Overview - Institute for Human Resource Professionals

What is Career Health

Career Health SG is a national initiative in support of the SkillsFuture movement. It aims to empower Singaporeans to chart their career pathways by deepening knowledge and skills with insights on growth jobs and industries. This initiative recognises that sustainable career growth stems from continuously developing relevant skills that align with evolving industry needs.

For employers and HR leaders, career health is about future-proofing your organisation’s workforce. In a tight talent market, manpower challenges can be turned into opportunities when you adopt a skills-first approach to hiring and workforce development.

The Career Health Overview

Businesses also benefit from taking a skills-first approach to hiring and human capital development. They can widen their access to talent, reduce hiring costs and build a more adaptable workforce.

As the appointed Skills Development Partner by SkillsFuture Singapore, IHRP guides HR professionals in implementing these skills-first practices. We help organisations align their talent strategies with business objectives by translating business needs into skills requirements, implementing skills-based talent practices, building internal capabilities for skills-based workforce development, and creating sustainable career pathways for employees.

By focusing on employees’ skills and potential, rather than only credentials or past roles, using the Career Health
ACE framework (Assess – Chart – Execute) you can:

Assess

Attract and retain top talent despite rising competition.

Chart

Sharpen your organisation's competitive edge by building adaptable teams.

Execute

Grow your business sustainably with a workforce ready for change.

Think of it as workforce fitness – when your people stay sharp, adaptable, and continuously learning, your organisation stays resilient and future-ready.

We often focus on skillsets, but my conversations have highlighted that this is only one piece of the puzzle. A truly effective skills strategy must collectively address Skillsets, Mindset and Digital Toolsets.

Solving these three collectively is paramount. Neglecting one will inevitably hinder the progress of the others.

Ong Chin Yin

IHRP-MP and Chief People Officer, Grab

At OCBC, we’re not just preparing for the future of work — we’re shaping it by giving every employee the tools, guidance, and confidence to grow with purpose and lead with impact.

Yap Aye Wee

IHRP-MP and Head, Learning & Transformation, Group Human Resources, OCBC

Explore Skills-First Insights

Discover practices, research, and resources shaping a skills-first future.

Skills-first Practices

IHRP Jobs-Skills Insights

Skills-First Practices Resources

Skills-first Practices

Skills-First Paradigm: One that positions skills as the common currency for articulating, developing, and recognising capabilities across the labour market.

The Centre for Skills-First Practices (CSFP) was set up to build the capability and mindshare of stakeholders to articulate, activate and recognise skills and in so doing, optimise human capital development and skills use in Singapore. CSFP focuses on three areas:

Build ecosystem-wide capabilities to embrace skills-first practices;

Develop analytical methods that provide insights into skills demand, supply, gaps, practices and solutions; and

Champion global strategic convening to advance skills-first practices.

Skills-First Working Paper Series

With the global emphasis on skills and the importance on skills that Singapore places, it is timely to define what skills-first means for Singapore. The working paper series, a six-part publication, produced by the Centre for Skills-First Practices (CSFP), aims to catalyse dialogue, surface fresh perspectives and encourage the co-creation of practical solutions to advance a skills-first ecosystem in Singapore. The first three working papers are now available online: