Strategies for Singapore maritime industry in an uncertain global environment - Part C: Talent

The maritime industry is indispensable to many countries as trade represents the lifeblood of many economies across the globe, including Singapore. Due to economies of scale, sea transport is highly employed for trades, transporting over 80% of the world’s trade by volume. The maritime industry is of high economic importance in Singapore, accounting for 7% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Production (GDP). In a world increasingly characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), the Sea Transport Industry Transformation Map (ITM) was launched in 2018, with a refreshed version released in 2022 in an endeavour to safeguard the competitiveness of Singapore’s maritime industry. A few unprecedented global events have taken place since 2018. In particular, Covid-19 upturned the world and brought forth the “new normal”, which includes an increased focus on sustainability, digitalisation, and work-life balance. From the Sea Transport ITM, developing a future-ready maritime workforce is one of Singapore’s key strategies and it involves attracting, retaining, and retraining talent. Based on current literature, it is only possible to gather the various talent initiatives developed by the different government bodies in response to the ITM and the industry's general need to attract, retain and upskill talent. As such, the research gaps with regards to Singapore’s maritime talent strategy include the current state of the maritime industry and whether maritime companies are putting in similar efforts to attract, retain and upskill talent. To gain insights into the industry’s current state of attracting, retaining, and retraining talent including other realistic issues overlooked, surveys and interviews were carried out to gather quantitative and qualitative data. Primary research efforts revealed that the overall push factor of the maritime industry is more than its pull factor. In addition, the government generally puts in more effort to attract talent into the industry than the companies but there are often limitations. Other issues uncovered include the word of mouth as a double-edged sword in attracting talent, low employee engagement by companies in retaining talent, the limited support provided by companies in retraining talent and people’s lack of awareness of the Maritime Port Authority (MPA) co-funding schemes for them to utilise in their training. The most challenging aspect of developing a future-ready maritime workforce is aligning the maritime companies with Maritime Singapore's vision as some companies may have tunnel vision. Companies also have the autonomy to decide on the extent they will contribute to a future-ready maritime workforce in Singapore. Hence, the study suggests establishing a maritime association to provide more direct support for all maritime stakeholders and a multilateral synergy model to remind the industry of the interdependence of the three key maritime strategies – sustainability, digitalisation and talent. Overall, maritime companies must and will need to generate more value.Bachelor of Science (Maritime Studies