Part of our growth strategy is to nurture and retain talent by investing in our staff through training and development for employees throughout their career to enhance their professional and personal competencies. These include:

• Seminars, workshops and conferences

• In-company training programmes

• On-the-job training

• Practical attachments

• Courses that lead to an academic qualification

Employees who have consistently achieved good performance ratings have a chance to apply for 100% support for part-time academic or professional qualifications that are directly linked to their job scope. So far, PowerSeraya has sponsored 26 employees to upgrade their skills and expand their knowledge base. Of these, 19 are taking degree courses.

Also, the Management Development Programme develops the management and leadership skills of selected staff and helps talent retention.  

At PowerSeraya, all employees receive regular performance and career development reviews where their performance is appraised by their supervisors against set targets. The supervisors also discuss the training & development needs of the employee during the performance appraisal process where competency/skills gaps are identified to determine the training needs of the employee for the following year.

In FY07/08, we invested about S$730,000 in training, a dip from FY06/07’s S$901,000. Similarly, the average training hours received per employee saw a reduction from 52.0 in FY06 to 33.4 in FY07. The reduction in training investment in FY07 was not because of a cut in training budget but rather due to two factors. One is the execution of the Management Development Programme in FY06, a seven day course involving 106 supervisory staff from various departments, which led to a surge in training expenditure for that year. The other factor is due to the fact that staff had to reallocate their priorities to deal with the work required for the divestment of the company, which meant less time for training. Nevertheless, the average investment of S$1,800 per employee is 86% higher than the median training expenditure per employee of S$969 from the Mercer 2007 Corporate Benchmark Monitor Singapore Survey.

Table 9.5 : Training Statistics for the FY05 to FY07 period

Competency-based recruitment practices
We believe in hiring based on the competencies required, following our technical competency inventory for each position from which we draw up the job description.  As a testimony to our philosophy and practice, we signed the Employer’s Pledge of Fair Employment Practices in 2006. PowerSeraya also embraces diversity and has been diversifying the workforce to meet changing business needs. Job applications are open to all and candidates are recruited on their merits with no discrimination either for or against due to race, gender or nationality.

Race
PowerSeraya’s ethnic distribution has a good representation of the minority ethnic groups and reflects our philosophy of giving equal employment opportunities to all ethnic groups. 

Table 9.6: Ethnic Distribution of the Workforce

Nationality
The increasing proportion of foreign nationals is to meet our business needs (eg. for specialised engineering expertise at the power plant) and also with a view of developing an organisation with the diversity of languages and cultures that would be an invaluable human asset should the company embark on its regionalisation plans in the future. 

Gender

To better tap the female workforce in Singapore, we have been consciously increasing the female mix in the workforce, subject to the merit-based recruitment system. Over the years, we have seen an estimated increase of six percentage points in the proportion of female employees over the FY04 to FY07 period. In fact, the percentage of the total workforce comprising of female employees at the corporate office headquarters is over 60% in FY07/08. This is higher than the Singapore’s average of 43.3% (Source: National Statistics for Labour Force in 2008 by Gender)

Gender Mix of company

Table 9.8(a): Gender Mix of workforce

Gender Mix by Workplace Location as of FY 07/08

Table 9.8(b): Gender Mix of Workforce by Location