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Introduction
Mr Speaker, Sir, it takes a village to raise a child. Back in the day, when families were larger and when extended families lived together, there were economies of scale in households to take care of the young almost by the batch. Close neighbourly relationships also meant there were usually a set group of women in the neighbourhood who would help with babysitting. However, shifting attitudes and social trends such as dual-income families and smaller households would need us to redefine what a village means in modern-day Singapore.
I believe Singaporean parents will welcome this bill and the providence of more paid leave for parents, especially for fathers, as they heed the call for a more balanced share of child caregiving duties. The Labour Movement appreciates that the Ministry has listened to our workers’ feedback and has considered our call for more caregiving leave. The amendments to this bill is a great start for supporting Singaporean families by providing them with additional resources to alleviate their financial and time pressures, and indeed, it makes allowances for fathers to be more present during the early development of their child.
However, two practicalities need to be taken into consideration in the roll out of such leave support:
a. The workplace cultural norms which need to be developed to catch up with legislative calls for more parental leave;
b. The long-term sustainability of continually increasing paid and unpaid parental leave for workers as well as businesses.
Developing Workplace Cultures to Keep Up with Legislation
Let’s talk about the current state of workplace norms. The reality is that for many workers, when it comes to taking time off from work, it is sometimes a sticky conversation. It is not always so straightforward: workplace policies to create allowances for working parents do not necessarily translate to these allowances being realised. For example, merely 40% of eligible fathers made use of the complete two-week duration of Government-Paid Paternity Leave (GPPL) between 2018 and 2020. And why is this so?
In an ideal world, the process goes like this: a working parent is faced with a home emergency, they approach their employer with a leave request which is readily approved, and the working parent goes on leave to resolve the situation. However, ground realities can be quite different. Many face the dilemma of how taking more time away from work may negatively impact the impression their bosses and colleagues have of them. They may worry about their career progressions at work, or even finding alternative employment if they find themselves victims of discrimination. If you think about it, how many times has the office congratulated a co-worker on the birth of their child, while also in the same breath, complained about how much more productive they need to be as they cover their colleague’s work while they are away on leave? Of course, the unions have our workers’ backs should they be faced with such unfair treatment, but many working parents seek for favourable work relationships, choosing not to rock the boat, thus not fully utilising their full entitlement.
Mr Speaker, as such, we must take a holistic view of the reality that working parents and caregivers face. Providing more paid leave for working parents and caregivers to tend to their families is welcomed. But we need our work cultures and work arrangements to catch up with our legislative moves.
While we empathise with new parents who feel the sheer physical exhaustion, especially sleep deprivation that comes with taking care of a newborn infant, let’s also not forget the many types of familial duties. Parents with older kids who need help in school or in navigating the sensitive period that is adolescence, parents who are raising children with special needs, sandwiched working parents who are also caregivers to elderly parents or relatives. These are the every day caregiving burdens that many households in Singapore face today – the challenge of juggling work and family.
All of these require more than just a few weeks of time away from work. It is an intense balancing act, constantly juggling between responsibilities at home and commitments at work. This is a lifelong balancing act that perhaps calling for leave is just a start.
Leveraging Flexible Work Arrangements to Support Families
It is therefore timely that we begin to explore more sustainable options for work-life harmony to complement the increasing number of days of leave. The Labour Movement has been advocating for flexible work arrangements (FWAs) for decades, and we continue to believe that FWAs is the catalyst for changing workplace norms when it comes to work-life harmony, and it is the long-term solution for keeping our working parents in the workplace.
In a recent survey by the NTUC’s Women and Family Unit on FWAs, 87% of 2,711 respondents, both men and women, said that FWAs are an important factor in their decision-making to stay or leave their current jobs. During the pandemic, FWAs were implemented as the de facto way to work, and companies scrambled to find implement FWAs with existing technologies and resources. In the post-pandemic workplace, companies have started conversations on implementing enforceable, practical policies around providing FWAs as a long-term solution. Flexible work arrangements are not only about working from home, but FWAs can mean, flexi-time, flexi-place, and even flexi-load. FWAs are an important way for companies to reinvent their company’s work culture, their attitudes towards caregiving leave, paving the way for more engaged workers, and in return, higher productivity.
At the NTUC Women and Family Unit, we recently introduced the C U Back at Work Programme (or what we call CUB Programme for short). This programme, piloted with a Singapore-based company, provides fully flexible work hours, flexible work locations, and even flexible training hours in an effort to attract and retain working parents. This programme was launched through much fanfare and with successful return-to-work applicants, both mothers and fathers, they shared that the programme enabled them to come back to work as the company had a work culture which not only tolerated, but embraced working parents’ needs for flexible work. However, in the same period of time, the company also went through, with the help of NTUC, e2i, and Company Training Committees, a continued process of work redesign, including investing in a new HR team, a new scheduling system, a policy of recognising employees who have covered the work of co-workers on extended leave, and a clear policy of career progression and performance appraisals.
Legislation alone will not be able to change the existing work culture in our workplaces. Employers must continue to play a part to encourage working parents to leverage family-friendly workplace policies such as paid leave and FWAs. In the equipping of our companies in the long-term adoption of FWAs, the Government can consider supporting our employers in their job redesign process, which often can be costly, and may be disruptive to current workplace practices. The MSF can also consider awarding companies which adopt and embrace family-friendly policies forms of recognition, so that their best practices can be shared and further propagated.
Conclusion
Today, the news of a baby on its way is still very much met with joy, but the village now consists not only of just mothers and fathers, neighbours and extended families, but of employers, bosses, co-workers, HR, and the Government.
I agree that the bill is a step in the right direction, but for greater sustainability of work-life harmony, let us consider the levers of a modern workplace in flexible work arrangements, which not only support new parents, but all working parents and caregivers alike. These concerns notwithstanding, I support the Bill. Thank you.
