How SNTUC’s Siow Shong Seng is setting the tone for an AI-ready workforce in Singapore with Microsoft 365 Copilot

SINGAPORE - Siow Shong Seng is elbows-deep exploring the latest features of Microsoft Copilot 365, having set up Copilot Cowork to automate several tasks for him.

The chief transformation and technology officer at Singapore National Trades Union Congress (SNTUC) gets daily updates on tech trends, the labor movement's appearances on social media, and the economy and jobs.

"I set up these agents to run by themselves. It saves me from typing out the same prompt every day," he said.

He has also built an agent in Copilot, to test how AI can help industrial relations officers (IROs) find information on labor laws, guidelines, procedures and review employment contracts to support NTUC members. IROs manage relationships between employers and workers, representing groups of workers to handle employment and workplace disputes.

"These officers handle a lot of administrative work. For example, if there's a work dispute between the workers they represent and their employers. So I created an industrial relations officer agent that pulls information from set sources like SNTUC, the Ministry of Manpower, and other government agencies," he said. "This agent is a template, to give my team ideas on building a production version."

SNTUC represents over 1.4 million workers in Singapore's unique tripartite system where unions, employers and government collaborate to develop labor policies, balancing worker protection with economic competitiveness.

This makes Siow an unofficial example-setter for workers navigating new ground in the AI-forward island state.

"SNTUC is supporting workers and we're trying to drive AI adoption to make our workers more prepared for the AI world," said Siow. "So, we have to make sure we are using that (AI) ourselves."

That AI usage includes Microsoft 365 Copilot, which was first tested by 50 staff members in January 2025 and rolled out a year later to SNTUC's 1,300 employees.

Siow, who's primarily responsible for driving digital transformation and strategy within the SNTUC, was part of the initial group of Copilot users. He observes that the AI assistant has rapidly evolved and improved since then.

Today, he lauds Copilot's ability to create and integrate work across apps like Outlook and PowerPoint, instead of him having to copy and paste answers from prompts like before.