SINGAPORE: While other employees dive straight into work right after a weekend respite, Ms Nabilah Awang spends her Monday mornings exercising, settling some house chores or “just recharging” herself. Such luxury is made possible by her employer, a commodity price reporting agency, which has implemente
SINGAPORE: While other employees dive straight into work right after a weekend respite, Ms Nabilah Awang spends her Monday mornings exercising, settling some house chores or “just recharging” herself.
But some who have tried four-day work weeks said work performance and productivity were affected while others added that such arrangements are not practical for their industry. “My team took less MC . Maybe because they feel guilty missing any more work day since the work week was already short,” the chef and co-founder of food & beverage business The Social Outcast said in jest.
In Singapore, conversations around having more days away from work have picked up steam as employees reevaluate their work-life balance after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted work norms. While the MOM had no plans to conduct four-day work week trials here, Ms Gan noted that results from pilots implemented in other countries appeared mixed.
He cited as an example how smaller companies in service industries would find it hard to adopt a four-day work week without potentially losing productivity and competitiveness. Various polls in recent years indicated a strong interest in a four-day work week, though some surveys found that employees did have some apprehensions about the arrangement.
Among the top concerns respondents of the Milieu Insight survey had were urgent tasks or work correspondences spilling into the non-working day, potential salary cuts or the stress of longer work days. However, given that they already frequently work beyond their official hours to complete their tasks, they dread having to stretch their work days even longer to make up for the lost fifth weekday.
One civil servant, who wanted to be known only as Ms Goh, noted how the work of an entity in the public service is usually linked to or to support the function of other government-related organisations. “I think the main issue that we should address, and which I don't think is brought up enough, isn't the number of work days, but rather the amount of work Singaporeans have to deal with.”
“In the event that there's work needed on a Friday, it just means that I can clear that on my time and target without distraction or interruptions ,” said the 29-year old, who has eight years’ experience in the industry. Elsewhere, 4 Day Work Week Global, a non-profit based in the United Kingdom advocating for the implementation of four-day work weeks, has reported largely positive results from companies participating in trials that it has helped to organise since last year.
Other businesses, such as restaurants, may require their staff to work longer hours for certain periods but compensate for it by giving them shorter working hours during the lull season, resulting in an average 32-hour work week overall. Labour economist Walter Theseira, from the Singapore University of Social Sciences , noted however that the move involved redistributing the hours on Saturday across the weekdays to roughly retain the total number of working hours per week in the civil service.
Associate Professor Trevor Yu from Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University, however, said that pandemic-related developments may help Singapore to make further changes to its work practices. SUSS’ Assoc Prof Theseira also noted how, as it is, companies here tend to be more conservative even in implementing other flexi-work arrangements.
Nonetheless, they added that whatever apprehensions employers may have need to be considered against longer term goals. He added that should the trend of shorter work weeks continues and competitors have adopted it, “it can impact the company’s attractiveness to talent” should it be slow to adopt the same practices.FOUR-DAY GOOD, FLEXI BETTER?
“Our Gurus can work full hours over a shorter number of days with no difference in pay in accordance with their role requirements and in consultation with their managers,” chief people officer Helen Snowball told TODAY. “Currently we practise no-meeting Fridays, and one Mad Long Weekend per month, typically the last weekend in a month. We hope to phase into two monthly Mad Long Weekends in 2024,” said Ms Chow, referring to the long weekend practice.
Meanwhile, F&B establishment Coriander Leaf started the four-day work week arrangement sometime in 2021 partly because it had a hard time hiring F&B professionals as business resumed after pandemic-related restrictions eased. Coriander Leaf has since offered a range of work arrangements to better fit both the employees’ and the company's needs.
“For trainers, it is more effective for them to follow through with the students on specific modules, rather than stagger them for the sake of a four-day week, which would compromise learning outcomes.”For some companies, the transition to shorter work weeks may be made easier if they can adopt high-productivity practices — and the government can help with the latter by offering subsidies or grants, experts told TODAY.
“For Singapore, a transition to a 4.5-day work week may be more realistic given our culture,” said Mr Bedi, an is ASEAN workforce advisory leader at EY.
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