Nanyang Polytechnic tackles productivity with new training centre
Student guides introducing a cashier system that improves productivity by allowing new cashiers to learn the POS system via e-learning. Photo: Low Wei Xin/TODAY
SINGAPORE — Final-year business students at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) can now learn more about productivity, whose sluggish growth in recent years has become a national concern, at a new training centre right on campus.
The Productivity Training Centre, touted as the first of its kind among institutes of higher learning here, is a collaboration between the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and NYP.
It is currently open to final-year business students, with plans to eventually extend the centre’s services to all final-year students at the polytechnic, said Mr Henry Heng, senior director at NYP’s School of Business Management.
The centre offers, among other things, a compulsory three-day productivity workshop where students will learn to identify and solve productivity-related problems.
Students will then have a chance to apply their newly acquired knowledge.
For example, under the centre’s Teaching Enterprise Project, students will come up with solutions to productivity issues that arise in real companies. These issues can either be brought to the centre’s attention by companies or by students themselves, who may have spotted a problem in the industry and wish to pitch their solutions to the affected companies.
Mr Heng said students will be offered internship opportunities in companies, where they will focus on dealing with productivity.
The WDA, the centre’s main sponsor, said while it has been actively providing productivity training to workers, the agency also recognises the need to develop the productivity mindset in students even before they graduate.
“We felt that there is an urgent need to pilot with one of the polytechnics ... to equip the graduating cohort with a workplace productivity skill set, to help them deepen that skills set ... that will help them deepen their productivity skills, (and) further their career readiness as well as achieve higher value-added skills,” said Ms Julia Ng, Senior Director of the WDA’s Enterprise Development Group.
In response to media queries, the WDA said there are no plans to extend the initiative to other polytechnics.
“We will continue to monitor the outcome. The sign-ups from companies have been very encouraging even though it just started. ... We will work closely with MOE (the Ministry of Education) as well as the other polytechnics to see how else we can work with them to embed productivity skills within the curriculum,” said Ms Ng.
