If your company is hiring or redesigning a role and qualifies for the Workforce Singapore Career Conversion Programme, the work to actually get the salary support has six stages. This guide walks through each one with timelines, deliverables, and the decisions you’ll need to make.
From first conversation to claims received, a Singapore employer’s CCP journey runs through six stages: (1) scoping & eligibility, (2) role and OJT design, (3) document preparation, (4) submission & clarifications, (5) OJT delivery, and (6) claims. End-to-end timelines are typically 2–6 weeks to approval, plus the OJT duration (3–12 months depending on pathway), plus a few weeks for the first claim cycle.
The work isn’t complicated, but it’s specific. Most rejected or delayed applications fail because the OJT plan was templated, the role didn’t show enough scope change, or the documentation was incomplete, not because the underlying business case was weak.
Before any documentation, we confirm three things: the company qualifies as an employer (Singapore-registered, able to deliver OJT), the candidate qualifies as an employee (Citizen or PR, mid-career, not a director’s family member), and the role qualifies (newly created or showing 50%+ scope change). We then map the role to a CCP pathway and confirm the salary band.
Output of this stage: a one-page eligibility memo with the recommended pathway, salary support estimate, and OJT duration.
This is where most of the value sits. We draft:
The bar for an OJT plan is “an assessor could read this and immediately see how the employee acquires the new skills over the programme period.” Vague verbs (“learn about”, “understand”) get rewritten into specific verbs (“build”, “lead”, “present”, “ship”) tied to deliverables.
The application pack typically includes:
We submit through the appropriate channel and manage any back-and-forth from the assessor. Typical clarifications: tightening an OJT activity description, providing additional evidence of scope change, or confirming a salary detail. Most clarification rounds resolve within a few business days when the underlying documentation is solid.
Approval usually arrives in writing within this 2–6 week window. Sustainability and overseas-market pathways typically need more iteration than “different job scope” placements.
The employee starts (or continues) in the redesigned role and follows the approved OJT plan. The employer’s job during this stage is to maintain the evidence trail: weekly OJT logs, supervisor sign-offs, training attendance records, and payroll evidence. We provide a tracker template and review evidence at the midpoint.
Once the OJT period or claim milestone is reached, we compile the claim with the supporting evidence and submit. Salary support is reimbursed to the employer; you continue paying the employee’s salary in full throughout. For longer pathways, claims may be split into multiple cycles.
An anonymised example of the process applied to a job-redesign engagement for an existing staff member.
An engineering firm wanted to expand a long-tenured HR Operations Executive’s scope into people analytics, workforce planning, and learning & development. The existing role had become almost entirely transactional; the redesigned scope added strategic responsibilities that required new skills.
Details anonymised. Salary support up to S$45,000 per eligible placement is subject to WSG’s prevailing guidelines and the employer’s SME status.
One-page assessment of employer, employee, and role eligibility. Recommended pathway, salary band, OJT duration, and projected salary support.
Before-and-after scope mapping, with responsibilities, performance expectations, and skills required, phrased to make the scope change visible to an assessor.
Measurable activities with weekly cadence, named supervisor, milestones, and KPIs. Aligned to SkillsFuture frameworks where applicable.
Compiled, named-correctly, ready to submit. Includes ACRA, contracts, salary evidence, CPF, undertakings, declarations, and supporting evidence.
Drafted responses to assessor queries, escalations where needed, and timeline tracking through to written approval.
Evidence tracker template for the OJT period, midpoint review, claim compilation, and submission of each claim cycle.
It depends on how recently. Programme rules generally require the application to be in before or shortly after the start date. If the employee has been in the role for many months already, the “new role” framing is harder to defend, we work backwards from the redesign date to see if a fresh angle holds.
Realistically, 3–5 hours of total internal time for a single placement: a kickoff call, JD/OJT review, documents collection, signatures. We do the writing, the structuring, and the submission management.
Clarifications are normal, most applications get at least one. We draft the response, you review and approve, and we submit. Typical resolution time is 2–5 business days per round when the underlying documentation is solid.
Yes. Each placement is its own application. Companies expanding a team or transforming a function often run 2–4 in parallel, with separate JDs and OJT plans (no copy-paste, assessors look for that).
A simple shared tracker (spreadsheet) covering: weekly OJT log entries, supervisor sign-offs, attendance records for any external training, and payroll evidence per pay cycle. We provide the template and check it at the midpoint so the claim phase is straightforward.
Our success fee covers Stages 1–4 (scoping through approval) plus claims management. There’s no charge if the application doesn’t get approved. The fee is a percentage of the salary support secured, agreed in writing before we start. See flat-fee vs success-fee consulting for the comparison.
From OJT period end (or claim milestone) to reimbursement: typically 4–8 weeks depending on programme channel. Longer pathways with multiple claim cycles see funds flow in tranches across the OJT period.