SMU’s new Resilient Workforces Institute to help Singapore navigate the future of work

Singapore Management University (SMU) has announced the launch of the Resilient Workforces Institute (ResWORK) as a response to overcoming the disruptions that digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) have brought to the workforce.

At the launch event, SMU and SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) signed a two-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on research capabilities to translate the impact of AI and generational changes in job tasks, skills demand, and learning pathways, into policies that support inclusive growth.

SSG’s Chief Executive, Tan Kok Yam, said this partnership was driven by the objective of “future-proofing the national SkillsFuture system”.

He added that adult learning must adapt to rapidly changing technologies and understand what employers need, how jobs evolve, and which skills help workers succeed.

“ResWORK seeks to help build such capabilities for our national adult training system,” Tan noted.

The institute is a multi-disciplinary endeavour, bringing together economics, management, behavioural science, psychology, and technology in its research.

It would also foster collaboration with research academics, industry partners and public agencies.

SMU has also established a partnership with industry partner Equinix to advance applied research under ResWORK. This would support a systemic research project on occupational exposure to AI within Singapore’s labour market.

The event also highlighted the initial nine seed-funded research projects led by the ResWORK faculty on various aspects of lifelong learning and workforce resilience.

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The pillars guiding ResWORK 

In his opening remarks, SMU Provost, Alan Chan, noted that ResWORK would focus on the need for both AI fluency and human centred capabilities to strengthen workforce resilience in the digital age.

SMU’s Professor, Vice Provost (Research) and Interim Director of ResWORK, Archan Misra, echoed this sentiment: “we believe that the future of work is going to be this fluid transfer of responsibility between algorithms and human beings.”

Misra explained that the Institute would address this human-technology interaction by grounding research into three pillars.

The first pillar, “Optimising Human-Machine Collaboration”, focused on exploring how humans work and learn better with technology, aiming to achieve human-robot collaborative capabilities.

The second pillar was about “Transforming Organisations”, was about innovating business processes that would allow organisations to adapt to rapid changes in the workplace.

The third pillar, “Maximising Societal Human Capital”, addressed labour economics and public policy-related issues that could support inclusive economic growth amidst disruptions or trends in the labour market.

Misra added that the combination of these pillars would guide better career planning tools and ultimately enhance lifelong learning for a more resilient workforce.  

Initial approaches to AI-ready workforces 

Nine projects from ResWORK have initially received internal seed-funding.

The projects span across the abovementioned three pillars with a focus on applied, policy-relevant research in partnership with public and private organisations.

One of the projects under the first pillar sought to explore why reskilling programmes often failed.

The research explored how adaptive AI accelerates learning by building on what adults already know, which is different from the usual approach that ignored the cognitive strengths that adults developed through years of professional experience.

A project on the second pillar explored employers and employees’ value for flexible work arrangements.

The study quantified how individuals valued flexible work using large-scale discrete choice experiments, and provided evidence to inform organisational decisions for more sustainable and inclusive workplace design.

Under the third pillar was a project that measured the impact of AI on Singapore’s labour market by constructing an exposure index.

Using econometric methods, the study sought to differentiate the impacts that would complement or substitute human labour. The index would then help to inform workforce planning, reskilling strategies, and national employment policies. 

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Human skills still the first priority

The panel session also highlighted the need for human skills that enable adaptation to change in the future workforce.

INSEAD’s Professor, Phanish Puranam, shared about skills dynamics as an approach to human capital strategy in the age of AI. This entailed designing organisations that could develop the human skills needed for the future.

Puranam explained that the key challenge was that workers’ skills cannot keep up with how quickly job tasks evolve, but technology could bridge this gap by teaching skills rather than just replacing workers.

As an example, he noted that an abacus improves mental math even after you stop using it.  

The same could be said about well-designed AI tools. By training people while they work, this makes upskilling more effective and creates lasting competitive advantage.

Expanding on the impact of AI in the workplace, Peking University’s Professor, Dandan Zhang, shared about her research on AI’s impact on different occupations in Singapore and China using large-scale job posting data.

The project analysed millions of job postings from China and Singapore from 2012 to 2024, mapping job descriptions to standardised tasks and skills.

She noted that while the analysis reflected a heterogenous impact, with some roles more affected than others, the project aimed to evolve into a reliable early warning system to identify AI-driven disruptions in job roles as they emerge.