotels and eight education institutions. Its delivery was made by a partner of Ernst & Young, Advisory ASEAN Workforce Advisory leader, Singapore Government & Public Sector leader, Samir Bedi, during the conference.

Delegates heard about the new roles the “hotels of tomorrow” will embody, such as hiring talents in sustainability, technologies and placemaking. The latter role creates meaningful experiences in partnership with the community.

Speakers honed in on the ways in which new talent can be drawn into the industry.

Bedi said that hotels need to create a new employee value proposition to future-proof the workforce and “uplift” brand appeal to make the sector more appealing.

Patsy Ng, Asia Pacific vice president HR, Hilton International Asia Pacific, said HR and hotel employees need to be the true marketeers of the industry. She added that technology had to “drive change to reposition the hospitality industry as an industry of choice and to enable staff to thrive and stay”.

Global studies have shown that millennials’ top priorities include choice and flexibility in their careers, but since the hotel industry is not known for such ideals, leaders need to re-define shift work, for example. The reluctance to do split shifts can be tackled by leveraging technology using “smart scheduling” which can calculate different “permutations of part-time hours” and tap on new workforce segments such as retirees and people with disabilities because people have different needs and can work at different hours, said Ng.

Ng said that instead of advertising a job title, the industry needed to talk about the essence of the job. For example, housekeeping jobs are not just about cleaning, but about providing guests with a good night’s sleep, hence creating a “life-transforming experience for guests” and giving housekeeping compelling roles by deploying technology to assist their jobs.

This last point was further affirmed by INTERLOCK GROUP’S Kevin Singh, whose company was at the conference to do a live demonstration of how hotel guests can make in-room requests with the help of robots to assist in delivering amenities such as towels. Singh said the robots freed up the time for housekeeping to manage their work more efficiently especially when there is a surge in guest check-ins. He has sold such robots to a five-star hotel in Jakarta.

During the panel discussion, industry overview and career opportunities sessions, speakers touched on how the industry could attract new talent from the polytechnics and the tertiary institutions. Negative internship experiences were cited as issues that had to be addressed. Interns need to be treated as individuals and hence internships should be “curated” so that interns can see a career path, said Andreas Sungaimin, senior vice president, Human Capital and Development, Pan Pacific Hotels Group.

Arthur Kiong, Far East Hospitality’s CEO, said that streamlining job functions and providing clearly scoped work helped staff at Far East Hospitality concept hotels in Sentosa manage customers better. He added that to draw talent, one needed to breathe meaning into roles and attract people from the shipyard and warehouse sectors if polytechnic and tertiary graduate recruits are not responding as desired.