Future-Ready Multi-Generational Workers Who Are Flexible and Fluid Across Sectors

PI: Mr Poon King Wang (LKYCIC, SUTD)
Team: Dr Thijs Willems, Ms Candy Mak, Ms Isabel Lam (LKYCIC, SUTD)

In an increasingly fast-paced and interconnected world, economies change quickly. Workers must prepare for the future by building flexibility and fluidity to cope with transitions between sectors and roles. Particularly, some segments of society face precarity and latent vulnerabilities – they can suddenly be tipped over into crisis and find themselves unable to cope.

The project aims to explore and develop ways to design new career pathways with marginalised and/or vulnerable workers in Singapore to help them build career resilience and realise their potential. The approach we are taking is novel as it introduces an initial element of diversification to designing career pathways. Unlike the conventional focus on building one pathway (e.g., to a specific role), we aim to introduce additional/alternative pathways that build on similar skills and tasks—much like how taking one multivitamin pill introduces multiple benefits at one time. We will therefore be building on our existing body of work on task transition algorithms and maps, as well as our “multivitamin” strategy, to help workers reframe the conversation around tasks, skills, domain knowledge, and expand possibilities from there.

Participants will be invited to co-create and test their new pathways with us using an iterative design process. In other words, they will be given tools and support to choreograph and rehearse their next career move. We will begin with in-depth interviews that cover both work and life (instead of the conventional focus on work-centric concerns) to understand the full extent of what might be holding them back. We may also employ fieldwork, co-design workshops with partner organisations and participants, and algorithmic transition mapping. Opportunities for workers to learn and apply new skills and technology will be integrated where feasible.

A key benefit of this research is thus the direct participation of workers in designing a future of work that includes and welcomes them.

For more information on the research project, please email candy_mak@sutd.edu.sg