More than 9,200 jobs, traineeships on offer in food services sector

• 37 per cent of the more than 9,200 jobs, traineeships, attachments and training courses in the food services sector are for PMETs
• About 7,700 locals were hired in September into food services roles under a government wage subsidy scheme
• MOM is hoping to keep up this hiring momentum, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said

SINGAPORE — Tired of working in an office, Ms Nurfarahin Syazwani Mahmud left her e-commerce job to return to the food and beverage (F&B) sector where she used to work part-time as a student.

The 24-year-old was given a role as assistant manager at a Texas Chicken fast food restaurant, but she could not get used to the responsibilities of being a supervisor.

She struggled for months until her employer sent her to a reskilling course that had trainers formerly working in the F&B line teach her to solve problems she never encountered as a part-time worker.

“It boosted my confidence,” she said. “Sometimes you get faulty equipment, staffing situations, suppliers sending in wrong stocks… (the trainers) guided us step-by-step how to identify the problem and calmly solve them.”

Ms Nurfarahin Syazwani is one of more than 1,100 workers from the food services sector who have undergone reskilling amid the Covid-19 pandemic, as restaurants are forced to transform their business models to adopt digital tools and rely less on manpower.

The two-week Jobs Redesign (JR) Reskilling Programme that she attended, held by Workforce Singapore, also taught her how to better handle the digital self-ordering kiosks that have reduced the number of staff needed to man ordering counters.

She was featured in the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) latest jobs situation report — the 17th edition — that highlighted that there were more than 9,200 job openings in the food services sector.

Another F&B worker who went through the JR Reskilling Programme, service crew supervisor Ho Peck Li, 51, said the training has helped her familiarise with the food delivery apps being used at the Hong Kong Sheng Kee Dessert restaurant where she works at.

WHY IT MATTERS

For the latest report, MOM chose to highlight the food services sector as the industry has hired the most number of Singaporeans and permanent residents under the Jobs Growth Incentive scheme amid a foreign manpower squeeze due to travel restrictions.

The S$1 billion government scheme launched in September last year aimed to encourage firms to bring forward their hiring plans and hire more locals by subsidising a quarter of monthly wages for new hires aged below 40 and half the monthly salary of those aged 40 and above.

In the first month the scheme was implemented, more than 50,000 local jobseekers were hired under this scheme, with about half of them aged 40 and above.

The sectors that hired the most under this scheme were:

• Food services (7,700)

• Wholesale trade (4,600)

• Professional services (4,000)

• Construction (3,300)

• Education (3,000)

Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said that with unemployment rates having recovered to pre-Covid levels, one of the priorities for the ministry is to sustain the hiring momentum.

“We knew that coming out of the circuit breaker there would be hiring to backfill vacancies created when companies let some staff go,” she said at a press briefing for the release of the report.

The Jobs Growth Incentive, she said, was designed with the uneven recovery of the labour market in mind to ease any hiring hesitations businesses experiencing new spurts of growth may have.

As these F&B companies seek to fill jobs vacancies, the National Trades Union Congress is hoping that the industry’s digital transformation will attract young Singaporeans who often shy away from jobs in food services.

Labour Member of Parliament Yeo Wan Ling said the labour movement is looking at bringing F&B work to the online space and making it more “exciting and aspirational” for younger workers.

In November last year, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing urged food services firms to find ways to innovate and raise their productivity, noting that the sector employs 5.5 per cent of the workforce but accounts for just 1.1 per cent of the country's economy.

WHAT ROLES ARE AVAILABLE

Of the 9,200 job openings in the food services sector listed on the Government’s MyCareersFuture online portal as of end-December last year, 37 per cent were for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs).

Examples of these PMET jobs include F&B services managers and sales, marketing and business development managers.

Non-PMET roles include cooks, waiters, bartenders and baristas.

To help F&B businesses transform and reskill their workers, the Government and the industry has put in place several initiatives which include:

• The JR Reskilling Programme for the food services industry where existing workers get trained and redeployed into new and higher-value roles

• For non-PMETs, a JR Reskilling Programme specifically for food services assistants will launch in the first quarter of this year. This programme will help them transit into roles such as service ambassadors and kitchen technicians to support digitalisation and automation efforts

• Several initiatives under the SMEs Go Digital Programme to help small- and medium-sized enterprises adopt digital technologies. Under the Digital Resilience Bonus, for example, food services firms can get a bonus payout of up to S$10,000.

HOW MUCH THE INDUSTRY PAYS

MOM gave some details on the monthly salary range for various roles within the industry:

• For sales, marketing and business development managers, the monthly pay ranges from S$3,000 to S$6,500

• F&B services managers earn between S$2,600 and S$3,250 a month

• Cooks get paid between S$2,250 and S$3,000 a month

• Waiters earn between S$1,600 and S$2,000 a month