Why flexible work arrangements are not so straightforward for some businesses: Opinion

Some media coverage of the recently announced Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement (FWA) Requests, especially in the foreign press, may have given the impression that Singapore is moving to a four-day work week, and that in the process we are somehow going to be working less or lowering our productivity.

Of course, this is not the case. The guidelines are not mandatory or prescriptive. What the guidelines do is open a line of communication between individuals and employers to start a conversation about FWAs.

In a rapidly evolving work landscape, many businesses recognise that FWAs are a hygiene factor for attracting and retaining talent rather than a mere nice-to-have. A recent survey by Indeed, the worldwide employment website, of over 1,200 Singapore-based employees showed flexibility was the top workplace priority (20 per cent). This overshadowed salary increases (16 per cent), promotion and career progression (14 per cent) and learning and development (13 per cent).

At the national level, there is also a strong case for FWAs as a policy tool for dealing with manpower scarcity by incentivising underutilised pockets of manpower such as seniors and caregivers to re-enter the workforce.

But while businesses are, by and large, supportive of the guidelines, what troubles many we have spoken to is the focus on the right of employees to request FWAs while disregarding the fact that the guidelines give employers the prerogative to turn down such requests on reasonable business grounds.

The reality is that the guidelines do not prescribe or mandate any form of FWA to employers, recognising that the FWA must make sense for both the individual and business in order to be sustainable.

But, rightly or wrongly, the impression that has been created in the public domain is that businesses that do not accede to FWA requests are not good, progressive employers when the reality is that such arrangements are not so straightforward to implement, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 

The challenges of implementing FWAs

Why might FWAs be challenging to implement? First, there are issues related to size. SMEs may struggle to put in place the necessary systems and policies to facilitate FWAs effectively.

For some, acquiring and maintaining the tools needed to support remote work, such as virtual communication and collaboration tools, data protection safeguards, and cyber-security support, may be costly. Some may not have a dedicated human resource team, and some are just too lean to be able to offer their employees flexi-load options such as part-time work and job sharing.

In some cases, flexi-time policies like staggered working hours may not be practical, for example, for businesses that need a critical mass to provide workplace transportation for employees working at industrial sites.

Second, there may be systemwide practices that constrain the amount of flexibility businesses can provide workers.

In the essential services sector, such as for cleaning and landscaping, contracting practices may make it difficult for businesses to implement flexible work arrangements due to contractual obligations under headcount-based contracting. Such contracts require workers to be present on-site for a fixed number of hours, regardless of whether their tasks are completed.

In contrast, outcome-based contracts (OBCs) are based on the delivery of mutually agreed outcomes and do away with rigid prescriptions on how to achieve this. While there has been a gradual shift towards OBCs, with the Government taking the lead, headcount-based contracting remains common among service buyers such as condominium management committees and smaller commercial and office units.

Enabling a more flexible deployment of such outsourced contract workers requires a change of mindset and expectations among such buyers.

In the food and beverage and retail industry, malls require tenants to open for a fixed number of hours. Tenants are not able to compress opening hours to a standard nine-hour workday, which would enable them to employ F&B/retail staff in a single shift.

For such front-line workers, the spirit of flexible work is not necessarily about enabling them to work part-time or work from home, but about addressing non-standard working hours and a lack of control over shifts. Both workers and businesses stand to gain from a single shift model, which may potentially optimise manpower requirements by up to 30 per cent.

By reducing the need for shift work, SMEs in the retail and F&B sectors can improve scheduling efficiency and reduce labour costs. More importantly, employees can better plan their work and personal lives, making retail and F&B jobs more attractive to Singaporeans.

Moving beyond guidelines to build FWA capabilities

Addressing these challenges will require solutions that go deeper than just guidelines and best practices. How can we help small businesses overcome the challenges of having inadequate systems and policies simply by virtue of being lean?

Unfortunately, having “no HR team” is unlikely to be a reasonable business ground under the tripartite guidelines to reject an FWA request. Today, SMEs can already tap the Productivity Solutions Grant to offset the costs of adopting FWAs. This includes purchasing HR tech solutions to implement flexible scheduling or engaging consultancy services to advise on job redesign that would enable FWAs.

Even then, unfortunately, for small businesses, purchasing such solutions just for their own needs may not make sense, notwithstanding the grants involved. Shared services and solutions such as access to affordable HR support and collaborative tools to support remote work may be necessary.

Here, trade associations and chambers (TACs) can play a role in coordinating and supporting such services, working in concert with landlords of commercial buildings and industrial parks to make such services available for the SMEs in their precinct.

Beyond shared solutions, what might be most helpful for SMEs, especially those in the essential services and front-line sectors, would be the pooling of skilled workers to support operational needs, as companies adjust to meet the expectations and demand for flexible work.

Some online platforms such as Freeboh exist today to facilitate ad-hoc job matching, but businesses tell us they need a comprehensive solution to manage this workforce pool, that also addresses the training, insurance, and other forms of support to facilitate effective deployment at short notice; a pressing need in regulated fields such as the security industry. Is there scope for piloting such a holistic solution in a particular sector, bringing together TACs with regulators, labour unions, and private sector partners?

Having the systems in place to support FWAs may be one mark of a progressive workplace, but there are others too. Is there scope to better recognise businesses that support various national employee-centric initiatives including the Tripartite Standards and SkillsFuture programmes? How can we support such companies in evaluating and reporting their “social” contributions alongside their “environmental” efforts?

Could such recognition be linked to practical economic incentives, such as access to government procurement in the way the Progressive Wage Mark is, or even time-bound access to foreign workers? These levers would serve as a powerful incentive for SMEs.

Finally, as a country with increasingly First World costs coupled with enduring labour constraints, we must confront the more systemic issue of how we can better deploy our outsourced contract workers and front-line workers in a way that is both optimised and flexible. That means confronting head on the need to sacrifice some of the conveniences we have grown accustomed to as consumers, like security guards at our condominiums physically present at all hours of the day, or malls staying open till the night.

The tripartite guidelines on FWAs were developed through extensive consultation and have attempted to balance the interests of both workers and employers. They are a step in the right direction. FWAs will be a feature of the future of work and businesses must confront this. The cost to businesses of losing talent can be high, so there are benefits to investing some time and effort to consider how FWAs can be implemented. 

But we must also be clear-eyed about the challenges in implementation and invest the resources to support businesses, especially SMEs, on this journey. And we must not be too hasty to brand the SMEs that struggle to implement FWAs as being less progressive.

• Musa Fazal is chief policy officer, advocacy and policy division, in the Singapore Business Federation.

Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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