In brief

Singapore’s workforce is coping, not thriving. This matters because AI is arriving into a workforce that is functioning but not fully engaged.
Workers are not resisting the transition. They are under-enabled, teaching themselves through trial and error in the absence of clear direction.
Leaders making AI decisions show the widest calibration gap, confident they drive change while work redesign sits last on their priority list.

Five key highlights

The Singapore workforce is coping, not thriving.

This means AI is arriving into a workforce that is functioning but not fully engaged. Only 15% of Financial Services workers and 22% Healthcare workers are satisfied with their working lives. Four in ten of all workers are present but not engaged. This segment will determine whether AI transformations scale beyond early adopters.

There’s a disconnect in work motivations across career levels.

All workers say they work for financial security, but it ranks last as a driver of satisfaction, at 7%. As a result, none are fully satisfied as each generation is motivated differently. This is a workforce trying to work as one but held back by their own differences in a time when alignment matters most. Yet most AI transformation programs are built on financial drivers which optimize for the variables workers care least about.

AI is challenging a national legacy rooted in productivity.

AI is fracturing the productivity frame by taking on cognitive labor, raising the question of identity, security and meaning: what work remains distinctively human? This is a pain point for leaders to solve.

Leaders driving AI show a gap in confidence and competence.

Senior leaders describe themselves as actively driving AI change - 45% in Financial Services, and 53% in Healthcare. However redesigning work to integrate AI ranks last of their priorities in both sectors. Compared to junior and mid-level employees, senior leaders are overconfident in their AI fluency. In Singapore's corporate culture, where upward challenge is difficult, a miscalibrated senior view persists through implementation without correction. The calibration gap is a structural risk, not merely an individual one.

A human-centered environment is needed to make work meaningful.

There are five conditions for workers to engage and change: clarity, connection, confidence, capability and commitment. Its application will require the combination of organizational design, managerial behaviour and employee participation to move from coping to thriving.