The Career Fitness Movement: Towards an Agile and Flourishing Public Service

ETHOS Digital Issue 14, Dec 2025

Opportunities in Longevity

Singapore is entering a new demographic era and workforce reality. Our ageing population means rising longevity and longer career journeys than ever before. At the same time, the operating environment is being continually reshaped by multiple factors including rapid technological change, evolving citizen expectations, and shifting geo-economic dynamics.

To remain an effective public service, our workforce must be agile in reskilling and reshaping itself to stay future-ready. Public officers must be adaptable in taking on new skills and new jobs to stay resilient and relevant in the future.

A key priority is to invest in our people so they can embrace new ways of working and build a career development mindset of continually refreshing their skills, grounded on the shared mission of serving Singapore and Singaporeans with excellence and heart.

This imperative is an opportunity at multiple levels. For organisations, unlocking longer career longevity means the opportunity to expand the productive capacity of the workforce. Tapping on employees' accumulated experience also means strengthening knowledge of institutions to make faster, better decisions in response to emerging challenges.

For officers, this new workforce reality is also a chance to experience more diverse and enriching career journeys. By continually growing their skills and adapting to changes, public officers can explore more diverse work experiences and varied career pathways for flourishing and fulfilling careers.

The Career Fitness Movement: Public Service’s Response

In July 2025, the Public Service Division launched the Career Fitness Movement (CFM) to help public agencies and public officers unlock the opportunities of career longevity.

Like the national Career Health and SkillsFuture movement, it encourages officers to continually upskill and reskill as part of lifelong learning. It also calls for officers to continually plan for their longer-term careers, beyond their immediate jobs.

Just as we call for everyone to invest early in their physical fitness before they fall sick, the CFM calls for officers to plan early in good times and take proactive steps to build their career fitness in order to keep their competencies always 'fit' for the future. The options are more when you plan ahead. This means being proactive about planning early and developing new competencies, so that officers can position themselves to seize opportunities as they arise.

The CFM is anchored on the Public Service's move towards Competency-Driven Growth (CDG and supported by an ecosystem of enablers. These include expanding development opportunities for officers with the introduction of gigs, Short-Term Immersion Programme (STIP), Talent Attachment Programme (TAP) and learning programmes through the Civil Service College to help officers deepen and diversify their skills.

The new One Talent Gateway (OTG) introduces an opportunities marketplace that makes cross-agency growth and development opportunities more accessible to officers, and also helps with career and development planning.

The Public Service Career Coach Network (PSCCN) also offers public officers another channel for personalised career guidance and support, even as we scale up training for supervisors to help them better coach and support officers in their Career Fitness journey.

These building blocks form an integrated ecosystem of enablers that gives officers both the tools and opportunities to chart meaningful career journeys, build their career fitness, and contribute with confidence to the Public Service.

A Shared Responsibility

At its core, building Career Fitness is a shared responsibility of officers, supervisors and organisations, with the support of other partners.

Officers must ultimately take ownership of their own growth over the longer term which will span across multiple supervisors, jobs, and agencies.

At the same time, supervisors play a crucial role in guiding career development conversations and supporting the movement of officers when they are ready.

At the organisational level, agencies play an important role as enablers by putting in place the right structures and systems to empower officers in their career development and recognise supervisors as good people managers and coaches.

Unions are also vital strategic partners of the public service to drive the CFM. They are sustained partners for officers across jobs, supervisors and organisations in the public service.

By pulling these efforts together, CFM enhances officers' employability and sense of purpose, while strengthening the Public Service's overall organisational agility to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.

Conclusion

The CFM represents a shift in how we look at and support career development. It calls for officers and agencies to plan for the longer term, beyond immediate jobs and needs. It also extends beyond empowering officers to take charge of their own growth, to also consolidating and synergising the efforts of agencies, supervisors and unions into a coherent, service-wide ecosystem of support. By embedding a culture of lifelong career development, supported by clear structures and shared responsibility, CFM ensures both officers and organisations can thrive amid longer career spans and rapid change. In doing so, it equips our Public Service to meet the evolving needs of Singapore and Singaporeans, with competence, confidence, and heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jacky Lee is Deputy Director (Strategic Workforce Planning & Upskilling) at Workforce Development, Public Service Division.

Gabriel Cheong is Manager (Career Development & Transition) at Workforce Development, Public Service Division.

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