The Big Read: Family-friendly workplaces and a competitive economy? The balance is hard but can be struck

SINGAPORE: Over the years, public relations (PR) professional Yvonne Koh has seen her fair share of “wasted talent” – women who are passionate and proficient in their work but quit their jobs after trying to balance caring for their young children and the demands of the work.
In the fast-paced and often hectic world of PR, Ms Koh, 48, said it is typically “unthinkable” for mothers with young children to have any semblance of flexibility or work-life balance. Thus, many end up resigning so they can prioritise parenting.
Now the boss of her own PR agency, Ms Koh is determined to ensure that her own employees can have the best of both worlds: A fulfilling career in their industry and family-friendly hours. To achieve this, her employees can choose to work fewer hours, work remotely — whatever it takes.
Case in point: One of her experienced employees works fewer hours a week compared with her colleagues, and her role was redesigned with reduced responsibilities. This was so she can spend more time with her young toddler at home. 
Without that arrangement, the employee would have left the workforce entirely, she said.
“There is a monetary cost to accommodate for this flexibility,” Ms Koh admitted. “But there is also an opportunity cost to losing that talent too.”
But not all businesses can provide that same level of flexibility to their employees, often due to a lack of manpower.
A teacher in the early childhood sector who wanted to be known only as Ms Fasya, 31, resigned from her job at a private preschool after the birth of her second child in 2021.
She told TODAY that the school permitted her to take only two months of maternity leave postpartum, and she had to clear the remaining two months by working a four-day work week over several months.
When she had to take leave to care for her sick child, the school’s management chided her.
“It was as though it was my fault I had to take leave for my baby. I had to pay for the doctor’s consultation fee to get a medical certificate just to prove my baby really was sick.”
Such struggles of working mothers — and fathers too — are back in the national discourse after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced at his maiden National Day Rally on Aug 18 several new policies aimed at promoting a “family-friendly environment” for Singapore.
These include making all four weeks of government-paid paternity leave mandatory from April 2025. A new Shared Parental Leave scheme will also be introduced, comprising 10 extra weeks of paid leave to be shared between both parents.
While the government is playing its part by enacting such policies, Singapore cannot become a family-friendly place without companies doing their bit too, parents and experts told TODAY.
“We spend most of our time thinking about work and being at work,” said Associate Professor Veronica Gregorio, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“This means that if corporations will actively remind us — through actions, events, and facilities — that our family life is important, that our partners need support, that we need to be present for our kids, then Singapore can truly say that it is a family-friendly nation.”
To be fair, experts said businesses are becoming more family-friendly, driven by post-pandemic employee preferences and government moves such as issuing guidelines that allow all workers to ask for flexible work arrangements.
Of course, there are trade-offs: Employers are often quick to note that offering flexibility comes at a cost to productivity and competitiveness.
So it may be time to ask: As Singapore strives to be family-friendly, can it still maintain its status as one of the most competitive economies in the world? 
When it comes to parental leave, the provisions in Singapore — where total fertility rate (TFR) fell to a historic low of 0.97 in 2023 — do seem less generous than those of other developed societies.
For example, Swedish parental insurance entitles parents to a total of 480 days, or about 16 months, of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted. Each parent is entitled to 240 of those days.
In 2023, the South Korean government extended the parental leave period from 12 to 18 months.
But there is no direct correlation between these provisions and a country’s TFR. Despite South Korea’s generous provisions, the nation recorded a historically low TFR of 0.72 last year.
What is more important is the country’s broader culture towards parenting and family time, said Assoc Prof Gregorio.
“In Sweden, both parents actively participate in child-rearing — this is made possible by extensive parental leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and significant social recognition for those who engage in their children’s lives,” she said.
On the flip side, South Korea offers its fathers 53 weeks of paternity leave, but very few men take it up due to fears of being left behind in their jobs, she noted, as the social stigma attached to not prioritising work or career is deeply entrenched in their work culture.
Even if companies try to do their part by implementing family-friendly policies, these are pointless if there is no buy-in from middle management, said Mr Piers Atkinson, the head of the life science team at human resource firm Ethos BeathChapman.
He recalled how he once spoke to employees from the same company in Singapore and found that they had wildly differing views on whether the firm was family-friendly, depending on which department they worked in.
“This all comes down to how a specific line manager implements these policies,” he said.
While Singapore has pushed for more work-life balance in recent years, employees and experts alike agree that there is still room for improvement by taking a leaf out of other countries’ books.
Take France, for instance. In 2017, the country added the “droit à la déconnexion” — the right to disconnect — to its Labour Code to improve people’s quality of life by formally separating the realms of work and private life.
The law does not prevent bosses from calling, emailing or texting workers outside of working hours. But it is now illegal for them to criticise or reprimand workers who do not respond.
A similar law just came into effect in Australia Aug 26.
In Singapore, the struggle to “draw the line” after working hours is a concern often cited by employees and a similar policy established by companies will aid that separation, workers told TODAY.
“The thing about working in Singapore is that a lot of times, you don’t get a mental break even when you’re on leave,” said Ms Celina Lim, 35, a strategic communications manager at Income Insurance.
While she says her own company has a more enlightened attitude towards this, she has observed that others are not as lucky as her.
“There’s an underlying expectation for you to always be working or checking emails so there isn’t any real down time for you to focus on your kids.”
Workers who benefit from flexible work arrangements also tend to feel like they are falling behind in their careers.
This is common especially among fathers, who worry that they might be perceived as having a lack of commitment or ambition, said Dr Xander Ong, chief executive officer of the non-profit Centre for Fathering.
A study published in July by SG Her Empowerment, an independent non-profit that focuses on empowering women, found that two in five people (41 per cent) under some form of flexi-work arrangement felt they had either been overlooked for promotion or received fewer opportunities for development.
But this idea that workers have to respond might simply be a misconception, said 34-year-old lawyer Eugene Neo, who himself is on a flexi-work arrangement to care for his family members.
“As an employee, you might be afraid that your boss or clients may have a certain impression or misconception about you if you are less responsive after official working hours — which they may not actually have,” he said.
“Open communication might therefore be helpful. Companies could have an official guideline or directive to help with those expectations.”
Over the years, there have been notable examples of companies here taking significant strides towards being more family-friendly.
At Google Singapore, for instance, all parents can take up to 18 weeks of “baby bonding” leave, while mothers can take up to 24 weeks of parental leave.
HSBC Singapore extended its maternity leave from 16 to 26 weeks and paternity leave from two to eight weeks last year.
Experts noted that more firms are introducing “family care” or caregiver leave for employees to take care of elderly parents and other direct family members. At advertising outfit TBWA Group Singapore employees can tap this leave even to care for their pets.
Some firms like HR platform Employment Hero have even structured their operations to be “totally remote”. 
Aside from flexible work and leave provisions, some workers say they appreciate accommodations such as dedicated nursing rooms.
At its Bras Basah headquarters, Income Insurance has a nursing room that can be used by three employees at the same time. Ms Lim, the strategic communications manager, said this is extremely helpful for mothers like her.
“Having accessible facilities like these (nursing rooms) to support mothers may seem like a small gesture, but they go a long way in providing relief for us.”
Smaller companies like baby-product outfit Hegen and clothing brand Love, Bonito told TODAY that they, too, have spaces to cater to the needs of breastfeeding mothers — the latter for retail-based employees as well. 
But these family-related benefits do come at a cost.
Employers and HR experts say accommodating flexible working arrangements affects productivity, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who struggle to cope when workers go on extended leave, as it can be a challenge to hire temporary replacements and redistribute workloads.
Ms Carol Tan, the head of HR for the Singapore and Australia branches of one such company, Cigna Healthcare, said that while government funding has gone some ways in subsidising hiring temporary help, the bigger challenge is in finding help with the right skill sets who are, at the same time, willing to take up temporary positions.
Those who have to pick up the slack left by absent colleagues, meanwhile, face burnout.
One advertising executive told TODAY that she experienced an overwhelming period of about three months when two of her colleagues went on maternity leave at around the same time, leaving her to take over their workloads while juggling her own responsibilities simultaneously.
“I was happy to help as welcoming a child is a very special moment in one’s life. But I didn’t realise how much there was to do — it was all too much for one person to handle,” said the 27-year-old who declined to be named as she still works at the same company.
While overcoming these challenges is far from straightforward, experts said the key is to stay ahead of the curve by anticipating such resource constraints and planning ahead, ensuring that the company does not “crumble” when employees go on caregiving or parental leave.
For one, companies can proactively adopt “scalable and tailored” approaches, said Mr Kenji Naito, group chief executive officer of recruitment firm Reeracoen. 
These include phased return-to-work programmes, cross-training employees to cover roles during leave periods and using technology to maintain productivity.
Ms Christina Ching, vice-president of HR and communications for Singapore LNG, added it is imperative for employers to manage the energy of those employees who are taking on the workload of their colleagues who are away.
“This means that employers need to be mindful to ensure there are regular pause moments for employees to recharge and reflect,” she said.
While companies can adopt such proactive measures, not all experts are convinced that family-friendly policies can take centrestage without having an impact on business operations and competitiveness.
Associate Professor Tan Ern Ser, a sociologist at NUS, believes this delicate balance of policy and productivity is a “zero-sum game”.
Similarly, Mr Kelvin Seah, an adjunct lecturer who is a pioneer member of The Ordinary Dad, a community of stay-home fathers, worries that as work-life balance policies increasingly become the norm, SMEs may start shifting towards hiring primarily singles or foreign talents.
But the more important issue that needs to be tackled is the nation’s long-standing obsession with productivity and global rankings, said Mr Seah, 54.
“We need to ask ourselves, what are we striving so hard for? Can Singapore live to be less efficient, less productive in terms of absolute quantitative measures?
“Because if we can, then we can slow down and breathe — and then maybe family has a chance,” he said.
Indeed, Singapore frequently ranks among the best internationally when it comes to economic competitiveness.
Using a host of statistical and qualitative data, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) ranked Singapore at the top among 67 countries in its annual world competitiveness ranking report this year.
Interestingly, the Scandinavian countries that are often lauded for their family-friendly work policies also make it to the top 10 in the same IMD rankings.
Denmark, Sweden and Norway are placed third, fifth and tenth respectively, which suggests that work-life balance can indeed be struck without compromising productivity.
In Denmark, each parent is entitled to 24 weeks of parental leave after childbirth, with mothers entitled to an extra four weeks of leave before birth.
Norway’s parental leave provisions are about double of Denmark’s — each parent is entitled to a total of 12 months of parental leave, and an extra year of leave for each birth, which must be taken directly after the first year.
That said, Scandinavian countries have much more natural resources that aid their economic competitiveness in comparison to Singapore, which relies mostly on its manpower to drive growth.
But even so, Mr Song Seng Wun, an economic advisor at CGS International, believes that the emphasis on work-life balance in those countries means workers are happier on the whole — instead of economic deterioration, workers become more productive as a result.
And there are businesses in Singapore that have embraced family-friendly policies and come out the better for it.
A number of multinational corporations and SMEs TODAY spoke to said that their family-friendly policies have led to better business outcomes for them.
Ms Mandy Goh, the head of talent for TBWA Group Singapore, said that the firm’s initiatives helped it to garner better retention among its employees. For instance, the company allows parents to bring their children to office, which can be helpful when alternative arrangements are not available.
Creative director Germaine Chen said she brings her six-year-old son to work once or twice a month when he is not in school and there is no one at home to take care of him.
The 35-year-old added that she is also grateful that neither her maternity leave nor the flexible work arrangements needed to accommodate her new role as a mother have had an impact on her career: She has had two promotions at TBWA since she gave birth to her child in 2018.
To this point, Ms May Leng Kwok, the head of market development (global) for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said that companies that offer on-site childcare facilities can help employees promote peace of mind while simultaneously attracting top talent.
Certainly, family-friendly practices have become a significant competitive advantage in today’s talent-driven market, HR experts said.
“Companies that prioritise these practices are better-positioned to attract and retain top talent, particularly as employees increasingly seek workplaces that value work-life balance,” said Mr Naito.
Taking a broader view, experts say bosses should seriously consider adopting more family-friendly practices at their workplaces in any case, simply because it is good for society.
Assoc Prof Tan said: “If we prioritise the family and see it as a cornerstone of society, including as an institution for raising the next generation and it’s important for social stability, then there is every reason to push for family-friendly measures.”
The article was originally published in TODAY.