Workers struggling to balance their work and personal time may look forward to better work-life harmony, following a new set of guidelines released by tripartite partners.
Minister of State for Manpower Gan Siow Huang launched the Tripartite Standard on Work-Life Harmony (TS-WLH) standards on 26 April 2021.
The TS-WLH is the ninth jointly developed by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), NTUC and Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF). It aims to entrench and enhance good work-life harmony practices in the new normal.
Ms Gan, NTUC Women and Family Unit Director Yeo Wan Ling, and SNEF Council Member Bicky Bhangu lead the Alliance for Action on Work-Life Harmony (AfA-WLH).
The TS-WLH details seven practices for employers to follow to help their workers achieve work-life harmony.
Ms Gan highlighted three of the seven practices she felt was important in the adoption of the standards.
She said: “The Tripartite Standard on Flexible Work Arrangement is key to work-life harmony and it is one of the key prerequisites for the adoption of the TS-WLH. The second is encouraging employers to introduce enhanced leave benefits and employee support schemes. We believe that many employees today are also caregivers for their children as well as their elderly grandparents and it is absolutely necessary for employers to have a good understanding of the support schemes needed for employees to discharge their duties well, both on the caregiving front as well as at the workplace.”
Employers need to regularly review the effectiveness of the work-life harmony programmes, and to consult with employees on what they really need, added Ms Gan.
Dr Bicky said that employers have a responsibility to help Singapore's workforce achieve work-life harmony – helping workers effectively manage both work responsibilities and family or personal commitments.
He said: “Close to four in five employers (78 per cent) had implemented at least one formal type of flexible work arrangement in 2020, up from about half (53 per cent) in 2019, in part due to the need to maintain safe operations during COVID-19.
“While this is good progress, we understand that work-life harmony goes beyond just flexible work arrangements, and there are opportunities for employers to further enhance work-life harmony practices at workplaces.”
He also added that it was important for the standards to be flexible enough for employers to implement while still taking care of the varying needs and wellbeing of employees.
“Getting this right helps not only to improve employee engagement and productivity but will also enable employers to sustain work life on new practices and make them much more widely accepted among businesses,” he said.
Ms Yeo believes that the concept of work-life harmony should not only be limited to women.
“We encourage employers to consider how the concept of work-life harmony applies to men. It is crucial that men contribute to caregiving needs in the family so that at the end of the day, both women and men alike experience work-life harmony,” she said.
