Eric Chua on ‘rightsizing’ roles for social service agencies after salary review

Sector salaries are reviewed regularly to ensure that social service agencies (SSAs) remain competitive against comparable roles in competing markets, said Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Social and Family Development Eric Chua. Replying to MPs’ questions in Parliament on Monday (May 8), he said the criteria for job roles were developed and validated with representatives from the sector, academia and the Government. Mr Chua said after the recent review of salaries, some job roles were merged or “rightsized”. These include adjusting organisation budget ranges for head of agency roles, merging executive, programme coordinator, programme executive and volunteer executive into a single executive role, merging social worker (entry) and social worker into a single social worker role, as well as merging therapist (degree) and therapists (diploma) into a single therapist role. Mr Chua said the revised salary ranges for merged job roles provide greater flexibility for SSAs to hire employees at various competency levels, and to plan for their progression according to experience and performance. For merged job roles, the starting salary guidelines took reference from the blend of the merged grades and are higher than the starting salaries of the lower merged roles before the review, he said. Mr Chua said the National Council of Social Service has been supporting SSAs in implementing the guidelines and ensuring that employees continue to be remunerated commensurately. Current staff should not have their salaries reduced as a result of the changes to the job roles, he said. SSAs should continue to pay staff competitively, including paying above the guidelines, if they are able to do so in order to attract and retain quality manpower, he added.