According to the wechat public account of PIL Shipping, on June 7, Pacific International Lines (PIL) has officially established its learning and development center of excellence, the PIL Academy. The Academy aims to strengthen employees’ business capacity and adapt to future career development needs. It will collaborate with organizations and technology partners to develop a holistic curriculum with accredited courses that will benefit the company and industry.
As the 12th largest shipping carrier in the world and Southeast Asia’s largest homegrown liner, PIL employs around 8,000 employees including 4,000 seafarers around the world. The academy aims to provide structured and customized training to all its employees, considering their diverse backgrounds and varied training needs.
The holistic curriculum ranges from technical courses in fleet and vessel operations; safety, quality and productivity; maritime, finance and commercial; sustainability and decarbonization to softer skills in leadership, innovation and communications.
Officiating the launch of the PIL Academy as the Guest of Honor was Chee Hong Tat, Singapore’s Minister for Transport and second Minister for Finance, together with PIL’s Executive Chairman S.S. Teo, and CEO, Lars Kastrup.
Chee said, “Singapore aims to be a global hub for maritime talent development, leveraging on our strong tripartite partnership between the government, industry and unions. As the global maritime industry embraces new challenges such as digitalization and decarbonization, Maritime Singapore must continue to upskill and reskill our workforce so that workers can remain relevant and competitive. The PIL Academy is an important step forward to achieve Maritime Singapore’s goal of developing a future-ready workforce.”
As a start, PIL Academy has signed a Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) to jointly develop micro-credentials for the competency-based stackable micro-credential (CSM) pathway for PIL employees. Participants are able to choose the specialist certificates that best fit their current professional development and potentially stack them towards a degree or a higher qualification. PIL Academy and SIT will co-develop micro-credentials related to maritime, and conduct continuing education programs and workplace learning projects.
PIL Academy is partnering with JobKred, a skills management software company, to automate skills planning, talent agility and capability deployment. With technology-based learning, employees have the flexibility to learn at their own pace while juggling work commitments.
In addition, PIL Academy will offer bespoke diplomas in maritime studies through their MOU with the Maritime Training Academy, an international supplier of distance-learning marine diplomas. The collaboration will enable students to choose from a diverse portfolio of short maritime courses developed by experts in their field.