'Singaporeans need to level up': Companies say flexi-work could push them to hire overseas
Employers also say it is difficult to implement flexi-work across different roles in a company, such as for staff in customer-facing jobs and those in backend functions.
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Davina Tham
18 Apr 2024 02:46PM(Updated: 18 Apr 2024 03:14PM)Bookmark
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SINGAPORE: As flexi-work becomes the norm in Singapore, employers said they may rethink hiring local staff and look overseas for recruitment.
Under tripartite guidelines announced on Tuesday (Apr 16), companies in Singapore must fairly consider employees’ requests for flexible work arrangements from December.
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Ms Tan Wan Ting, who founded digital marketing agency Weave Asia in 2017, currently hires 11 full-time employees in Singapore and 13 in Malaysia.
Although the agency’s work can be done remotely, she was “willing to bear a lot of operating costs” for an office and full-time employees in Singapore to ensure a fast response time for clients.
Weave Asia currently has “flexi-place” arrangements for employees to work from different locations.
But Ms Tan was worried that the requirement to consider requests for other arrangements, including “flexi-time” measures like staggered working hours, could mean “messy” hours for her Singapore team.
This in turn could affect how contactable her employees are and their response speed, she said.
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If flexible work hours become the norm, Ms Tan said she may have to hire more workers from Malaysia where manpower costs could be four or five times lower than Singapore, and farther abroad.
The only reason not to do that would be if Singapore-based candidates have skills that candidates across the Causeway cannot match, and she was concerned that is increasingly not the case.
“Singaporeans, we really need to level up,” said Ms Tan. “I’m just a small company. Bigger companies will be thinking the same thing.
“Why do I need to hire full-time staff now if there are flexi-work hours? Might as well I gather a pool of talent, I pay them by the hour,” she said.
Mr Felix Sim, the founder of blockchain venture builder Salad Ventures, put this another way: “The ‘local’ premium will soon become irrelevant for most businesses.”
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His company hires eight full-time employees in Singapore and 10 full-time remote employees. A hybrid work policy with two days a week in the office has been in place since last November.
If flexible work arrangements become the norm, employers can grow their teams remotely, reducing their dependence on locally based employees, said Mr Sim.
“It will start to be more challenging for employees to look for a job … because employers will now truly compare their abilities and pay package against possibilities of hiring remotely overseas.”
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MAKING IT FAIR FOR ALL
Employers who spoke to CNA after the guidelines were announced acknowledged the benefits of flexi-work, including employee well-being and loyalty. Many already implement them in some form, usually informally.But aside from the possible impact on local hiring, questions remain about how such arrangements will be implemented across different roles in a company in a way that employees feel is fair.
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Firms that already have flexible work arrangements said ensuring fairness among employees is one issue.
HSBC Singapore’s head of HR Mukul Anand said businesses may face difficulties ensuring that arrangements are “consistent and fair” across all levels, roles and departments.
Performance evaluation models will need to be relooked to ensure they are outcome-driven, he added. It may also be challenging to manage a “dispersed workforce” where employees are working remotely or at different times.
This may affect employee productivity and will require effective communication, coordination, and supervision by business leaders, he said.
OMS, an oilfield services and manufacturing company, is drafting an official flexi-work policy for its 110 full-time and part-time employees.
CEO How Meng Hock also flagged equitable treatment of employees as a challenge.
“Those working on the production floor may not have the same level of flexibility as office staff, which can lead to feelings of disparity and unfairness,” he said.
“While we strive to provide flexibility, it’s essential for employees to understand and accept that not every situation can be treated uniformly.”
Confidentiality was another challenge. “While we aim to address individual needs sensitively, sharing specific details about one employee’s flexibility arrangements with others may lead to unintended consequences and feelings of inequity.”
Small businesses also voiced concerns about flexi-work for lean teams in frontline functions.
Old Hen Coffee Bar has 11 frontline employees serving customers and preparing food and drinks across two outlets. Mr Terry Lim and his co-founders handle backend functions.
Currently, frontline staff ask for days off or to come in later on certain days through a “very casual” process of informing the person in charge of scheduling.
There are limits to this. “Certain requests are harder for us to meet, like doing only weekday shifts, although we did have a staff who was on a four-day weekday-only work arrangement,” said Mr Lim.
It would be “really tough” to implement formal flexible work arrangements for frontline staff, he said, adding that he was open to suggestions on how to do so practically.
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WHAT BUSINESSES CAN DO
Another entrepreneur who has adopted progressive flexible work practices emphasised the employer’s role in fostering a good working culture among employees.“Employees who respect, collaborate with, and trust one another are much more receptive to each other’s personal needs than those who feel competition or inequality in the workplace,” said Mr Winthrop Wong, co-founder of online pharmacy Glovida-Rx.
His company practises remote work and flexi-hours, and grants up to three days of medical leave without requiring a medical certificate.
Flexible work arrangements require great communication on the employer’s part, said Mr Wong.
“The management must be clear on the parameters of the flexi-work with the employee, but they must also be open with their team about why the arrangements are in place for a particular employee,” while still ensuring his or her privacy.
“Communicating clearly, and being open to questions, will help prevent any feelings of resentment or your team feeling like there is some bias in an organisation. Ultimately, employees must know why you are being so flexible,” he said.
Ms May Leng Kwok of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, an association for HR professionals, said evaluating the impact of flexible work arrangements must be considered from the start of implementation.
Measurements could include job satisfaction, staff well-being and impact on absence rates as well as key business objectives such as performance and staff retention.
“Employers should encourage managers to treat a flexible working request as a dialogue rather than a yes or no decision. Consider using trial periods to test out flexible working arrangements and measure and evaluate outcomes,” said Ms May, the institute's head of global marketing development.
She added that signposting the potential benefits of flexible work – such as talent recruitment and retention, greater agility and financial benefits to the company – will be key for manager buy-in.
Overall, the guidelines – together with training, advisory services and educational materials – strike a good balance between maintaining trust and harmony between employers and employees, while ensuring employees’ requests will be fairly considered, she said.
The tripartite workgroup that developed the guidelines has said it will provide training and resources, including in skills like change management, performance appraisal and job redesign, which are deemed critical to flexible work practices.
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GAPS IN PROTECTING WORKERS
For a long-time advocate of flexi-work, the new guidelines are helpful for defining and standardising what flexible work arrangements are, but gaps remain.Ms Sher-li Torrey is the founder of Mums@Work, a career portal with 60,000 members in Singapore that supports working mothers by listing jobs that offer flexible arrangements.
Since the portal started in 2010, employers now understand better what flexi-work is but this is still lacking among some smaller firms, according to Ms Torrey.
She said of the new guidelines: “It is a step in the right direction. Is it going to move the needle? Not now, and definitely not in the near future.”
But requiring employers to fairly consider requests for flexi-work empowers workers to ask for such arrangements and can help them stay in their jobs, she said.
However, they do not protect jobseekers looking for flexibility, including mothers returning to work, she said. Instead, asking about flexibility during a job interview could backfire on the candidate.
“So what this helps is talent retention, not talent attraction,” she said.
Employees also fear being penalised for getting flexible work arrangements, and there does not seem to be a clear way to ensure they are still considered for promotions, said Ms Torrey.
In her experience, employers often have a strong case for holding back career progression for employees on flexible work arrangements.
“They do get sidelined for promotions. And it’s a hard one to argue because sometimes there are elements like face time,” she said, where flexible workers may get less face time with supervisors.
An employee’s job scope can also change over time because of the nature of what they are able to do under flexible work arrangements, which can also affect prospects for progression, she said.
Even if flexi-work is normalised, it will likely still be a minority who have such arrangements, added Ms Torrey.
“The question then becomes: Can a minority speak up and say I want equal promotional rights even though I have the added advantage of the flexibility?”
Employees’ concerns that they could be penalised are “fair”, said Mr Ang Yuit, president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME).
A “mature conversation” on this would start by looking at whether the requested arrangement is temporary or permanent. If it is permanent, then the employer and employee need to sit down and discuss their expectations, he said.
The guidelines encourage employers to inform employees about their expectations on work deliverables, performance evaluation, how the employee will remain contactable, and the possibility of reviewing and adjusting arrangements that have already been granted.
Mr Ang added that ASME was encouraging smaller businesses to look at the process for considering flexi-work requests holistically, as part of their improvement of human capital practices.
Asked about challenges that these businesses face implementing the guidelines, Mr Ang pointed out that many employers already practise flexible work arrangements on an informal basis.
The effect of the guidelines is to make that process formal and explicit, and for employers to improve the workflow for such requests, he said.
