The Big Read in Short: In push to be more family-friendly, workplaces have to evolve

SINGAPORE — Over the years, public relations (PR) professional Yvonne Koh has seen her fair share of “wasted talent” – women who are passionate and proficient in their work but quit their jobs after trying to balance caring for their young children and the demands of the work.
In the fast-paced and often hectic world of PR, Ms Koh, 48, said it is typically “unthinkable” for mothers with young children to have any semblance of flexibility or work-life balance. Thus, many end up resigning so they can prioritise parenting.
Now the boss of her own PR agency, Ms Koh is determined to ensure that her own employees can have the best of both worlds: A fulfilling career in their industry and family-friendly hours.
Case in point: One of her experienced employees works fewer hours a week compared with her colleagues, and her role was redesigned with reduced responsibilities. This was so she can spend more time with her young toddler at home.
Without that arrangement, the employee would have left the workforce entirely, she said.
“There is a monetary cost to accommodate for this flexibility,” Ms Koh admitted. “But there is also an opportunity cost to losing that talent too.”
But not all businesses can provide that same level of flexibility to their employees, often due to a lack of manpower.
A teacher in the early childhood sector who wanted to be known only as Ms Fasya, 31, resigned from her job at a private preschool after the birth of her second child in 2021.
She told TODAY that the school permitted her to take only two months of maternity leave postpartum, and she had to clear the remaining two months by working a four-day work week over several months.
When she had to take leave to care for her sick child, the school’s management chided her.
“It was as though it was my fault I had to take leave for my baby. I had to pay for the doctor’s consultation fee to get a medical certificate just to prove my baby really was sick.”
Struggles of working mothers — and fathers too — are back in the national discourse after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced at his maiden National Day Rally on Aug 18 several new policies aimed at promoting a “family-friendly environment” for Singapore.
These include making all four weeks of government-paid paternity leave mandatory from April 2025. A new Shared Parental Leave scheme will also be introduced, comprising 10 extra weeks of paid leave to be shared between both parents.
Of course there are trade-offs: Employers are often quick to note that offering flexibility comes at a cost to productivity and competitiveness.
As Singapore strives to be family-friendly, can it still maintain its status as one of the most competitive economies in the world?
Companies in Singapore have made notable strides in becoming more family-friendly over the years, HR experts noted.
For instance, at Google Singapore, for instance, all parents can take up to 18 weeks of “baby bonding” leave, while mothers can take up to 24 weeks of parental leave.
HSBC Singapore also extended its maternity leave from 16 to 26 weeks and paternity leave from two to eight weeks last year.
In addition to longer parental leave, companies large and small told TODAY they have added provisions that employees appreciate, like caregiver leave for employees, fully remote work, and dedicated facilities for new mothers
At its Bras Basah headquarters, Income Insurance has a nursing room that can be used by three employees at the same time.
Ms Celina Lim, a 35-year-old strategic communications manager there, said that the facility is extremely helpful for mothers like her.
“Having accessible facilities like these (nursing rooms) to support mothers may seem like a small gesture, but they go a long way in providing relief for us.”
But these family-related benefits do come at a cost.
Employers and HR experts say accommodating flexible working arrangements affects productivity, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who struggle to cope when workers go on extended leave, as it can be a challenge to hire temporary replacements and redistribute workloads.
Those who have to pick up the slack left by absent colleagues, meanwhile, face burnout.
One advertising executive told TODAY that she experienced an overwhelming period of about three months when two of her colleagues went on maternity leave at around the same time, leaving her to take over their workloads while juggling her own responsibilities simultaneously.
“I was happy to help as welcoming a child is a very special moment in one’s life. But I didn’t realise how much there was to do — it was all too much for one person to handle,” said the 27-year-old who declined to be named as she still works at the same company,
While overcoming these challenges is far from straightforward, experts said the key is to stay ahead of the curve by anticipating such resource constraints and planning ahead, ensuring that the company does not “crumble” when employees go on caregiving or parental leave.
When it comes to parental leave, the provisions in Singapore — where total fertility rate (TFR) fell to a historic low of 0.97 in 2023 — do seem less generous than those of other developed societies.
For example, the Swedish parental insurance entitles parents to a total of 480 days, or about 16 months, of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted. Each parent is entitled to 240 of those days.
In 2023, the South Korean government extended the parental leave period from 12 to 18 months.
But there is no direct correlation between these provisions and a country’s TFR. Despite South Korea’s generous provisions, the nation recorded a historically low TFR of 0.72 last year.
What is more important is the country’s broader culture towards parenting and family time, said Dr Veronica Gregorio, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“In Sweden, both parents actively participate in child-rearing — this is made possible by extensive parental leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and significant social recognition for those who engage in their children’s lives,” she said.
On the flip side, South Korea offers its fathers 53 weeks of paternity leave, but very few men take it up due to fears of being left behind in their jobs, because the social stigma attached to not prioritising work or career is deeply entrenched in their work culture, she said.
While Singapore has pushed for more work-life balance in recent years, employees and experts alike agree that there is still room for improvement by taking a leaf out of other countries’ books.
Take France, for instance. In 2017, the country added the “droit à la déconnexion” — the right to disconnect — to its Labour Code to improve people’s quality of life by formally separating the realms of work and private life.
In Singapore, the struggle to “draw the line” after working hours is a concern often cited by employees, and a similar policy established by companies will aid that separation, workers told TODAY.
But this idea that workers have to respond might simply be a misconception, said 34-year-old lawyer Eugene Neo from TSMP Law Corporation, who himself is on a flexi-work arrangement to care for his family members at home.
“As an employee, you might be afraid that your boss or clients may have a certain impression or misconception about you if you are less responsive after official working hours — which they may not actually have,” he said.
“Open communication might therefore be helpful. Companies could have an official guideline or directive to help with those expectations.”
While companies can adopt proactive measures, the more important issue that needs to be tackled is the nation’s long-standing obsession with productivity and global rankings, said Mr Kelvin Seah, 54, an adjunct lecturer who is a pioneer member of The Ordinary Dad, a community of stay-home fathers.
“We need to ask ourselves, what are we striving so hard for? Can Singapore live to be less efficient, less productive in terms of absolute quantitative measures?”
That said, there are businesses in Singapore that have embraced family-friendly policies and made them work.
A number of multinational corporations and SMEs TODAY spoke to said that their family-friendly policies have led to better business outcomes.
Certainly, family-friendly practices have become a significant competitive advantage in today’s talent-driven market, HR experts said.
Taking a broader view, experts say bosses should seriously consider adopting more family-friendly practices at their workplaces in any case, simply because it is good for society.
Dr Tan Ern Ser, a sociologist at NUS said: “If we prioritise the family and see it as a cornerstone of society, including as an institution for raising the next generation and it’s important for social stability, then there is every reason to push for family-friendly measures.”