Motivations and Barriers to Workforce Skilling

To foster knowledge-sharing, discussion, and collaboration in understanding the digital economy, TFGI Brownbag offers a platform for exploring research, gathering feedback, and engaging diverse perspectives.

Published 25 Nov 2025
2 mins read

Topic

Digital Society

Country/Region

Singapore

In this Brownbag session, Dr. Charmaine Tan will share insights from her mixed-methods studies on what drives and what holds back Singaporean adults from pursuing further education and training. Drawing on evidence from focus groups, surveys, and discrete choice tasks, Dr. Tan will explore how adults weigh the costs and benefits of training, the roles of dispositional mindsets and socio-environmental factors, and the impact of information gaps on training uptake. She will also discuss practical, behaviourally-informed strategies to improve training uptake, along with directions for future research.

Details

Date: 4 December 2025
Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (GMT+7) / 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (GMT +8)
Registration link here

Note: Please register before 3 December 2025.

About the speaker

Dr. Charmaine Tan

Dr. Charmaine Tan is a Senior Scientist at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing, with a research background in Behavioural and Experimental Economics. Her work focuses on understanding how social motivations shape decision-making and how these insights can be used to promote positive behavioural outcomes. Dr. Tan is the Principal Investigator of a study funded by the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Science of Learning grant, which examines how dispositional traits and socio-environmental factors influence adult learning motivations across demographic groups. Prior to joining A*STAR, she was a Research Fellow at the NUS Business School and a Researcher at the Civil Service College Singapore.

About TFGI Brownbags:

To foster knowledge-sharing, discussion, and collaboration in understanding the digital economy, the TFGI Brownbag Session offers a platform for exploring research, gathering feedback, and engaging diverse perspectives.

Interested to partner with us on this? Write to us at @[email protected].

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Cite this article

(2025, November 25). Motivations and Barriers to Workforce Skilling. Tech For Good Institute. Retrieved from https://techforgoodinstitute.org/events/past-events/motivations-and-barriers-to-workforce-skilling/

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Mouna Aouri

Programme Fellow

Mouna Aouri is an Institute Fellow at the Tech For Good Institute. As a social entrepreneur, impact investor, and engineer, her experience spans over two decades in the MENA region, South East Asia, and Japan. She is founder of Woomentum, a Singapore-based platform dedicated to supporting women entrepreneurs in APAC through skill development and access to growth capital through strategic collaborations with corporate entities, investors and government partners.

Dr Ming Tan

Senior Fellow & Founding Executive Director

Dr Ming Tan is Senior Fellow at the Tech for Good Institute; where she served as founding Executive Director of the non-profit focused on research and policy at the intersection of technology, society and the economy in Southeast Asia. She is concurrently a Senior Fellow at and the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore and Advisor to the Founder of the COMO Group, a Singaporean portfolio of lifestyle companies operating in 15 countries worldwide. Ming was previously Managing Director of IPOS International, part of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore. Prior to joining the public sector, she was Head of Stewardship of the COMO Group.

Ming also serves on the boards of several private companies, Singapore’s National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, Singapore Network Information Centre (SGNIC), and on the Digital and Technology Advisory Panel for Esplanade–Theatres on the Bay, Singapore’s national performing arts centre. Her current portfolio spans philanthropy, social impact, sustainability and innovation.