Managing labour shortage in the financial sector

• Main Authors: Diong, Lee Ping, Seah, Siew Kee, Tan, Lee Ngah
• Other Authors: Gregory Thong Tin Sin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/64470
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The financial sector is one of the leading contributors to the economic growth of Singapore. Due to shortage of labour, this trend may not be sustainable. An analysis shows that labour shortage is the result of external economical, organisational and individual variables. External economical factors comprise of decreasing growth rate of the population, low female labour force participation rate, higher school leaving age and ageing of the population while monotonous job content accounts for the organisational variable. Besides, individual variables such as different values of the younger generation and lack of qualified people also contributed to labour shortage. The serious impact of labour shortage in the financial sector was not until recent years with the government 's effort to globalise the sector. Hence managing labour both in terms of quality and quantity of workers in the sector will emerge as a major challenge. The current measures adopted by the financial institutions surveyed included a combination of job recruitment (through advertisement, job agency, recruitment in schools and recommendation from staff), computerisation and automation, ex tens ion of retirement age, as well as training and skills upgrading. How ever , in view of the current lab our shortage , the above measures are deemed to be inexhaustive. Moreover, implementing them creates a new series of problems such as high cost incurred in advertising and training, difficulty in recruiting staff and problems associated with computerisation (such as unauthorised access to confidential information, fraud, computer breakdown, high maintenance cost and substantial outlay involved). Hence, the current measures should be modified to emphasise the following: retention of staff and effective induction programmes, ongoing training programmes, recruitment from the commercial institutes, attraction of women into the workforce, permanent part-time employment and job sharing; employment of foreign workers and extension of retirement age. Labour shortage is inevitable in any expanding economy. This has caused fierce competition among the various sectors for labour, including the financial sector. To solve this problem, the sector has to resort to computer i sat ion and automation. Nevertheless, the most effective way is to tap the under-utilised resources. Making a more efficient use of the existing manpower is hence the key to managing labour shortage in the financial sector.