Singapore’s companies have largely found out learn how to purchase AI instruments. What they haven’t found out is what to do with the people sitting subsequent to them.
That’s the central discovering of a sweeping new report by Accenture, launched Monday, which warns that Singapore’s AI ambitions danger stalling not due to a tech hole, however a individuals one. Titled Singapore’s Progress Mandate: Why the AI future will probably be received or misplaced on individuals, not know-how, the report attracts on 4 analysis streams performed between December 2025 and February 2026, and paints an image of a nation caught between digital momentum and human inertia.
The headline numbers are, on the floor, encouraging. 9 in 10 Singapore enterprises have moved past merely exploring AI instruments into lively implementation. Almost half have deployed generative AI inside particular enterprise items, and almost three quarters are experimenting with or exploring agentic AI.
However peel again the tech layer, and the numbers develop uncomfortable. Just one in three organisations has a expertise technique that’s totally aligned with its AI technique. Almost half of tech leaders surveyed admitted their firms had but to revamp job roles or duties in any respect.
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The price of this misalignment is quantifiable. Organisations that positioned individuals on the centre of their AI transformation in 2025 grew income 1.8 share factors greater and earnings 1.4 share factors greater than friends that didn’t. In a market as aggressive as Singapore’s, that isn’t a rounding error.
Younger employees, outdated assumptions
Maybe the sharpest discovering issues the nation’s entry-level workforce, a cohort that’s formidable, digitally native and, based on the analysis, being quietly set as much as fail.
Entry-level job postings rebounded eight per cent in 2025, suggesting the labour market is upgrading quite than collapsing. However what these roles demand has shifted dramatically. Postings for entry-level ICT positions fell 38 per cent between 2022 and 2025, whereas demand for AI, machine studying, and information administration expertise accelerated sharply. Routine, repeatable duties are being compressed. Roles that mix area information, analytical reasoning, and the power to deploy AI instruments are increasing.
Younger Singaporeans sense the shift. Totally 95 per cent consider Singapore’s ambition to guide in AI is achievable. But simply 31 per cent strongly agree that the ambition is genuinely people-centric. Their nervousness is restricted: 81 per cent report beginner-level or zero understanding of immediate engineering — the talent mostly cited as a spot — and 80 per cent report the identical in terms of AI ethics and governance. Almost half fear about preserving tempo with the velocity of AI change.
The report reserves its most putting discovering for final. Solely 23 per cent of Singaporean staff genuinely belief their employer to behave of their greatest curiosity when introducing AI instruments, a determine that sits in stark distinction to a world benchmark of 83% from Accenture’s separate Pulse of Change analysis.
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That hole shouldn’t be merely a morale drawback. Belief, the report argues, is a tough operational requirement. When staff don’t consider their organisations will put money into them by an AI transition, they disengage from upskilling. And 47 per cent of respondents already determine an absence of management help as the one largest barrier to constructing AI fluency successfully.
Accenture frames the problem as a management crucial, not a human sources job. Mark Tham, Accenture’s Nation Managing Director for Singapore, stated enterprise leaders should elevate expertise methods to an equal — or better — precedence than know-how adoption, noting the nation has largely mastered deploying AI instruments however has but to grapple significantly with redesigning the work round them.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s Funds 2026 pledge of “no jobless development” within the AI period offers the report a pointed political context. Accenture’s conclusion is blunt: Singapore’s CEOs are, in impact, the implementation layer of that nationwide mandate. The algorithms are prepared. The query is whether or not the organisations constructed round them are.
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Picture Credit score: Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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