If you’ve been in the same role or job for a while and feel your skills aren’t growing; you are getting stagnant and are not learning much from your organisation, you might be undergoing ‘deskilling’.
What Is Deskilling?
Deskilling occurs when your knowledge slowly falls behind industry needs. In other words, you have been in the same role for some time and starting to feel like you’re not learning much anymore? You’re not alone — many working adults in Singapore and their counterparts around the globe, face this situation simply means losing the edge in your skills or knowledge because your job scope hasn’t changed much over the years. Even good and experienced employees can go through this — it happens quietly, bit by bit, ‘slowly but surely’, and it’s something you don’t want to ignore, if you want to stay relevant in your career.
Why Does Deskilling Happen ?
Here are some common reasons we see in the Singapore workplace:
- Same routine, ‘day in day out’
When your tasks become second nature, it’s easy to stop learning new things or taking on challenges. - New tech, but ‘old habits die hard’
Industries evolve fast — from digital tools to AI and automation. If you don’t keep up, your skills may slowly fall behind and become irrelevant and obsolete. - Insufficient or no feedback or guidance.
Without open conversations with your boss or colleagues, it’s hard to spot areas where you could grow or improve. - Limited learning opportunities or lack of motivation
Some workplaces don’t actively provide training or employees don’t feel the seriousness nor urgency to learn new skills and knowledge thus employees end up feeling unproductive and disengaged in the long run and their skills and knowledge are in the risk of becoming obsolete.
The good news is all is not lost. You can turn things around.
How do avoid Deskilling? Here are some ways which you can avoid stagnation:
- Seek feedback from your boss, mentors and colleagues.
- Taking on and accepting new responsibilities and challenges
- Keep yourself updated of new information, trends and technologies in your industry and workplace.
- Learning new skills by taking up courses and reading books, news articles and periodicals relating to not only your scope of work but also your industry, domestic news and world events.
- Stay curious, resilient, humble, optimistic with the willingness to learn.
- Take action and proactive steps to avoid falling into the deskilling circle.
At the Institute of Maritime & Business Management (IMBM), we help working professionals like you refresh your skills and stay future-ready through industry-recognised, relevant and quality courses in Maritime, Logistics & Business Management. Very affordable courses with interest free instalment plan (even with no grant for some courses). Look at the course not the cost! Still our non-funded courses are affordable.
Having said that, if our Certificate & Diploma in Maritime Studies courses are MCF Claimable (via 70% reimbursement for eligible students) whereas SkillsFuture Credit can be used to offset the balance fees for our MPA pre approved short courses,
Stay Ahead with Us
- Pick up new and in-demand skills
- Gain real-world knowledge from industry experts
- Network with professionals and working adults
- Learn part-time courses designed for working adults
We cannot emphasis this enough – Invest in yourself today — upgrade, upskill, and unlock new career opportunities.
👉 Visit www.imbm.edu.sg or call (65) 8823 6825 to find out more about our upcoming courses.
Institute of Maritime & Business Management est. 2009
Skills * Commitment * Excellence
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