In celebration of International Women’s Day this year, and in line with the recent calls by the Labour Movement for greater support for working mothers, the Labour Movement has launched a hunt for the “Best Companies for Working Mums”.
Work-life harmony has been at the forefront of discussions where retaining women and attracting them back to the workforce is concerned. A recent Happiness Poll done by the Labour Movement with more than 5,500 respondents also reiterates the fact that more needs to be done to enhance the support given to working mums at their workplace. This impacts the employment rate of women, as those who are able to harmonise between work and family care are more likely to remain in the workforce.
NTUC Women’s Development Secretariat (WDS) is thus co-organising the contest with Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices (TAFEP), with the aim to recognise and highlight the different ways which companies can help their employees achieve better work-life harmony. The contest would also be able to draw out exemplary companies that other companies can look up to, and showcase best practices which employers and employees may find useful. (For more information on the contest, please refer to Annex A.)
Today, the Labour Movement also celebrated International Women’s Day with a carnival at Downtown East. Themed “IT’S TIME – N.O.W! (NURTURE OUR WOMEN)”, the carnival gathered about 2,500 participants to reinforce the Labour Movement’s advocacy on empowering women to lead better and meaningful lives through Work, Live and Play.
Job Fair organised by WDS and e2i
Other than fun-filled activities, which included a mass walk, booth activities and workshops that participants get to enjoy at the carnival, they can also look out for job opportunities at the job fair organised by WDS and e2i (Employment and Employability Institute). About 1,000 job vacancies from 17 different employers were available at today’s one-day job fair, which primarily targeted women job seekers. Participating employers came from various sectors such as food and beverage, healthcare, retail, hospitality, security, administrative and transport and logistics, etc.
Out of the 17 employers at the job fair, 10 offered job vacancies which provided some form of flexi-work arrangements. These totaled to more than 200 of such job vacancies.
Going forward
“While WDS will continue to focus on placing women in better jobs, we also hope to deepen our engagement with employers, communities and workers to share our message – to “Value Every Worker” and call on them to embrace a culture of flexibility. We will continue to work with employers towards enhancing their flexibility programmes. This will go a long way in attracting more women back to the workforce and also retaining the existing workforce,” said Ms Sylvia Choo, Director of NTUC WDS.
Amidst a challenging economic outlook, Singapore continues to face a tight labour market and a slowdown in workforce growth. WDS urged employers to be more flexible and innovative when it comes to recruitment so that they can better tap on the potential pool of economically inactive women who want to come back to work.
WDS will continue to work with the unions and employers and various agencies to advocate the importance of having flexi-work arrangements provided at workplaces to attract back-to-work women. WDS, with the Labour Movement will also continue to call upon the government and for more support in helping more women return back to work, especially with regards to flexi-work arrangements.
Other than offering more flexi-work arrangements which include part-time positions or home-based positions, employers can also look at job re-design to see how they can make work more attractive to this potential pool of women job seekers. At the same time, employers should realise the importance of quality jobs and should seek to provide fair remuneration package and work benefits accordingly.
