• Over half of employees (53%) say that they experience ‘online fatigue’ when it comes to workplace upskilling during COVID-19.
• To overcome challenges posed by remote workplace arrangements, employers are seeking to ‘change the training approach to adapt to remote learning’ (voted by 50%), ‘try out more innovative methods of training’ (voted by 47%) and ‘adapt new technology platforms’ (voted by 39%).
• Over two thirds of employees (68%) prefer to attend instructor-led programmes, as compared to pre-recorded online training (6%). Instructor-led programmes are preferred regardless of whether it is conducted face-to-face (37%) or virtually (31%).

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 14 December 2021 – Work-from-home arrangements remain for many in Singapore, affecting how employers upskill their workforce amidst COVID-19. One of the top challenges faced by 53% of employees in Singapore when participating in training programmes is online fatigue, thereby putting a damper on company training efforts.

These are some of the key findings from NTUC LearningHub (NTUC LHUB)’s recent Workforce Learning in Workplace Transformation (WLWT) report. The report is based on a survey with 150 business leaders and 300 employees across industries in Singapore, and interviews with human resource experts.

In particular, employees between the ages of 30 to 39 are the most likely to experience online fatigue (63%). This is followed by those between the ages of 16 to 29 (59%), and 40 to 54 (48%). Employees above 55 years old are the least likely to experience online fatigue when it comes to training (41%).

To tackle this, employers say that exploring new methods of conducting training can overcome challenges posed by remote working arrangements and to increase employee engagement. The top three methods voted by employers are to ‘change the training approach to adapt to remote learning’ (50%), ‘try out more innovative methods of training’ (47%) and ‘adapt new technology platforms’ (39%).

Many employers view that remote workplace arrangements are disruptive to implement effective employee training (39%), and COVID-19 restrictions continue to be a challenge to training (37%). Therefore, most (78%) reveal that their companies are planning to improve training programmes offered to better adapt to the transformed workplace.

The report also uncovered that two thirds of employees (68%) prefer to attend company provided instructor-led programmes, regardless of whether it is conducted face-to-face (37%) or virtually (31%). This is in comparison to only 6% that voted for pre-recorded online training programmes as a preferred mode of learning.

Commenting on the findings, NTUC LHUB’s Strategy Director, Soh Hooi Peng, says, “As COVID-19 hits its second-year mark, online fatigue is becoming a prominent problem that causes burnout in employees, thereby posing a challenge not only to their work but also their learning and development. To combat this, learning must evolve alongside the future of work. We must explore and constantly develop new modes of training delivery to develop and engage the workforce. At NTUC LHUB, we will continue to work with companies to explore adult learning trends in order to transform the learning experience of lifelong learners to keep them motivated in terms of continuous learning and upskilling.”

­­To download the Workforce Learning in Workplace Transformation report, visit https://www.ntuclearninghub.com/workforce-learning-2021. To find out more about the courses, training and grants, contact NTUC LHUB at https://www.ntuclearninghub.com/.

About NTUC LearningHub

NTUC LearningHub is the leading Continuing Education and Training provider in Singapore which aims to transform the lifelong employability of working people. Since our corporatisation in 2004, we have been working with employers and individual learners to provide learning solutions in areas such as Cloud, Infocomm Technology, Healthcare, Employability & Literacy, Business Excellence, Workplace Safety & Health, Security, Human Resources and Foreign Worker Training.

To date, NTUC LearningHub has helped over 25,000 organisations and achieved over 2.6 million training places across more than 500 courses with a pool of over 900 certified trainers. As a Total Learning Solutions provider to organisations, we also forge partnerships and offer a wide range of relevant end-to-end training solutions and work constantly to improve our training quality and delivery. In 2020, we have accelerated our foray into online learning with our Virtual Live Classes and, through working with best-in-class partners such as IBM, DuPont Sustainable Solutions and GO1, asynchronous online courses.

For more information, visit www.ntuclearninghub.com

#NTUCLearningHub

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

With AWS, the leading genomic and diagnostic testing company performed more than 6 million COVID-19 tests globally during the pandemic, scaling daily testing capabilities by 8x

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 December 2021 – Today, Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), an Amazon.com company, announced that Prenetics, a global leader in genomics and diagnostic testing, is running its entire infrastructure on AWS, the world’s leading cloud, to provide millions of consumers globally with at-home testing. Prenetics’ COVID-19 tests are approved and recognized by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and United Kingdom governments, and supported by many global organizations including the Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon, Hong Kong International Airport, London’s Heathrow Airport, Cathay Pacific Airways, Delta Air Lines, and the English Premier League (EPL). The breadth and depth of AWS’s cloud capabilities, including computing, developer tools, and databases, have enabled Prenetics to significantly scale its testing capabilities while also making the testing process faster, more efficient, and cost effective.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide, people needed quick, accurate, and easily accessible testing to verify their health status, seek timely treatment, and prevent transmission. To meet this demand, Prenetics used the cloud to develop health solutions, including its COVID-19 testing services, that helped people navigate the pandemic safely. With AWS’s full suite of developer services including AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CodeDeploy, Prenetics has automated the building, testing, and deployment phases of application development, saving time for developers to focus on inventing new health products and features. For example, Prenetics developed Circle HealthPod, a portable, reusable, and rapid detection system that can test consumers for COVID-19 at home and at point-of-care locations, like hospitals, in approximately 20 minutes. Prenetics is developing single-use capsules for Circle HealthPod to detect other infectious diseases like influenza and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). To run these new tests and access the results, users simply use the Circle HealthPod’s mobile app, which also runs on AWS.

Using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Auto Scaling, which enables organizations to automatically add or remove Amazon EC2 instances according to conditions they define, Prenetics automatically scales microservices for testing-related tasks, including user registration and test result processing. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), a service that helps customers set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud, enables Prenetics to minimize database management time and focus on managing the testing process. To rapidly scale based on user demand for COVID-19 tests while remaining secure, Prenetics uses AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF) to protect its web applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) against common web exploits and bots that try to compromise security or consume excessive infrastructure resources. In 2020, Prenetics set up a cloud infrastructure in four days to achieve data compliance and minimize latency in Europe by using AWS. Prenetics also built a digital health passport in ten days in the cloud for the English Premier League, allowing all 20 football clubs to conveniently and securely reveal their COVID-19 status to make training sessions and matches safer, bringing the excitement of the game back to fans worldwide.

“By tapping into AWS’s array of services and proven infrastructure, we accelerated COVID-19 testing with new innovations and easily expanded operations globally,” said Peter Wong, CTO of Prenetics. “We look forward to using AWS’s advanced cloud capabilities, including machine learning, to further support our international customers by providing the best healthcare services.”

“Organizations leading the charge in healthcare and life sciences use the cloud to help improve patient care, lower costs, and advance precision medicine,” said Robert Wang, Managing Director, Hong Kong and Taiwan, AWS. “The COVID-19 pandemic is spurring rapid innovation and transformation in the industry, and Prenetics is using the expertise and the breadth and depth of AWS’s secure, reliable, and scalable cloud capabilities to transform the testing experience for both patients and providers.”

About Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 81 Availability Zones within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 27 more Availability Zones and nine more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

#AmazonWebServices #AWS

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Merchants will be able to solve their logistics challenges with diversified logistics solutions by GOGOX and have the flexibility to pay by deferred payments with Atome to enable better cash management to run their businesses

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 December 2021 – Carousell, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing classifieds marketplaces, today announced new partnerships with GOGOX, the pioneer app-based logistics platform in Asia, and Atome, Asia’s leading buy now pay later brand to help small local businesses via Carousell for Business (CarouBiz). Combining Carousell’s reach of 1 in 5 Hong Kongers as active users with ready buyer intent, and the established expertise of partners, Carousell aims to build an ecosystem that enables small local businesses to succeed.

Many small businesses continue to face  high cost challenges, such as rent, cash flow, resource management and data security, even before the pandemic. These challenges are even more severe currently. Although the Hong Kong Government has been actively encouraging digitalisation and ecommerce, small businesses still struggle to adapt to new technology and business models compared to large-scale enterprises.

Growing demand for more support

The Trade and Industry Department estimates about 340,000 SMEs in Hong Kong, of which 13% are in retail^[1]. There is increasing impetus to go online, as online retail sales grow in Hong Kong. While online sales only accounted for 8% of total retail sales in October, when comparing the first ten months of 2021 with the same period in 2020, Censtatd estimated that the value of online retail sales increased by 41.7%^[2].

Unlike large corporations who can hire the necessary talent, smaller merchants need easy-to-use, affordable tools and “plug-and-play” services that allow them to scale at low cost and without a lot of training. Demand for CarouBiz subscriptions of premium seller tools have increased sharply in Hong Kong in 2021 compared to last year. In Q4 2021, Carousell also rolled out a self-serve version of CarouBiz for tech-savvier merchants who do not require a dedicated Client Success Manager to advise on marketing strategies.

“Carousell has been enhancing our CarouBiz offerings this year to further strengthen support for small businesses. We have seen double digit percentage growth in our CarouBiz subscribers this year, which shows growing demand for such tools. As a one-stop platform where users can find anything they want at any time of the day, Carousell is privileged to be able to use our platform to help SMEs find ecommerce success. Besides initiatives such as the CarouBiz Booster Fund, we are also building an ecosystem of partners that address the pain points of our users and meet the needs of merchants while ensuring win-win for all,” said Mr Kevin Huang, Managing Director, Carousell Hong Kong.

Embracing e-commerce  with GOGOX

As online shopping takes off, merchants have to adapt to additional workflows such as logistics and express delivery. Smaller merchants do not have the economies of scale to run their own logistical operations in a cost and time efficient manner.  Meanwhile, casual sellers prefer not to meet up buyers due to public health safety concerns, and are in search of a reliable and flexible delivery method. Since September 2021, Carousell has partnered with GOGOX to provide diversified logistics services to casual sellers via GOGOX’s platform services, GOGOVan and GOGODelivery, in addition to offering targeted logistics solutions to merchants through GOGOX’s GOGOBusiness service, hoping to enable consumers and merchants to enjoy contract free and convenient logistics services.

Reeve Kwan, Co-founder of GOGOX said, “As a leading logistics platform in Hong Kong, GOGOX transforms the industry with advanced technology, redefining everyday delivery and user experience. We connect with driver-partners to provide agile and efficient logistics solutions to the community, in particular merchants. The partnership with Carousell is strategically important to facilitate the development of e-commerce. Throughout the partnership, we are committed to supporting SMEs as they embark on the digital transformation journey. We look forward to working closely with Carousell, driving the process of digitalisation and equip merchants with logistics capacity in the digital economy.”

“The growth of ecommerce in Hong Kong in the past two years have shown Hong Kongers the convenience it brings. There is no need to leave work or home to shop, and this is made possible by a robust logistics system. GOGOX has many affordable delivery options tailored to different needs, whether you are an individual selling preloved items or a small merchant. This aligns well with the variety of users on our platform, and allows us to provide value-added services,” said Mr Huang.

Supporting business growth with Atome

While banks have been simplifying or relaxing SME lending to help small business^[3], many businesses in the ecommerce and retail sector find it challenging to meet the required documentation^[4]. The partnership between Carousell and Atome will enable seamless buy now pay later (BNPL) acceptance for Carousell’s merchants, especially for businesses who are starting out, providing a flexible and transparent payment option for Carousell’s merchants.

Since the end of November 2021, interested merchants can also sign up for an exclusive Carousell x Atome CarouBiz plan, which includes HK$110,000 worth of in-app advertising and other business support. With Atome, merchants can split their bills into three, zero-interest deferred payments upon checkout via credit card, debit card or Apple Pay. This reduces the time and paperwork needed in applications, especially for smaller sums, and provides more flexibility for merchants to manage their cash flow.

“We are excited to integrate Atome as a buy now pay later flexible payment option on Carousell for CarouBiz. This payment option will provide SMEs and new businesses in Hong Kong with a secure, seamless and flexible way to grow their business while managing their cash flow. The introduction of the Carousell x Atome revolving store plan will also provide these merchants with other crucial marketing and business support. We are glad to play our part in helping merchants scale their business and contribute to the Hong Kong economy. Shoppers can also look forward to our upcoming recommerce partnership with Carousell in Singapore,” said Jonathan Cai, Head of Regional Partnerships, Atome. 

“Our merchants have been sharing feedback about challenges faced with running their businesses, and the team has been reviewing how we can better support them. This partnership will enable us to extend more flexible and affordable payment options for our merchants. By partnering with a leading and established brand like Atome, our merchants can rest assured with the guarantee of a reliable and trusted payment service,” said Mr Huang.

About Carousell

Carousell is the leading classifieds group in Greater Southeast Asia on a mission to inspire the world to start selling, and to make secondhand the first choice. Founded in August 2012 in Singapore, the group has a leading presence in eight markets under the brands Carousell, Mudah.my, Cho Tot, OneKyat and Ox Street, serving tens of millions of monthly active users. Carousell is backed by leading investors, including Telenor Group, Rakuten Ventures, Naver, STIC Investments and Sequoia Capital India. In Hong Kong, Carousell has a diverse range of products in over 30 categories, including property, autos, electronics, home and furniture, and fashion. Download the app for iOS or Android, and visit www.carousell.com.hk for more information.

About GOGOX

Established in 2013, GOGOX is one of the first mobile app-based logistics platforms in Asia committed to providing extensive logistics services through innovative technology. Formerly known as GOGOVAN, the company has a competitive and diverse business portfolio, from van-hailing and instant delivery to customised logistics solutions. GOGOX instantly connects individuals and businesses with millions of logistics partners to fulfill all sorts of delivery needs, redefining the delivery experience by providing speedy, agile and convenient logistics services.

Over the years, GOGOX has expanded its businesses from Hong Kong to Singapore, mainland China, South Korea, India and Vietnam. Following a merger with 58 Suyun in August 2017, GOGOX has increased its presence to over 340 cities, with 4.5 million registered drivers under its network.

About Atome

Atome is a leading buy now pay later platform in Asia, partnering online and offline retailers to increase conversions and grow average orders and customer segments. It currently partners over 5,000 online and offline retailers in nine markets (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and mainland China). Key merchant partners include Sephora, Agoda, ZALORA, SHEIN, Zara, Marks & Spencer, Charles & Keith, Aldo and Pandora. For consumers, Atome offers choice, convenience and flexibility in how they choose to shop and pay. Atome is part of Advance Intelligence Group, one of the largest independent technology startups based in Singapore. Founded in 2016, the Group has presence across South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and Greater China. The Group is backed by top tier investors SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Warburg Pincus, Northstar, Vision Plus Capital, Gaorong Capital, Pavilion Capital, GSR Ventures and EDBI.

#Carousell #GOGOX #Atome

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 14 December 2021 – “Coronation”, a digital illustration minted by A_Moore for mocking Summit for Democracy, was sold at 2.5 ETH（10,017 dollars on Dec. 12th）on OpenSea, the largest NFT market. He might be inspired by Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta.

“Coronation” follows the composition of the famous painting “The School of Athens” （completed between 1510 and 1511​）. Raphael used “The Academy of Athens” to embody the humanitarian and liberalism of the Renaissance. And this famous work also expresses Raphael’s admiration for ancient Greek culture.

“Coronation” is a good reference to the composition of Raphael’s “School of Athens”. The whole work adopts a single-point perspective composition. In order to highlight the theme, there is a character in the center of the picture, held the torch so high that the reader’s first attention will be focused on the center of the picture. The buildings of Athens, which were built thousands of years ago, are located at the top of the picture.   At the horizon of the picture, there are several groups of interactive people, which are painted on both sides of the central figure, some people are talking about something, some people are observing something, and some people seem to be expressing something by holding a blue flag. People in each group, from all directions of the picture, are established not only independently, but also fully interact with each other,

The accurate application of perspective method, the beautiful and clear structure, the skilled control of spatial sense and the clear priorities of the frame, all these superb skills brought people unparalleled visual experience. On the other side of the picture is the modern society, which is painted full of riots. The distinction between the top and bottom in this picture creates an era contrast of millennium history. And the sharp contrast also made much impact on character interaction…

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are irreplaceable files on blockchain, and it can verify the ownership of digital art works. Normally, buyers own limited rights of displaying the digital artwork they represent. In March this year, An NFT made by Mike Winkelmann （known as Beeple） was sold for $69 million at Christie’s. With over 90% market share value, OpenSea tops the NFC market.

About Hong Kong International New Eco. Research Institute (INERI)

INERI is dedicated to providing a new financial economy, the popularisation and related solutions of blockchain technology, and the “chain energy economy” theoretical system to government’s regulatory authorities and traditional Chinese enterprises.

Website: www.ineri.net

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.