Essay draft 3

In today’s world, many activities are interconnected and integrated. Commercial activities in one part of the world have to keep in pace with those in other parts of the world. Singapore is not spared from this effect of globalization. Ministry of Manpower (MOM) (2005) reports that many services in Singapore have to provide round the clock service 7 days a week and businesses in Singapore are affected by events of countries in another time zone. This has caused operations of companies to be perpetually active even after office hours, eroding the clear divide between work and after work. There is thus an invasion of work into personal time, which is supported by the Robert Half’s 2011 survey that reports, 69% of Singapore employees still pay attention to work after office hours (Robert Half, 2011). From this, it is clear that many Singaporeans do experience a loss of work-life balance.

The Singapore government has put in place measures to mitigate the loss of work-life balance in working Singaporeans, but its success is limited. In this context, the successful attainment of work-life balance is contingent upon individuals to play a more active role in gaining the trust of employers so as to utilize existing measures and setting the boundaries between work and life.

The tripartite committee of MOM, National Trade Union Congress (NTUC) and Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) was set up by the Singapore government in the year 2000. This tripartite committee is responsible for setting up the Work-Life Strategy. Under the Work-Life Strategy, schemes such as Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA) and Family Care Leave aim to help working Singaporeans achieve work-life balance. Although there were successful cases of use of FWA to promote work-life balance such as Kleen-Pak Products Pte Ltd and Singapore General Hospital (MOM, 2013), these cases are rare and few. The reality is that 7 in 10 employers are unsupportive of flexible work arrangements (Chew, 2013).

Yeo (2012) asserts that the underlying problem is the difficulty of employers in trusting employees to maintain work competency if they spend lesser time in the office. It is thus common for employers to judge employees’ productivity based upon the time they spent in the office. Employer’s distrust of employees’ productivity has resulted in the limited implementation of FWA in workplaces. This sustains the problem of loss of work-life balance. The onus is on individuals, to solve this issue of trust in order to achieve work-life balance. The Institute of Singapore Charted Accountants (2009) reiterates the role of employee in achieving work-life balance, where employees need to initiate the discussion with the employers and come to a middle ground on the issue of employer’s expectation of work quota and the ability of employee to achieve that quota. Discussion between employees and employers on work quota is vital for the issues of trust and productivity as it would be clear that productivity of employees is based on achieving the work quota instead of measuring productivity based on time spent in the office, and the only way for employee to gain the trust of employers is to meet the work quota despite being on FWA.

Employers are unsupportive of implementing FWA in their workplace despite encouragement by the government through financial incentives that help to defray the cost of implementing FWA and financial rewards (MOM, 2013). It is apparent that even financial rewards are unable to entice profit-driven companies and employers to implement FWA. Therefore, formal means of achieving work-life balance may not be successful. As a result, work-life balance can be achieved by individuals via informal means. TED Talks (2010) mentioned that, individuals have to be responsible for setting the boundaries of work in their lives. Therefore, an informal means of achieving work-life balance that can be employed by individuals would be the adoption of certain practices in their lives, such as abstaining from any work-related activities for an hour a day, and using that time to engage in personal activities. Despite the small amount of personal time being set aside, it should contribute to a better work-life balance because according to TED Talks (2010), “with the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your live”.

In conclusion, despite the Singapore government implementation of initiatives and financial encouragement for employers to promote work-life balance in Singapore, the unwillingness and unsupportive attitude of employers towards these initiatives has limited the success of existing initiatives. Therefore, individuals need to play a more active role in committing to set boundaries between work and life and gaining the trust of employers in order to utilize existing initiatives to attain work-life balance.