If you are here for job security and stability, please reconsider. - Manager/Senior Manager Workforce Singapore Employee Review

If you think government jobs today are like the government jobs of the past, think again. Many of the best workers who are bright, sincere and honest leave the government because they’re being stifled in their development here which is really a playground for top management. You’re but a slave in their hands. 1. If you think it’s easy to be a perm here, think again. All estab (headcount) officers join WSG under a 2-year contract, with a chance to be emplaced (converted to permanent) after a year or a year and a half. You would think the chances of getting emplaced is 99.999% which the HR always boasts about in their effort to make you accept their offer. But in my tenure here, I’ve seen the emplacement rate being 50% in some divisions. You will be emplaced if you work like a slave - for myself I was emplaced because I had so much work that I had to work on weekends and even till midnight (which can be the norm here). They don’t tell you that the emplacement rate here is 50% because they don’t want this on paper, they just make you leave voluntarily by lessening your portfolio bit by bit and then telling you all the time how incompetent you are for the job - if you’re in this situation, take the hint and leave early, fire them before they fire you. And that is how they say their emplacement rate is 99.999%, because it’s not on paper. I’ve seen good officers being managed out just because of sheer bias, i.e. you’re too soft-spoken and don’t fight to do more here (because you didn’t know you had to). They will justify and say that they need you to produce in order to be emplaced, but the truth is everyone here must be overworked yet undervalued in order to be emplaced. Why? Because you’re a public servant. 2. There is literally no progression for you in this organisation, and those who rise up fast are those who know how to play politics and have connections. There is currently an estab freeze in the whole of government and in WSG, they made it worse by also freezing the number of estabs per rank. That means that no matter how well you perform, and even if you already hit the salary band ceiling of your rank for many years, you cannot be promoted and have your pay increased because the people above your rank have not vacated from their estab for you (which many times the estab will be given to others, like recruiting in new blood). You would think this happens only to team leads and above, but no, there was a recent exercise in WSG to freeze even the estabs in the lower grades (Manager and Senior Manager), which was not the case in the early days of this organisation and the whole of government a few years back. That is why all the good talent leave, because your performance may be great on paper but they will say “sorry I cannot promote you this year because I have no estab”. Also, if you have no connections here and are being offered a low rank even after negotiation, don’t take it, because unlike private where you can quickly work your way up to be on par with your peers, over here you have to queue up like everyone else to get promoted (there’s a minimum number of years you have to hit per rank before you’re eligible to be promoted), which means you will never be on par with your peers - unless you’re willing to wait 10 years to be on par with your peers (when all of you are stuck together at Assistant Director rank), or you become a favoured black horse. 3. They have a system that will either stifle you completely or let you rise up like a black horse. Look up “CEP” on the internet and you will see that this is a system that the government uses to determine your career end point. This means that if you dedicate your entire life to WSG, your CEP will determine how far you can climb in this organisation. Ever wondered why Senior Managers and Assistant Directors get stuck in the organisation and get passed over for promotion even if there are vacant estabs? That’s because their CEP is low. CEP is determined by the “in club” of the organisation (usually Directors and above), and if you play your politics well, they will change your CEP and allow you to rise like a black horse out of nowhere - and this, my friends, is how those with connections get justified on paper to rise up in the government fast (you will see this everywhere in the government, not just in WSG). If you are but a nice, hardworking and productive minion here, your CEP is usually low and nobody will bother changing it for you and you’ll be stuck at that rank forever. 4. Favouritism, not meritocracy, drives the organisation. They have systems such as the FL (future leader) and CEP which are refreshed every year. If the Director dislikes you suddenly, and if they change another Director in your division, they can literally take you off the FL list and refresh your CEP. More often than not, they have taken competent people off the list because they want to replace such people with others who are their new, incompetent favourites. I’ve also seen incapable people who do no work but push their own work to others get brought into the organisation at a higher rank or promoted very fast in their tenure, while the truly good and honest ones who can do the work and are around for a long time get passed over for promotion all the time, i.e. Senior Managers who are acting team leads for many years never actually get promoted to the next level, but rather those who are favoured and do not do any actual work but push them away get promoted. I’ve also seen people follow the “in club” (Directors etc.) wherever they get rotated to (and not through the HR system but through “under the table” ways) in order to keep their FL and CEP so that they don’t get refreshed every year, since they need the right people to favour and promote them and subsequently survive here. Favouritism is everywhere, of course, but favouritism is literally the only thing that drives this organisation now since they have such lousy performance recognition and talent development systems. 5. Don’t bother thinking people can guide you at work. You’ll be considered incompetent if you can’t be a self-starter, which usually means you need to at least know how the government works to be one here. Those who join WSG from another agency or ministry are luckier because they know how it works here and can pick up fast, but if not, you’ll have to find a way to learn quickly. If you think your team leads will help you, you will realise that your team leads are too busy playing politics and socialising with the top management to care about to you - they themselves need to move up the ladder too. (Note: This does not apply to some good team leads who, most of the time, get stuck at their rank and cannot progress because they have hearts of gold towards their officers. Good people can’t survive here.) Those who guide you are truly the good ones who usually leave after awhile because they’re too good and honest for the organisation that WSG doesn’t deserve them. 6. Another reason why you will always be undervalued and overworked is because it is a playground for top management over here - top appointments change all the time and you can literally have different Directors each year, therefore no one can vouch for your work because they don’t know you, and every year you would have to queue up again to wait for your turn to be promoted when the stars align. If the minimum number of years for you to be eligible to be promoted at your rank is 3 years, you may now need to wait 5 years or more because you now need to queue up to prove yourself to each new Director each year. (If people tell you not to care about promotion, you better care about it, because your yearly increment cannot fight inflation and only promotion allows you about 10% increment. You’re a public servant, sure, but you’re also a human being who needs money and recognition.) 7. You think you’re doing something purposeful and meaningful for the society, but when you look at internal data, numbers are always massaged and skewed only to save themselves. They will report whatever outcomes they like to the media, but truly, when you deep dive into the data, these programmes are just being used by companies who either do not really need government funding, or know how to game the system. The whole design of WSG programmes is terribly counterproductive and therefore you will see how WSG always gets complaints and audit problems in the news. Be prepared for more. 8. There is no job security and stability in the government - today that’s a myth and the “iron rice bowl” story is a story they keep replaying to each other to comfort themselves that they cannot survive in private. In fact, WSG keeps selling the “you have to hire mature (aged 40 and above) workers” story to employers all the time when they themselves don’t even do so. If you take a close look at the organisation, those who are 40 and above take the top jobs, and if you’re around this age and not taking the top jobs here, you will soon be pushed out with dirty tactics such as secondment because ultimately, the organisation needs new blood in and they deem you too old and lowly to stay. If they second you out of this organisation to non-government organisations - take this as a bad sign - because if you don’t have someone powerful enough in WSG to protect you and bring you back into the organisation, you can lose your WSG estab after the secondment and find yourself jobless suddenly. This, again, goes back down to favouritism and politics - you need to play the game well to save yourself here. Worse, they can paint such a rosy picture of secondment to you and say it’s for progression and exposure, but only those who are old birds here will know the truth of how the government really works - everything is dirty so don’t be naive. Never trust the HR. Remember, as with every organisation, HR is not independent and will always be subservient to the top. They may just throw you under the bus because they need to protect the people whom they truly need in the organisation, which are those in the top jobs and not you, since you’re a lowly and replaceable officer. They can do all sorts of employee surveys but no one will ever dare to or want to report anything bad in the surveys, because you will literally be backstabbed here. Protect yourself. Many people stay because they are too entrenched in the system and think they have nowhere else to go. But if you’re young and talented yet undervalued in this organisation, save yourself from staying here - you’re committing a career suicide if you stay. And if they laugh at you for going to private because they don’t think you can make there, know in your heart that these people who laugh at you do so because they’ve been out of the private sector for eons (or never been there before) and do not know the outside world today. Take it from me, who’s been in cut-throat private companies and industries for a few years before joining WSG. WSG, do you really think private companies today cannot do meaningful work too and only public agencies can? Is that your only unique selling point to get naive people to join you? Really? If you see very little negative reviews on this platform, that’s because whatever we say won’t make much difference - governments everywhere will always remain governments, and if you want to understand more about how the government works, I recommend watching/reading “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”, two classic BBC political satire series. Thanks, Glassdoor, for giving me the opportunity to warn others.