1. The NTUC Women’s Development Secretariat (WDS) ‘Little Ones @ Work’ (LO@W) programme is back this year-end holiday to reach out to more companies, with the main purpose of promoting worklife integration at the workplace.
2. Companies are encouraged to designate at least one day in a year to allow their employees to bring their children to their workplace. Children are thus given the opportunity to appreciate and understand how their parents’ work is like. Companies can also organise fun and meaningful activities which will help engage both parents and children. The entire experience will not only help parents bond with their children, but will also help the employees feel a stronger sense of belonging to the company.
NTUC WDS updates on LO@W: 101 companies, 3,800 children to date
3. Working hand in hand with the management and union partners, NTUC WDS leads the programme to help employees strike a better balance between work and family. Since its launch in June 2009, the programme has received very encouraging responses from participating companies. To date, a total of 101 companies have taken part in the programme, with 3,800 children joining in the sessions organised.
4. We also witnessed a significant growth in participants since NTUC WDS embarked on the pilot series in December 2008, where 200 staff and 100 children partook in the sessions. More than 60 companies have committed to the programme for 2010, and this brought the number of participating children to more than 2,000 in one single year.
Parkway organises four sessions for its staff
5. Parkway Holdings Limited (“Parkway”) participated in the programme for the first time this year, organising four sessions for staff and their children for all its hospitals and clinics in Singapore. The events brought together more than 102 children and their parents from Parkway Shenton clinics, Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Hospital and Parkway East Hospital.
6. Mrs Ma Concepcion Nillo, a staff nurse at Gleneagles Hospital’s Maternity Ward, brought her three children aged 12, 9 and 3 years to the event organised at Gleneagles Hospital. Commenting on the benefits of the LO@W programme, she said, “The whole experience is really good for the children. They get to enjoy the fun activities, make new friends and see my workplace.”
7. “As I work long hours, I am not able to spend as much time as I would like with my children. I am very happy that Parkway has given its staff an opportunity to participate in activities that help us bond with our children and build stronger relationships,” she added.
8. Ms Ann Yong, Parkway’s Senior Vice President of Human Resources, said, “Parkway strongly advocates the importance of worklife integration. We hope that the ‘Little Ones @ Work’ initiative will help provide a platform for Parkway families to come together for meaningful parent-child bonding activities, and build the foundation of a family-friendly culture at Parkway”.
9. NTUC WDS has undertaken many initiatives during the year in a bid to actively promote work life balance and encourage employers to offer more family-friendly programmes to their employees. We are glad to see that the LO@W programme has been well-received by companies and we have received encouraging feedbacks on the programme. Going forward, we hope to extend this programme to more companies and continue to witness its growth.
Mdm Halimah Yacob
Deputy Secretary-General, NTUC
Director, NTUC Women’s Development Secretariat
