UTAC recognised for excellence in employee development and lifelong learning

Source: UTAC. President Halimah
Yacob of Singapore presented the award
to UTAC.

UTAC Holdings (UTAC), an independent semiconductor test and assembly services provider, was honoured with the SkillsFuture Employer Award 2018, Singapore’s highest skills award for employers.

The award recognises companies which have done well in creating a culture that champions life-long learning and career development in the workplace.

Dr John Nelson, CEO, UTAC, said: “In a demanding and competitive business environment, our employees are our biggest asset. We have invested significantly in skills development and have robust training programmes and learning activities in place to bring out the best in our employees to enable them to continuously provide great value to our customers.”

“Collaborating with accredited agencies, institutions and industry partners, UTAC has successfully leveraged on the Skills Framework for Electronics to support our employees’ continuous learning journey. Being an in-house approved training organisation (ATO) for workforce skills qualifications (WSQ), we continually strive to improve our processes to enable employees to acquire relevant skills for the industry and to help new employees assimilate into a new work environment”, he added.

UTAC promotes continuous skills upgrading via three key areas: a commitment to life-long learning; strengthening competitiveness and building a strong Singaporean core; as well as through career development and skills mastery for employees.

Since 2016, UTAC has been working closely with SkillsFuture Singapore and other industry partners to develop the Skills Framework for Electronics. Between 2015 and 2017, UTAC doubled the number of WSQ courses offered to employees from five to 10 to help them attain continuing education and training qualifications. The broader spectrum of WSQ courses also supported the development of mid-career workers under the Workforce Singapore’s Professional Conversion Programme (PCP). Through the PCP and Earn & Learn Programme (ELP), nearly 100 eligible professionals have been hired and attained at least three WSQ courses on top of a six-month structured on-job-training (S-OJT) exercise. 

UTAC manages all employees’ learning activities via an in-house developed, web-based application called the UTAC Learning System (ULS). ULS is designed with an interface that features an e-University portal that allows employees to study courses on their own before attempting e-assessments in the ULS.

To boost the Singaporean core UTAC began collaborating with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) in 2016 and was recognised as a Certified On-Job-Training Centre. Such accreditations have enabled UTAC to support national manpower initiatives such as the PCP and the ELP. Under these programmes, candidates are given the opportunity to participate in WSQ courses and S-OJT.

UTAC has also been working with Temasek Polytechnic on the ELP since 2015. The company has hired 14 fresh diploma graduates over three cohorts who were then sponsored for the Specialist Diploma in Integrated Circuits Assembly & Test. Fresh graduates who undergo the Specialist Diploma in Robotics & Automation course are also being considered to support UTAC's automation projects.

To develop employees’ skills, UTAC is enhancing its On-the-Job Blueprints by incorporating relevant technical skills and competencies (TSCs) and generic skills and competencies (GSCs) given in the skills framework.

UTAC’s annual review process assesses the potential of each employee, helps the company map out individual development plans and match employees with training programmes to enable skills mastery. In 2015, UTAC identified two employees who demonstrated strong leadership qualities to attend the Singapore Semiconductor Leadership Accelerator (SSLA) course, one of the initiatives under the Singapore Semiconductor Vision 2020.