February 7, 2022

SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) was initiated to encourage lifelong learning and skills upgrading amongst Singaporeans. It provides courses that target adults in the workforce, equipping them with industry-relevant skills to match the current economic climate. On 7 February 2020, it was reported in The Straits Times in ‘More Singaporeans, companies using SkillsFuture for training: SSG’ that 86% of Singaporeans who enrolled in SkillsFuture programmes in 2019 felt that it had enriched their work performance. There was also a notable increase in the number of individuals and enterprises who participated in SkillsFuture in 2019 than in 2018.

‘Regulatory Focus and SSG Career Development Course Use: A Brief Online Intervention’ is a project by Assistant Professor Jia Lile (NUS Psychology) that studies individuals’ career development through the regulatory focus theory (RFT). RFT is a goal pursuit theory which explores the relationship between a person’s motivation and how they set themselves up to achieve that goal. It assumes two separate self-regulatory orientations: promotion (achieving the goal satisfies the need for accomplishment); and prevention (achieving the goal prevents negative outcomes that could happen if the goal is not obtained). Both orientations can help an individual to attain their goals, but when an individual pursues a goal using a mindset that fits their regulatory orientation, they are more eager to persevere towards achieving their goal.

As part of the project, a two-year randomized intervention study on 24 to 40-year-old members of the Singaporean workforce is conducted, with participants assigned to four different intervention conditions. The first three conditions contain varying information about the suitability of regulatory focus (self-regulatory orientation) for career goal pursuit, while the last condition acts as a control group to determine the pre-existing effect of the participants’ current regulatory focus. Results are evaluated after one year through data on their SSG course usage, job satisfaction, current career status, career resilience, and general health.

Dr Jia postulates that the best outcome for SSG course use and overall career development occurs when the regulatory focus intervention aligns with the individual participant’s motivational style and informs participants on their regulatory orientation towards goal pursuit. The experiment informs policymakers on different ways to improve SkillsFuture courses which benefit different individuals.

The project kicked off in 2019 and is managed by the NUS Institute for Applied Learning Sciences and Educational Technology (ALSET) and funded through a grant from the Workforce Development Applied Research Fund (WDARF).