Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Eugene - Family friendly society
Singapore is a family friendly society as most companies in Singapore have policies that allow their workers to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Most companies in Singapore operate a five day work week, as well as giving their employees at least fourteen days of annual leave, despite guidelines that say employees need only be given fourteen days of annual leave after 8 years of service with the company. This gives employees plenty of time on weekends to spend with their families. They can also take up to about fourteen days paid leave to go on a holiday with their families. This ensures that Singaporean workers can spend enough time with their families even with a busy work schedule. However, just because Singapore has family friendly policies in place does not mean that Singapore workers will appreciate it. Because of Singapore’s highly competitive standards at the workplace, many workers will choose to work overtime or on weekends, and not take all of their annual leave so as to appear more hardworking to the company. This makes all the family friendly policies in Singapore useless as workers in Singapore do not bother even try to maintain a healthy work-life balance. However, the people who do so are a minority in Singapore, and many actually do try to spend time with their families. Therefore, I think that Singapore is effectively a family friendly society.
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Hey, you mentioned that people chose to work overtime due to the invisible pressure from the society to work more for better returns. I would like to highlight that a policy will only work when people are willing to comply to it. To say that Singapre is a family friendly society, not only the government's effort is crucial, community participation is also an important cornerstone for a certain policy to work. Hence, i feel that Singapore cannot be said as a family friendly society unless Singaporeans are willing to commit to the various ways that government do to have a better work and family lives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, just because Singapore has family friendly policies in place does not mean that Singapore workers will appreciate it. Because of Singapore’s highly competitive standards at the workplace, many workers will choose to work overtime or on weekends, and not take all of their annual leave so as to appear more hardworking to the company.
ReplyDeleteSnowmann's comment provides an alternative elaboration to your limitation =)