SINGAPORE: The seasonally adjusted resident unemployment rate rose from 3 per cent in June 2016 to 3.1 per cent in June this year, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on Thursday (Nov 30). 

This is the highest since 2010. 

In the Labour Force in Singapore Advance Release 2017 report, MOM said the lower employment rate for those aged 15 and above, which declined from 65.3 per cent to 64.9 per cent, reflected population ageing and the “higher propensity of youths to postpone entry into the labour force as they pursue further education”. 

The employment rate for those aged 15 to 24 decreased from 35.8 per cent in June last year to 34.1 per cent in June this year. 

However, the employment rate for residents aged 25 to 64 continued to increase, from 80.3 per cent to 80.7 per cent during the same period. For residents aged 65 and over, the employment rate increased from 25.5 per cent to 25.8 per cent. 

There was also a difference between the unemployment rates for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) compared to non-PMETs. 

The unemployment rate for PMETs fell slightly from 3.1 per cent in June 2016 to 3 per cent in June 2017, and their long-term unemployment rate also improved from 0.9 per cent to 0.7 per cent in the same period. 

MOM said this could have been aided by enhancements to programmes that assist PMETs, especially those aged 40 and over, in securing employment. 

However, unemployment among non-PMETs rose in 2017 from 4.2 per cent in June 2016 to 4.5 per cent in June this year. 

These workers found it harder to secure a job with the continued decline in non-PMET job vacancies, MOM said. 

Nonetheless, they are unlikely to be unemployed for long as their long-term unemployment rate for non-PMETs remained unchanged at 0.7 per cent, it added. 

INCOME GROWTH UP WITH IMPROVEMENT IN ECONOMY

According to the report, the median income of full-time employed residents including employer CPF contributions rose faster year-on-year by 4.2 per cent in June 2017 compared to 2.7 per cent in June last year in nominal terms, and 3.7 per cent compared to 3.3 per cent in real terms.

This was due to the improvement in economic conditions and demand for higher-skilled manpower, MOM said. 

Over the last five years from June 2012 to June 2017, real income at the 20th percentile grew at a sustained pace of 4.2 per cent per annum, faster than the median of 3.4 per cent per annum. 

The growth was supported by Government initiatives to raise incomes of low-wage workers, MOM said. Real income growth for both groups were significantly faster than in the preceding five years, it added. 

“For real income growth to be sustained, firms will have to continue to transform and grow to become more productive. In a manpower-lean environment, it is also important for firms to adopt progressive human capital practices. They will have to invest in their workers and build inclusive workplaces to value every employee regardless of age, gender and qualification,” the Manpower Ministry said in a press release.

MOM said that the Government will also need to press on with efforts to help low-wage workers be better deployed, allow older workers to remain in employment longer and make more flexible work arrangements available, especially for those with caregiving responsibilities.

SINGAPORE: For the past few years I have coached students to corporate workers, educators to CEOs about resilience and one question comes up constantly.   

“How can we develop our resilience muscles if we are so afraid of failure?”

Students tell me that they’ve grown up with their parents sitting next to them when they’re studying, correcting their mistakes even before they discover them.  

Junior corporate workers tell me that they are sceptical about authority figures encouraging them to take risks, fail fast and think out of the box as their experiences with their line managers have taught them that even small failures affect their KPIs and are penalised. 

Senior leaders tell me candidly that in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, they are looking for people who are able to be resilient but most Singaporeans don’t have any risk tolerance for failure and they struggle with finding people to take on ambitious roles or overseas postings. 

WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME TRULY RESILIENT

If we are to become truly resilient in work and our lives, we need to redefine our relationship with setbacks, uncertainty and change. This requires a mindset shift from seeing change as a threat to an opportunity for growth. 

This mindset shift must occur at every level in the ecosystem from student to educator, junior worker to HR to senior management, or “resilience” and “fail forward” will just become lip service – catchy but meaningless soundbites.

This is incredibly difficult because humans have a fundamental need for safety. Since we were cavemen, we have been programmed to seek biological, social and cultural homeostasis.  

Change is the unknown, which means risk and potential disaster. 

But as humanity enters a new era of constant change and disruption, there has never been a greater need for resilience. Change is now a given. The speed of change is exponentially increasing. How are we going to respond to it?

First, let’s address some career resilience myths. 

Career resilience is not simply about bouncing back from failure with a smile on your face, like an inflatable punching bag. It is not putting up with anything that is thrown at you in the name of work. It is not simply staying in the same job for decades. 

If you’re just rebounding mindlessly without any growth, what’s the point in that? You’re setting yourself up to replicate the same mistakes in future, wasting effort and time.

Rather, true career resilience is about choosing to take responsibility for your own career and growth, being agile, constant evolution and recovering from setbacks with new insights and personal growth.

To me, there are three components of career resilience:

Awareness – Are your awareness sensors working? How self-aware are you and how aware are you of the wider world? How is your career serving you now? And are you contributing at your best and utilising your strengths? What’s working, what’s not working and what could you change?

Agility – Are you able to adjust to change and setbacks nimbly and carry on pursuing your goals? Can you respond intelligently rather than just reacting on autopilot? Can you turn adversity into opportunity? Can you reinvent yourself and evolve with the times?

Growth and transformation – Are you wiser? Have you grown and learned from setbacks? What does success look like to you and what metrics do you use to measure your own growth and success? 

Ask yourself those hard questions now before it is too late, because the truth is that no one is responsible for your own career development but you. 

SOME SPECIFIC TIPS ON HOW TO CULTIVATE RESILIENCE

1. Understand your brand. Be able to define your strengths and what your unique value proposition is. If need be, ask others around you. What strengths do they rely on you for?

2. Have some curiosity about the world outside. What’s going on in other sectors? What new events could you go to? Meet new people and form new networks. So much of life depends on happenstance – you randomly bump into someone who turns out to have an opportunity for you for instance.

3. Curiosity about the world inside. Self-reflection is key. Make it a practice to carve out some time every day or week to reflect on past events and cultivate a habit of asking yourself what’s working, what’s not working and how you can develop.

4. Draw inspiration from yourself. Some people read inspirational memoirs of great people to motivate themselves, but it can be even more effective to draw inspiration from your own past successes.

One suggestion is to spend 15 to 30 minutes letting yourself journal. Find a quiet spot and keep your pen moving across the page without editing.

Write about the three greatest setbacks or challenges in your life that you have overcome and identify what strengths you used to pull through. Read it back to yourself. You may even want to put it somewhere where you can see it to encourage yourself to keep going when times are tough. 

5. Have optimism. Our consciousness is saturated with negative messages from the media and our surroundings. Research shows that optimistic people are far more successful and resilient than pessimists. 

One way to deliberately encourage more positive thinking is through a gratitude practice. I do a very simple practice with my family at dinner where we each say one specific thing we are grateful for today. It helps us have more empathy and insight into each other’s lives, and also reminds us not to overlook the beauty and richness of life itself.

6. Self-care. It sounds basic, but self-care is a hygiene factor. If you’re not sleeping well, eating well or exercising your body, you are not optimising your ability to be resilient in your career and your personal life. 

7. Build social resilience. One of the most successful people I know tells me that she has appointed her own “advisory board” of trusted people whom she goes to for advice, encouragement and ideation. Life is challenging and having good friends and mentors makes a huge difference.

Don’t get so busy with the operational stuff that you forget to invest in relationships. As the African proverb goes,

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I’m very passionate about resilience because I believe it is the the biggest factor influencing your career success. 

Yes, skills are important. But resilience trumps skills any day.

If you don’t have resilience, you’ll never have the opportunity to apply even the most sophisticated skills. If you give up easily, none of your talents you’ve spent so much time acquiring will actually see the light of day.

So invest in yourself and be resilient about exercising resilience. 

Crystal Lim is director of the Centre for Future-ready Graduates at the National University of Singapore.

This is the fourth commentary in Channel NewsAsia’s series with the NUS Centre for Future-ready Graduates on achieving career success.

Read the first commentary on whether work-life balance is as elusive as most people make it out to be.

Read the second commentary on why networking is not a dirty word but a necessary skill.

Read the third commentary on why multi-tasking is a productivity killer. 

SINGAPORE: While the Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) campus in Pulau Ubin features impressive obstacle courses these days, it was far more spartan when it began 50 years ago.

As one of the pioneering instructors at OBS during its founding days, Mr Mathias Chay has seen the campus evolve.

“My fellow instructors and I would go into the swamps and chop trees, branches and so on to build obstacles,” said Mr Chay, who is in his 70s.

They placed these so-called “agility courses” near the sea so that if trainees were to fall, they would land in the water.

“It was all built by us, made up of the natural elements found around us. I suppose it was not as sophisticated but it did the job,” said Mr Chay at the OBS 50th anniversary celebrations on Pulau Ubin on Wednesday (Nov 29).

“The quarters where the students would stay were actually labourers’ quarters. They were built for the workers of the granite quarry nearby,” he added.

Mr Chay also recalled the time when sea expeditions were done using sailboats given to them by the British Army.

“It was one of those old fibreglass boats that were very rudimentary. We called them bathtubs as they were very clumsy,” he reminisced.

PULAU UBIN “LIKE A LARGE, UNKNOWN CONTINENT”

One of Mr Chay’s adventure trainees at OBS was none other than Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

“The facilities and equipment were very basic. We had canoes, sailing dinghies, prismatic compasses and topographic maps, some simple rope and obstacle courses, but not much else,” recalled PM Lee in his speech at the anniversary celebrations.

“Pulau Ubin then was even more rural than today. There were prawn ponds, granite quarries, a few kampongs, old rubber plantations, lots of mangrove swamp and a bit of a beach. To us, it seemed like a large, unknown continent,” he said.

He said that the 17 days he and his camp mates spent there had a lasting impact on him.

“Today, the mission of OBS – to develop mentally and physically rugged youths to be active citizens is more relevant than ever,” Mr Lee added.

TEACHING YOUTHS RESILIENCE

Since OBS was formed in 1967, more than 500,000 Singaporeans have been through the course.

OBS instructor Melvin Lam said that current trainees are taught skills like kayaking, trekking, setting up tents and cooking in the outdoors.

“They also stay overnight in the forest. The environment we put them in puts them out of their comfort zone,” he said.

Putting the trainees in an unfamiliar environment improves their endurance and resilience, said the 28-year-old, who has been instructing at OBS for a year.

It was such skills which student Haikal Chew learnt on his recent stint at OBS. His fondest memory was leading his team of 60 to kayak around Pulau Ubin.

“The most memorable was the sea expedition, where I was the sea expedition leader. (It) was tough but we made it to our destination and it was meaningful,” said the secondary three student at Woodlands Ring Secondary School.

CEO of National Youth Council David Chua said that there will be more team-based challenges in the high adventure elements of Coney Island when the expanded camp opens there around 2020.

“In the future we can look forward to new programmes not just from Coney Island but to expeditions that will be designed in the northern parts, Eastern parts and southern parts of Singapore,” he added.

At the event, PM Lee also launched the OBS50 anniversary book. It recounts the memories and experiences of former instructors and students at OBS.

SINGAPORE: While the Outward Bound Singapore (OBS) campus in Pulau Ubin features impressive obstacle courses these days, it was far more spartan when it began 50 years ago.

As one of the pioneering instructors at OBS during its founding days, Mr Mathias Chay has seen the campus evolve.

“My fellow instructors and I would go into the swamps and chop trees, branches and so on to build obstacles,” said Mr Chay, who is in his 70s.

They placed these so-called “agility courses” near the sea so that if trainees were to fall, they would land in the water.

“It was all built by us, made up of the natural elements found around us. I suppose it was not as sophisticated but it did the job,” said Mr Chay at the OBS 50th anniversary celebrations on Pulau Ubin on Wednesday (Nov 29).

“The quarters where the students would stay were actually labourers’ quarters. They were built for the workers of the granite quarry nearby,” he added.

Mr Chay also recalled the time when sea expeditions were done using sailboats given to them by the British Army.

“It was one of those old fibreglass boats that were very rudimentary. We called them bathtubs as they were very clumsy,” he reminisced.

PULAU UBIN “LIKE A LARGE, UNKNOWN CONTINENT”

One of Mr Chay’s adventure trainees at OBS was none other than Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

“The facilities and equipment were very basic. We had canoes, sailing dinghies, prismatic compasses and topographic maps, some simple rope and obstacle courses, but not much else,” recalled PM Lee in his speech at the anniversary celebrations.

“Pulau Ubin then was even more rural than today. There were prawn ponds, granite quarries, a few kampongs, old rubber plantations, lots of mangrove swamp and a bit of a beach. To us, it seemed like a large, unknown continent,” he said.

He said that the 17 days he and his camp mates spent there had a lasting impact on him.

“Today, the mission of OBS – to develop mentally and physically rugged youths to be active citizens is more relevant than ever,” Mr Lee added.

TEACHING YOUTHS RESILIENCE

Since OBS was formed in 1967, more than 500,000 Singaporeans have been through the course.

OBS instructor Melvin Lam said that current trainees are taught skills like kayaking, trekking, setting up tents and cooking in the outdoors.

“They also stay overnight in the forest. The environment we put them in puts them out of their comfort zone,” he said.

Putting the trainees in an unfamiliar environment improves their endurance and resilience, said the 28-year-old, who has been instructing at OBS for a year.

It was such skills which student Haikal Chew learnt on his recent stint at OBS. His fondest memory was leading his team of 60 to kayak around Pulau Ubin.

“The most memorable was the sea expedition, where I was the sea expedition leader. (It) was tough but we made it to our destination and it was meaningful,” said the secondary three student at Woodlands Ring Secondary School.

OBS CEO David Chua said that there will be more team-based challenges in the high adventure elements of Coney Island when the expanded camp opens there around 2020.

“In the future we can look forward to new programmes not just from Coney Island but to expeditions that will be designed in the northern parts, Eastern parts and southern parts of Singapore,” he added.

At the event, PM Lee also launched the OBS50 anniversary book. It recounts the memories and experiences of former instructors and students at OBS.

SINGAPORE: In a quiet neighbourhood in eastern Singapore, a 47-year-old woman was developing a rash, fever and conjunctivitis. Had the symptoms developed separately, her General Practitioner would have barely batted an eyelid.

But together, the symptoms were indicative of the Zika virus, an illness that was spreading quickly around South America.

Patient A, as she became known, would be the first case of locally transmitted Zika in August 2016. As more people were diagnosed with the disease, which is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, authorities sought to control the mosquito population through regular fogging.

By the end of the year, about 450 people here were confirmed to have caught the virus.

“You have to have all of the stars lined up before you have that kind of transmission that you did last year,” said Emeritus Professor at Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme Duane Gubler. 

Prof Gubler told Channel NewsAsia that epidemic transmission is a “complicated interaction between the virus, the human host and the mosquito”, and all three “lined up” to propagate the virus quickly in a span of four months.

But just as quickly as new clusters appeared, Zika numbers dwindled globally as well as locally.

For scientists and infectious diseases experts, understanding the impact of the virus is a work in progress. With current research maturing over the next six months, Prof Gubler said the hope is to eventually be able to provide more answers than questions.

Until then, the focus for vulnerable countries needs to be on controlling the mosquito population.

FACTORS BEHIND LACK OF MICROCEPHALY IN SINGAPORE

Having circulated silently across Africa and Asia since the 1960s, Zika’s large outbreak was first reported on Yap Island, west of French Polynesia.

Prof Gubler said with some 5,000 reported cases, there were no signs of neurological diseases associated with Zika. They include microcephaly, which causes babies to be born with a smaller head due to abnormalities in the development of the brain. Another neurological disease linked to Zika is the Guillain-Barré syndrome, which causes temporary or permanent paralysis.

“When the virus got to French Polynesia with over 30,000 cases, then they started to see a few cases of microcephaly,” Prof Gubler said.

By the time it got to Brazil where it infected hundreds of thousands of people, Prof Gubler said the number of babies born with microcephaly rose even more. 

Prof Arijit Biswas, a Senior Consultant at the National University Hospital’s Women’s Centre said there appears to be a link between Zika and microcephaly in a developing fetus. 

In Singapore, the Health Ministry told Channel NewsAsia that of the 17 women who were diagnosed with Zika during their pregnancies in 2016, two had their pregnancies terminated while one had a miscarriage.

The reasons behind this were not linked to Zika. 

It added the other 14 women gave birth to babies with no signs of microcephaly. Last year, the Health Ministry announced it would monitor the development of these babies until the age of three.

“So far, none of the babies evaluated under the surveillance programme have shown signs of abnormalities and are developing well,” MOH said.

Prof Biswas, who who is also the lead of the Health Ministry’s Clinical Advisory Group on Zika and Pregnancy, said the small number of pregnant women affected in Singapore also lowers the probability of having a baby with microcephaly. 

Prof Gubler agreed, saying this could explain why in places like Brazil where hundreds of thousands are thought to have been exposed, doctors started to see a rise in the number of microcephaly cases.

Both he and Prof Biswas added another reason for the lack of microcephaly cases in Singapore could be due to genetic variances in the Zika strains.

In September 2016, health authorities and researchers concluded that the Zika virus strains found in the first two locally transmitted cases in Singapore were not imported from the South American strain.

“To our surprise, the Zika strain causing the local outbreak was derived from a local version that has been circulating in South-east Asia since the 1960s,” A*Star’s Bioinformatics Institute’s (BII) Sebastian Maurer-Stroh was later quoted in a publication.

A*Star said an analysis of the strains suggest Singapore’s strain diverged in early 2010, before the rapid spread through Brazil.

The Agency’s BII said Zika strains prior to 2013 have not been linked to severe neurological complications.

While there is research to suggest a mutation in the strain circulating in South America could have been the reason for the high rates of microcephaly, Prof Biswas cautioned there is insufficient data on the microcephaly rates among different strains. 

DOES THE THREAT REMAIN? 

For infectious diseases expert Dr Leong Ho Nam, the drastic decline of cases this year came as a surprise. He said he expected the number of cases to rise. Instead, Zika activity, like in the rest of the world, has been low.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) said this year’s Zika clusters were contained in “small localised areas” through intensive and targeted vector control operations and community awareness.

After the last Zika cluster in Serangoon North Avenue 1 closed in September, Zika cases have been sporadically appearing after weeks of inactivity. For example, after more than six weeks, a new case was highlighted in the Health Ministry’s weekly infectious diseases bulletin last week, bringing the total to 67 this year. This is a sharp decline from the 453 Zika cases this time last year.

Both Dr Leong and Prof Gubler expect the virus to continue to spread, though it is unclear how rapid its spread will be.

Prof Gubler said he expects Zika to go the way of Dengue and Chikungunya epidemics. All three are transmitted by the aedes mosquito.

“Chikungunya caused a major epidemic in Asia in the 1960s and 1970s and then disappeared and then reappeared in 2004 and spread again over several years,” Prof Gubler said.

“Dengue has done the same thing- it comes and goes. After several years of epidemics, the virus goes underground and it becomes “a silent transmission”, characterized by mildly asymptomatic cases that are not recognised as Zika or as Dengue or as Chikungunya.”  

Prof Gubler said that’s because the viruses undergo genetic mutations that cause them to have a lower potential for epidemics and infectivity.

But Dr Leong offered a different explanation, saying that the likely reason for the lack of Zika cases in Singapore could be due to a better control of mosquito breeding. He pointed out there were about 2,500 cases of Dengue this year, compared to more than 12,600 last year.

“But if you look beyond it and postulate and guess, is it because the Zika virus is not able to grow so well in Singapore?” he said.

“If Singapore is very good in controlling mosquito populations, my assumption would be that Indonesia and Thailand may not have set up the tremendous efforts Singapore has. Why aren’t they getting huge outbreaks of Zika?”

Compared to dengue, Dr Leong also pointed out that Chikungunya also does not spread as quickly.

“It thus suggests that the mosquitoes here are not quite adapted to Chikungunya and Zika transmission as compared to Dengue,” he said.

“We must not assume that the mosquito will treat Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya equally. We will assume that like us, some would like to eat more fruits, some would like more meat and some would like more vegetables. So there will be a different propensity for the virus.”

Prof Gubler noted that a Zika vaccine could be about three years from being approved if all goes well. 

Aside from the development of a vaccine, Prof Biswas said another interesting outcome of research on the virus is the unravelling of the “mechanism of nerve cell destruction, particularly nerve stem cells”. 

“One suggested mechanism is the destructive effects of the virus on neural stem cell which play a very active role in the development of fetal brain,” Prof Biswas said. 

This, he said, could explain how microcephaly characteristics of a small brain can develop in fetuses infected with Zika. 

But this same understanding is being explored by researchers in treating other diseases.

“Researchers are also exploring the possibility of using Zika virus in the treatment of brain tumors, utilizing the same nerve cell destruction properties of this virus,” Prof Biswas added.

CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE IS CRITICAL

Until then, both experts agreed that mosquito controlling efforts need to be maintained on the island.  

To that end, NEA told Channel NewsAsia it conducted more than 575,000 inspections between January and June this year. It said some 1,900 households were fined for mosquito breeding.

It said construction sites found to be breeding mosquitoes dropped from 11 per cent in 2013, to 6 per cent as of June this year, as a result of working with stakeholders.

Still, it said more than 20 Stop Work Orders were issued in the first half of the year.

“With more exposure, the viruses and mosquitoes will learn to adapt to each other. So if you are hungry and there is nothing to eat except vegetables, you end up adapting and liking vegetables,” Dr Leong said.

Another reason for eradicating the mosquito population is the worry that there are other viruses out there that could be transmitted through the aedes mosquito.

“I estimate there’s probably five or six viruses out there that can be transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti that will respond to the same type of pressures- urbanisation and global travel,” Prof Gubler said.

“That can move those viruses around the world. So the only way to prevent the epidemic of those viruses if they emerge is to have good mosquito control because we don’t have vaccines for them, we don’t have other antiviral drugs.”