MOH Holdings Pte Ltd
Special Feature | MOH Holdings

Grooming the Heart and Minds of Healthcare

MOH Holdings Pte Ltd
Mr Derek Tan, Director at the HR and Talent Development Division at the MOH Holdings (MOHH), shares about the changes in the healthcare sector, and how healthcare scholarships are positioned to help young talents find a successful and fulfilling career in healthcare.

Singapore’s healthcare sector is a dynamic and expanding one. To date, the sector employs around 96,000 people and since 2011, MOH has added 1,700 acute hospital beds, 1,200 community hospital beds, 5,300 nursing home beds, 4,200 home-based and 2,900 centre-based care places. These are results of an increased demand for holistic care, making the industry rife with opportunities for nurses and allied health professionals like diagnostic radiographers, medical social workers, podiatrists, and occupational therapists.

The Healthcare Scholarships offered by MOH Holdings help identify, groom and develop these future leaders across the variety of clusters: clinical, management, education and research. Mr Tan grants us insights into the future of Singapore healthcare and how MOH is poised to equip generations of professionals to overcome the challenges that await.

Facing the Tomorrows of Healthcare Today

Mr Tan cautions that despite the increase in available jobs, a low birth rate coupled with our ageing population means the local workforce is shrinking and a fierce war for local talent is likely to erupt. At the same time, he notes that workplaces are becoming smarter, employing greater use of technology and artificial intelligence that employees must be able to adapt to.d challenges for our healthcare policy makers and professionals today and tomorrow.

HR professionals like himself have many questions to answer in order to better support the evolving healthcare sector and to overcome relevant challenges. He declares, “How can we develop leaders who can rally and motivate a multi-generational and multicultural workforce? In what ways can we build and develop future skills for our workforce to embrace the changes brought about by technologies and AI? To address these issues, we must constantly ask ourselves how we can continue to attract bright young talent, and how we can retain these talents and keep them engaged.”

Mr Derek Tan

Mr Derek Tan

Director
HR and Talent Development Division
MOH Holdings Pte Ltd

“Our unique value proposition as a scholarship agency is that we, the management and our scholarship officers, will be your friend and confidante when you choose to make a difference in the public healthcare sector.”

Empowering Professionals to Rise Up

The solution, he believes, lies in ensuring that a flow of professionals is competently equipped to handle the changing needs of the landscape. Healthcare workers, he says, must acquire new skills, and integrate more technology into their work and role processes in order maintain the standards of healthcare.

That is where the MOHH Healthcare Scholarships come in. “This is one way we attract and train the necessary talents. MOH Holdings and the healthcare clusters offer diverse career tracks, catering to a range of different interests and ambitions. Scholars will be given opportunities to develop themselves professionally by attending conferences and exchange programmes, and platforms to network with likeminded industry people will be provided,” Mr Tan details.

Support and resources will also be given to smoothen each scholar’s full transition from university to the corporate world. “The MOH Holdings scholarship team adopts a personable approach towards managing and developing our scholars. We are committed to walking the journey with them - from the point they receive the healthcare scholarship award, all the way through the two key transition points: embarking on their university education and transition to the working work,” he elaborates.

He adds that the Scholars Development Framework is another way that enables MOH Holdings scholars to grow. This framework will extend support to scholars from beyond their university years into the early years of their careers. It involves working closely with healthcare clusters to ensure that scholars can develop a strong foundation of professional skills and the competencies required. “It is also a good way to identify scholars who have exceptional talents – individuals that MOH Holdings can develop and sharpen the leadership skills of, in order to groom for leadership positions,” Mr Tan shares.

Ultimately, he affirms, “Our unique value proposition as a scholarship agency is that we, the MOH Holdings management and our scholarship officers, will be your friend and confidante when you choose to want to make a difference in the public healthcare sector and become part of our family as a healthcare scholar.”

Cultivating the Heart to be Servant Leaders

His plans for the division are to develop a workforce that can deliver the best quality care. This requires leveraging on new technologies and using creativity to go the extra mile. As a result, he hopes to find passionate individuals who desire to help Singaporeans stay healthy, agile individuals who can use their strong inter-professional knowledge to manage their stakeholders, and tech-savvy individuals who will use data to deliver value-based outcomes.

“We seek leaders who can walk the talk, who have the skills to deliver best quality care, embrace new technologies and be creative in the process. Most of all, and most importantly, we look for healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, allied health professions, administrators and support staff who possess passion, compassion, empathy and have a personal touch which they should never lose,” he concludes.