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The Courage Chapter: Senior Workers’ “Plug-and-Play” Expertise A Boon For Workforce Gaps

  • Lifestyle
  • 5 days ago
  • SilverStreak Editorial Team

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The Courage Chapter: Senior Workers’ "Plug-and-Play" Expertise A Boon For Workforce Gaps
Credit: The Courage Chapter
Singapore’s labour force has just shrunk for the third year in a row, thanks largely to our ageing population.
Though the fall is gradual – the proportion of Singapore residents either working or looking for work has dropped from 70.5% in 2021 to 68.2% this year – it nevertheless reflects a demographic truth that policymakers, companies and the general public alike will all have to face sometime soon.
Our country’s only natural resource – its people – will dwindle, unless we tap on our growing silver workforce.
Enter The Courage Chapter, a talent and employment start-up fronted by decidedly not-silver co-founders Lim Kai Ning and Jesslyn Yim.
The pair envision an age-friendly paradigm shift in not just the way organisations view senior employees, but how silvers look at working in their later lives too.
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There's a lot of evidence to show that employment has a strong positive effect on mental health, helps with cognition and fosters social connection.
Says Kai Ning,
It was something that I noticed with my own father, who returned to work as a part-time technology adjunct lecturer at NTU (Nanyang Technological University) after stopping work,
says the 29-year-old.

"He became visibly happier. I think he felt valued by society, he got to go out and meet other people and share his knowledge, and it wasn't full-time, so he had the flexibility to enjoy himself and relax too."

The Courage Chapter fills "sweet spots"
The Courage Chapter: Senior Workers’ "Plug-and-Play" Expertise A Boon For Workforce Gaps - The Courage Chapter
Credit: The Courage Chapter
The Courage Chapter, like its name suggests, seeks to help experienced employees transition to the next chapter of their working life. How this looks like exactly depends on individual “reternees” – the name the company gives to seniors returning to the workforce – but it generally entails work both meaningful and flexible.
For companies, they can be plug-and-play solutions to temporary employment gaps when someone goes on sabbatical or maternity leave, or for a one-off project,
Kai Ning says.

"Compared to hiring and training a contract worker from scratch within three months or even a year, these workers often need only a short time to adjust to their new company's system before they can hit the ground running."

That last bit’s usually the trickiest, as the co-founder admits that she’s encountered some reternees who require what she calls “expectation alignment”.
In our regular online workshops for our reternees, we like to say that you need to return to the workforce with the humility of an intern. Not because you lack the experience or the skills, but simply because it makes the process of assimilating into a new workplace that much easier,
says Kai Ning.
The same, however, can be said for companies themselves, as the co-founder says that firms are often reluctant to bite despite her sizable silver talent pool. As of our interview in September, they’ve only managed to place several reternees in companies – SilverStreak included! (More on that later.)
Systemic change takes time. A lot of our work now is in helping people to understand that there are tangible benefits of having an intergenerational mix in the office,
she says.

"We regularly conduct workshops on career transitioning for older workers, inclusive human resource hiring practices and unconscious bias – starting from the bottom, so that thoughts would hopefully open up upstream."

An office with a good proportion of seniors is almost an inevitability in the future, looking at the numbers. We now have only 3.5 residents to every senior aged 65 and above, compared to six back in 2014. This number is expected to plummet further to 2.7 in 2030.
Meanwhile, the average Singaporean is now expected to live to 83, which has led to the government kicking up the re-employment and retirement age.
Silver "reternee" pivots to digital marketing
According to Kai Ning, most reternees prefer a role they’re experienced in – which makes sense, as their skills would more easily be applied to special projects or “process improvements, using their experience as a model”.
The Courage Chapter: Senior Workers’ "Plug-and-Play" Expertise A Boon For Workforce Gaps - Jenna Lock
However, 60-year-old Jenna Lock bucked the trend. Despite boasting close to four decades of experience in administration and finance, she decided to return to work as an intern in an entirely new field – digital marketing and social media.
I had just taken an urban farming course and I had the idea to open my own small farm in my condominium penthouse,
says Jenna.

"And I was thinking about reaching out to people with disabilities or dementia to teach them about urban farming too."

But I had to find a way to reach out to them using social media, so I took another course – and then I thought, maybe I should try it out in a real company for some on-the-job training,
she adds with a laugh.
The silver reached out to The Courage Chapter, where she was eventually assigned to SilverStreak for a three-month internship. At SilverStreak, she crafted social media captions, participated in editorial meetings to come up with new content and helped organise events for our free-to-join community groups.
I preferred an internship because you are learning something and gaining experience. You're being paid to get trained up, and you can put it into practice. With a part-time job, you're not really learning, just using old skills to earn some money,
says Jenna.

"I just find it more interesting to always be trying new things."

Having had a taste of digital marketing here, she hopes to eventually set up her own website and social media pages for her urban farm when she gets it up and running. She also plans to enrol herself in coffee brewing and baking courses to shore up her skills.
We have limited time on this earth, we shouldn’t waste it sitting at home watching TV,
she says.

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