Speech at the Work-Life Excellence Award 2010 Gala Dinner

Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister For Manpower, Resorts World Convention Centre, Sentosa, Singapore

His Excellency Ambassador Luis Fernando Danus
Embassy of Chile

Mr Hawazi Daipi,
Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on Work-Life Strategy

Mr Tony Chew,
Chairman, Singapore Business Federation

Mr Heng Chee How,
Deputy Secretary General, National Trades Union Congress

Council Members, Singapore National Employers Federation

Executive Council, Employer Alliance

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen

1. Good evening. It gives me great pleasure to join you tonight as we recognise employers and leaders who make work-life harmony an integral part of their organisations' business practices.
   
   Bright outlook, more competitive labour market
2. We are meeting in optimistic circumstances. Singapore's economy expanded by 18% in the first half of 2010, and is projected to grow by 13 to 15% this year¹ as we ride on the global recovery. Job creation is stronger, with total employment rising by 63,000 in the first half this year².
3. The outlook is bright, bringing in great opportunities as well as challenges. At the Work-Life Conference yesterday, my colleague, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Mr Hawazi Daipi, spoke about the tightening labour market and how employers address this challenge. Bosses are realising that focusing on financial incentives alone to attract and retain employees would not be sufficient. Numerous studies have found that work-life balance plays a key factor as well – for example, a global study amongst more than 50,000 workers found that work-life balance was ranked as the second most important workplace attribute, after compensation³.
   
   Going beyond traditional ways of working
4. Another important challenge employers need to address is our increasingly connected world. Physical and geographical boundaries are fast becoming irrelevant as a growing part of the global economy plugs into the digital world.
5. More and more workers and enterprises are also getting plugged in. Business decisions are made round the clock, and time has become a scarce commodity. To seize growth opportunities, organisations and businesses cannot confine themselves to traditional ways of working. We need to be nimble and flexible, to innovate and respond quickly to the ever changing situations. While businesses may operate 24/7, it is not sustainable for employees to do the same. According to the International Labour Organisation's Global Wage Report⁴, Singapore workers already lead the pack when it comes to the number of hours we put in at work. To enable employees and therefore the business to operate at peak efficiency over the long term, progressive companies have come to recognise that they need to adopt effective work-life initiatives, to help employees manage their work and personal commitments in this increasingly time-scarce world.
6. IBM, one of this year's Award-winners, is a good example. It has business operations all over the world, with work teams spread across continents and time zones. When these work teams meet, timings will be such that it would be bedtime for at least one group of the team members. IBM thus values highly work-life integration and workplace flexibility, with close to 60% of its employees on its Mobility Programme. All employees are empowered with the tools to work where they want, whenever they want, as IBM has confidence in them to produce results. For IBM, its work-life strategy has been a driver of its business performance. It has enabled the corporation to weather well the difficult past couple of years.
7. Another of this year's Award-winners, Singapore law firm Rajah & Tann, has gone along a similar path. The nature of its work required many of its employees to work long hours in the office, often staying back to take overseas calls from another time-zone. To address their needs, the firm has invested in blackberries and web email access to enable these employees, many of them young parents, to work from home. This enables them to manage their time between family and work more flexibly, and at the same time enhances business continuity during emergencies.
   
   Trust between employer and employee is essential
8. Work-Life strategies and flexible work arrangements would not work without trust and ownership. Managers need to nuture an open and responsible culture to complement such practices. For example, if managers need the assurance of physically seeing their staff working at their desk instead of trusting them to work from home, employees will not feel comfortable taking up work-life programmes. On their part, employees must take responsibility for their performance when they are entrusted with such flexibility.
9. Recently, I read about Netflix, a US company offering online DVD rental by mail and video streaming. It is a large company, worth over 680 million US dollars, employing over 2,000 people. What is quite special about Netflix is that it does not track vacation leave. Before 2004, Netflix had the usual X days per year leave policy. Employees then were working online some nights and weekends, but were allowed to come in later or take the occasional time off for personal matters. So one day an employee asked: why track vacation days when the company does not track hours worked? Netflix then realised that it did not need a vacation policy, just as it did not have a 9-to-5 workday policy.
10. While I would say that not many of us here could go quite as far as Netflix, the company's story demonstrates the importance of trust between employers and employees in the workplace for successful implementation of work-life strategies. Having worked together closely and emerged stronger from the downturn, we should continue to strengthen the trust between management and employees, not only to implement work-life strategies, but also to be more competitive and productive in this increasingly globalised world so as to achieve better personal and corporate performance.
    
    Work-life integration is the way forward
11. All the Award-winners gathered here tonight understand this concept, and have adopted many practices to make their organisations a compelling place for employees to work in. They have also tailored the practices to suit an increasingly diverse workforce. Let me share a couple of other examples.
    
    • To engage long serving employees who have not gone through its new orientation programme, Singapore General Hospital specially designed a BRIDGES programme to reacquaint long-tenured employees with the hospital’s various work-life initiatives. SGH believes that its work-life strategy helps to ensure a sustainable, stable workforce, who can then add that special touch to patients’ lives to help speed up recovery, thereby increasing throughput of beds and reducing waiting time. The hospital’s work-life strategy has contributed to its high-trust culture and talent retention, as well as improvements in productivity such as shorter patient waiting time and more efficient resource utilisation.
    
    • Focus on the Family Singapore, a local charity, is a first-time winner of the Work-Life Excellence Award this year. Being a voluntary welfare organisation of less than 30 employees, the organisation cannot compete purely on the basis of financial incentives. Work-Life initiatives have become a key employee retention tool. Although Focus is small, it implements flexible work arrangements rigorously but employees are accountable for deliverables and service standards. Many SMEs can take a leaf from its practices and implement a culture conducive for work-life integration.
12. This year, we have 13 small and medium enterprises among the award-winners, compared to 8 in 2008. The increase in the number is an encouraging sign that more SMEs are adopting and benefiting from work-life initiatives. This is a step in the right direction.
    
    Tripartite efforts paying off
13. The government is fully committed to promoting work-life harmony. The WoW! Fund, which we set up in 2004 to facilitate companies to kick-start work-life strategies, has since benefited more than 700 companies employing over 60,000 employees⁵. The Tripartite Committee on Work-Life Strategy, and the Employer Alliance, have made significant contributions to raise awareness about the benefits of work-life strategies. I would like to thank them for giving their time generously as work-life advocates. Their efforts have succeeded in generating greater buy-in among Singapore businesses, unions and workers, and contributed to the increased adoption of work-life strategies and flexible work arrangements in Singapore.
    
    Award-winners have the edge
14. On this special occasion, we honour the employers and individuals who have demonstrated the positive impact of well-designed work-life strategies on organisational performance. I would like to offer my congratulations to the 70 Work-Life Excellence and Work-Life Achiever Award winners, and the two Work-Life Leadership Award winners. The organisers have profiled your good practices and your successes in a commemorative book. I hope the book will inspire other employers to further your example and help employees manage their work-life needs, so that they can be more productive and innovative at work.
15. On this note, I would like to once again congratulate all the winners tonight and wish everybody a very pleasant evening. Thank you.