Singaporeans can apply for government grants to support studies in infocomm, media, and design

Applications for the SkillsFuture Study Awards for the Infocomm, Media and Design sectors will open up to 14 June 2016.

Announced by Singapore Minister for Communications and Information, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim at the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI)’s Committee of Supply Debate* 2016, the SkillsFuture Study Award encourages Singaporeans to take ownership of their own skills upgrading, in order to deepen specialist skills needed by future economic growth sectors.

A total of 310 SkillsFuture Study Awards will be available for application by Singaporeans who are in their early to mid-stages of their career and are interested in deepening their skills in the Infocomm, Media and Design sectors. These include:

 150 awards from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA);
 70 awards from the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and;
 90 awards from the DesignSingapore Council

Each award, valued at S$5,000, can be used to defray the recipients’ out-of-pocket training expenses for their courses. The award is bond-free and can be used on top of existing government course fee subsidies.

Interested?

Apply for the SkillsFuture Study Award. It is open for applications by Singaporeans, and nominations by employers. Applicants should:

 Have at least three years of working experience in the relevant sector
 Not be a previous recipient of any SkillsFuture Study Award

Read the TechTrade Asia blog post about Singapore's drive to strengthen infocomm skills

Hashtags: #COS2016, #SGBudget2016, #SmartNation, #YaacobIbrahim

*A Committee of Supply in Singapore consists of the whole Parliament, which will debate to consider the business of supply. It usually sits for seven days or more to deal with the estimates of expenditure for the coming financial year. The Committee considers each ministry’s request for funds and votes on it. In 2016, the debate runs from 6 to 14 April.

Using Tableau visualisations in real-time to start a conversation

Murphy shows how 'before Tableau' contrasts with 'after Tableau'. He discovered Tableau in 2010.

In a presentation called Don't Fear the Data, Google's Head of TV Attribution (APAC), David Murphy says that large datasets are easy to work with if you have the right tools. Speaking at the Tableau on Tour conference in Singapore, Murphy said that his life can easily be divided into 'Before Tableau' and 'After Tableau'.

Before he discovered Tableau's visualisation software, he used spreadsheets to create charts, and did not look forward to making changes as it was complex and time-consuming even to make minor changes to the chart. If different versions of the chart had to be made for different teams, a change meant updating all the different versions, with the risk of human error occurring along the way.

The software was also slow, and tended to break down, he added. Questions had to be predetermined. "You need to know what you need to pull out from the data before you can do something with it," Murphy explained.

"It turns people off big data - you come up with lots of reasons why you won't do it rather than saying 'let's do it'," he said.

The Tableau epiphany for Murphy occurred in 2010, he said. He found that he could create charts "twice as fast, or better". "It freed me up to do more cool things, there was more time for me to analyse and bring insights, rather than being a data monkey and doing manual tasks," he said. "I solved problems more easily. (Tableau) greatly reduced the concept-to-implementation gap."

With Tableau, there was no need to worry about breaking equations and cell references, as can happen in spreadsheet software, he said. "There is no need to lock in design. You can rapidly iterate, get more responsive to the needs of the business and to the needs of the users...get much faster insights," he said.

Instead of having a customer or manager ask a question and returning in a week with the charts that answered the question, Tableau allows real-time changes to the data, maintaining the momentum there and then. "I can have a conversation with the data there and then, with the stakeholders who want to know," he said.

Instead of predetermined questions, Tableau has freed Murphy to play around with the data at his disposal, he added. "If you think it, you can do it," he said, with trivial questions potentially leading to something useful.
   

Using Tableau for data visualisation has replaced spreadsheets.

At Google, Murphy uses Tableau to show the relationships between broadcast advertisement airings and online engagement. "Previously you would have had to (show the customer) a .csv file with 12 dimensions and eight measures," he said.

He noted that while each customer's needs are unique, he can now address them in real-time. "You can be really responsive. You don't have to know everything before you go in; you can learn together with customers," he said. "It shows that we care and we keep to the heart of things which I couldn't really do with spreadsheet solutions, and (that) would have taken months to do."

Murphy has also set up a personal site, Datasaurus-Rex, which features visualisations created with Tableau. Among his projects are a dog year calculator, connecting dengue fever cases with mosquito breeding habitats, through crowdsourced insights. "It makes things accessible to people," he said. "I can dive into unknown datasets with ease, and empower others to understand data."

Interested?

Check out Murphy's visualisations on the Datasaurus-Rex site
View visualisations made with Tableau Public
Get a free trial of Tableau

Read the TechTrade Asia blog posts on building a Smart Nation and why visualisations matter

Hashtags: #data16, #datasaurusrex

LinkedIn explores the new norms @Work around the world in new study

Source: LinkedIn.

Professionals in Singapore have become more confident about speaking up and are becoming more assertive at work, according to new research by LinkedIn, the professional network. LinkedIn’s New Norms @Work study* shows that 58% of professionals would now challenge their colleagues by voicing their opinions compared to when they first started their career. 

One in every two professionals surveyed also disagree that they are “yes employees” — someone who does as he/she is told and is not likely to question authority. Compared with their peers in Malaysia – where 64% of those surveyed said they are “yes employees,” Singaporean professionals are more vocal but trail behind those in Indonesia (37% are “yes employees”).

In Singapore, professionals aged 25-34 – or the millennials – appear to be the most eager to please. Over half or 55% say they consider themselves as “yes employees”, compared to 43% of professionals in the 55-65 age group, suggesting that the confidence to speak up come with more work experience.

“The diversity of opinions in any organisation, if harnessed effectively, goes a long way towards strengthening the quality of decision-making. It will also help to enhance Singapore’s attractiveness as a key regional business hub,” said Cliff Rosenberg, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at LinkedIn. “Employers need to create an even more conducive environment for employees to feel comfortable about speaking up. Professionals can also share their wealth of expertise on platforms like LinkedIn to benefit a broader group, and to build their professional brands at the same time.”

Some other interesting findings include:

Dressing

While many workplaces have implemented more liberal and casual dress codes, professionals still dress to impress. First impressions do count and close to half (48%) of professionals surveyed in Singapore say that they will dress up more for meetings held during the workday,

Women feel most pressured to impress in the workplace, with 37% believing they get judged more for what they wear at work (the global average is 25%), while men believe they will appear more professional by dressing smartly (46%). Men, however, tend to look for a more prescriptive approach than their female counterparts and prefer an environment that has clear norms of work attire. Overall, there is a clear idea of what constitutes appropriate work wear with 39% of males and 47% of females maintaining separate work and home wardrobes.

Reputation

LinkedIn’s study also suggests that a blemish-free professional brand is extremely important to professionals in Singapore, with some indicating they will go to great lengths to protect their reputations, even if it means being dishonest. One-third (34%) of professionals in Singapore reported that if they were fired from a job, they would make it look like they left of their own accord; 24% wouldn’t mention it at any cost while 1% would even lie about it. Between the sexes, males (34%) are more likely to be upfront and completely honest about the situation, compared to females (27%).

Online profiles

Reflecting the digital savvy of professionals in the country, the online profile photo is now an opportunity to make a good first impression. This is especially so for professional networking sites; 35% of those surveyed in Singapore say they think more carefully about their profile pictures on LinkedIn compared to other social networking sites. Conscious of the need to establish and protect their professional brands, 43% of Singaporean professionals say it is “very important” for them to keep their professional and personal social media profiles separate.

A global comparison of the 19 countries that participated in the study finds that the value placed on one’s professional brand is similar from country to country with some differences across markets:

· Across markets, one quarter of all respondents agreed that women get judged more for what they wear at work.

· In India, one quarter of full-time working professionals reported wearing a suit or formal dress to work the most frequently, compared to only 3% of their counterparts in Sweden.

· Indonesia professionals are the most image-conscious, with the highest number (51%) of professionals there saying they think most carefully about their professional profile picture, compared to only 4% in Japan.

· Professionals are speaking up globally. When asked the one thing they would do now compared to when they started their careers, over half of professionals worldwide reported that they would challenge their boss by voicing their opinion, challenging ideas, etc.

Next steps?

LinkedIn encourages professionals to join the New Norms @Work conversation by sharing their #WorkSelfie on LinkedIn and across social media channels. Visit a blog post for tips on how to take a great work selfie and to learn more about the New Norms @Work global study.

*In April 2015 LinkedIn partnered with Censuswide to survey more than 15,000 full-time professionals around the world. Respondents between the ages of 18-66+ were surveyed in 19 countries including theUS, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and the UK to unearth mainstays in office culture and gain a better understanding of how full-time working professionals view themselves and are reshaping their professional brand for the modern workplace.

Differing executions of talent management in Asia

Source: ECN.

Talent management has increasingly become a strategic priority for business leaders fighting for managerial talent across Asia. 

A survey of the Economist Corporate Network's (ECN's) 550 member companies across Asia has found that 95% of CEO respondents feel they are actively involved in talent management. However, the nature of their role and the extent of their involvement varies widely.

Aligned for Success? Strategy, talent management and the role of the CEO in Asia reveals that the involvement of CEOs in human capital issues centres most heavily on strategic and planning activities, such as assessing the future shape of their workforce needs, and organisational design. Many CEOs admit to doing less about the developmental aspects of talent management such as nurturing key skills, training programmes and mentoring future leaders.

Highlights from the report include:

· A high proportion (90%) of respondents are raising their investment in internal talent development, but 65% indicate that they have no clear metrics in place to measure the benefit gained from training programmes.

· CEOs identify leadership, strategic thinking and an ability to manage across cultures as the top three skills missing among their current management bench.

· While nearly all CEOs claim to be the leading voice for, and closely involved with, talent management, most currently devote less than 20% of their time to talent-related issues. At the same time, 43% feel they should be giving more time to developing talent in their companies.

· CEOs are most closely involved with the planning aspect of talent management with fewer than half closely involved in actually developing talent.

· Asia-based CEOs indicate that their HR heads are more closely involved in strategy development than their counterparts in Europe and North America.

· 89% of respondents claim that their talent management strategy is informed by and aligned with their core business strategy.

Justin Wood, Director of the Economist Corporate Network in South-east Asia, said: “Competition for talent is intensifying in many parts of Asia. In Southeast Asia, for example, the value of foreign direct investment inflows reached record levels in 2013, overtaking China. These foreign firms are all looking for management talent to drive their investments. At the same time, local firms in Southeast Asia are also growing quickly and investing internationally, both across the ASEAN region, as well as further afield. This makes the battle for top talent especially intense.

“CEOs regularly claim that people are the number one priority at their firms. Yet all too often a gap exists between their rhetoric and the reality. This is usually because of a disconnect between the CEO’s strategic vision and the implementation by HR leads. This new report reveals how business leaders in the region are now looking to bridge this gap by adopting a more strategic approach to talent management, aligned with their core business strategies.”

Read the Southeast Asian edition of the report here. 

*To explore the challenges of securing and developing the right people with the right capabilities, skills and mindset for business leaders in Asia, the ECN surveyed CEO clients about their role in talent management and the extent to which talent management is aligned with core business strategy. Findings of the regional survey were discussed with CEO-level focus groups in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore and these insights were used to help inform the final report.

Factor in pricing and marketing for successful product introductions in Asia Pacific

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of all new products in Asia-Pacific flop, more so than in other parts of the world, says strategy consultancy Simon Kucher & Partners, quoting results from the third Global Pricing Study 2014*, which it conducted together with the independent Professional Pricing Society (PPS). 

Watches on sale in Orchard Road, Singapore.

The capability to enforce price increases is decreasing worldwide, as study results from the previous Global Pricing Study show. In 2012, companies were still able to enforce half of their planned price increases, whereas they are only able to realise about one-third in 2014. Regular price increases appear practically impossible. For instance, regional companies that wanted to raise their prices by 4% only managed 1%.

Despite the economic recovery and attempted price increases, 36% of the respondents in Asia Pacific have been unable to improve their margins in the last few years. "Before you know it, the profits necessary to finance innovations will be gone. And it's precisely these innovations that are going to enable companies to compete sustainably in the market," warns Fan Chen, Managing Director of Simon-Kucher’s office in Beijing.

One-fourth of the respondents even acknowledged that not one of their new products fulfilled the profit targets. The study reveals why: Companies have done a poor job of integrating customer value and pricing policies into the innovation process. 

"Most companies deal with product pricing and marketing when it's already too late - often only right before the launch," explains Dr Jochen Krauss, Managing Partner of Simon-Kucher’s office in Singapore. "It's no wonder that three out of four new products are a bust, thus shooting down any chances of securing those profit targets." 

"This is alarming news for companies, but nothing that can't be solved," comments Dr Georg Tacke, Simon-Kucher's CEO, "Price pressure, price wars and competition shouldn't hold them back from achieving the prices they want. It's definitely feasible." 

Of the global respondents of the study, one group rose above the others. This group, the “Best”, meet their price targets for new products and continue to do so in the long term because they factor pricing and marketing into the innovation process from the very beginning, says Simon-Kucher & Partners. 

The "Best" of the respondents demonstrate how it’s possible to succeed long term - despite price and competitive pressure. About 10% of all global study respondents belong to this group. "The 'Best' thoroughly understand the value that their new products offer and are therefore able to achieve the desired profits. That's what separates them from the 'Rest,'" adds Jan Haemer, study author and Director at Simon-Kucher. 

The study results back this up: Asia-Pacific’s “Best” have a 57% higher share of innovative products in their portfolio and their share of new products that meet profit targets is 62% higher. Also, when it comes to enforcing price increases, their ratio is 62% higher than the others.

A look at the overall study results shows that the “Best” work with a powerful mix of measures: innovation, value and price management are C-level objectives at these companies. Furthermore, they completely integrate marketing and pricing into innovation processes from the product inception to the market launch. They also work with professional methods and customised software to measure value and set prices. 

"The ‘Best’ leave nothing to chance," says Krauss. "If you know the true value of your product, you can set the right price. Besides, it’s essential that companies are able to make tough decisions when necessary – from the beginning to the end of the innovation process." 

This also means having the courage to kill new products if it becomes clear that they won't meet their profit targets, advises the company. 

*Approximately 1,600 participants, of which 39% are C-levels, from companies of all industries and over 40 countries across Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe, took part in May/June 2014 in an online study conducted by Simon-Kucher & Partners. Approximately 200 respondents from Asia-Pacific answered questions on their business environment, pricing practices and pricing performance. The study takes place every two years in collaboration with the independent Professional Pricing Society (PPS).

New research hints that sodium guidelines need to be revised

A new research study from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden on how much salt, or rather sodium, people can safely consume has been making the rounds. According to the university, the study is one of the largest of its kind and indicates that today’s recommended maximum daily intake may be wrong. 

A sprinkling of salt on nuts.

The Prospective Urban Rural study Epidemiology (PURE) study followed over 100,000 persons from 17 countries* for four years and made a number of measurements, including their intake levels of sodium and potassium and how they are related to blood pressure, mortality, heart disease and stroke. Two reports from the global study mentioned by the university were published 14 August in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This is one of the most ambitious studies ever conducted on the effects of people’s salt intake over time," says Annika Rosengren, Professor of medicine at the University of Gothenburg and one of the researchers behind the study.

Too much dietary sodium has been known as a serious health risk because it is clearly linked to increases in blood pressure and incidence of stroke. The results of the new study show that more sodium in the diet does indeed increase a person’s blood pressure, in particular among those with a daily sodium intake exceeding 5 grams (which corresponds to 12.5g of table or cooking salt), those who already suffer from high blood pressure, and those who are 55 years of age or older.

However, one of the two reports from the University of Gothenburg study shows that the recommended level may be too low for good health, said the university. Although a low intake of sodium was in fact associated with a somewhat lower blood pressure, low levels of sodium in the diet can also be harmful. A 2012 review of existing research in the European Journal of Heart Failure concurs, showing that too little sodium in the body, called hyponatraemia, is a good predictor of subsequent death due to heart failure. 

The findings are controversial as other studies, such as this one in 2013, have found that lower sodium intake is linked to a reduced risk of stroke and fatal coronary heart disease in adults. The PURE study found the lowest risk of cardiovascular events and death among those who consumed moderate amounts of salt, rather than cutting salt to a minimum, and that the health risks increased both above and below this interval. The statement from the University of Gothenburg did not specify how much salt was considered 'moderate', and while it may make sense to say that low-sodium diets are likely to lead to hyponatraemia, hyponatraemia can also be caused by some medicines and diseases too.

"The scientific support for today’s recommendations is very weak. At the same time, however, a high sodium intake remains associated with increased risk for both high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease," says Rosengren.

Another study in the August 14 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, from Tufts University, noted that more than 1.6 million cardiovascular-related deaths per year can be attributed to sodium consumption above the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 2g per day. An analysis evaluating populations across 187 countries found the average level of global sodium consumption in 2010 to be 3.95g per day, with all regions of the world above recommended levels.

In their meta-analysis of controlled intervention studies, the researchers found that reduced sodium intake lowered blood pressure in all adults, with the largest effects identified among older individuals, blacks, and those with pre-existing high blood pressure.

“These 1.65 million deaths represent nearly one in 10 of all deaths from cardiovascular causes worldwide. No world region and few countries were spared,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who led the research while at the Harvard School of Public Health. 

Mozaffarian also chairs the Global Burden of Diseases, Nutrition, and Chronic Disease Expert Group, an international team of more than 100 scientists studying the effects of nutrition on health and who contributed to this effort. “These new findings inform the need for strong policies to reduce dietary sodium in the US and across the world.”

“We found that four out of five global deaths attributable to higher than recommended sodium intakes occurred in middle- and low-income countries,” added John Powles, last author and Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in the department of public health and primary care at the University of Cambridge. “Programmes to reduce sodium intake could provide a practical and cost effective means for reducing premature deaths in adults around the world.”

A December 2013 study authored by a number of scholars including both Powles and Mozaffarian found that sodium intakes were highest in East Asia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe (mean >4.2g/day) and in Central Europe and Middle East/North Africa (3.9–4.2g/day). Regional mean intakes in North America, Western Europe and Australia/New Zealand ranged from 3.4 to 3.8g/day.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), sodium is found naturally in foods such as milk and cream (approximately 0.05g of sodium per 100g) and eggs (approximately 0.08g/100g). Bread contains about 0.25g/100g), snacks such as pretzels, cheese puffs and popcorn have approximately 1.5g/100g, while soy sauce would have 7g/100g), and bouillon or stock cubes, approximately 20g/100g.

A July 2014 study in the UK found that halloumi cheese (2.71±0.34g/100g) and imported blue cheese (2.71±0.83g/100g) contained the highest amounts of salt, while cottage cheese (0.55±0.14g/100g) contained the lowest amount of salt.

Health Xchange, a portal set up by Singhealth, has listed nutritional content of common Chinese street (hawker) foods in Singapore. Fishball soup tipped the scales at 2.9g of sodium for a serving of 798g. Soup dishes dominated the sodium stakes. Other dishes with over 2g of sodium per serving included lor mee (540g), which contains over 2.5g of sodium; kway chap with 2.3g of sodium; prawn mee soup, 2.4g of sodium; 569g of Penang laksa, with 2.2g of sodium, and 528g of ban mian with almost 2.2g of sodium.

*This appendix on another aspect of the PURE study lists participating countries. High-income countries include Canada, Sweden, and the UAE; upper-middle income countries were represented by Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey, while China, Colombia, and Iran were the lower-middle income countries. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe contributed data for low income countries.