Is there Life outside Work ?

More hours at work and less hours for relaxation, sports, hobbies, entertainment, socializing and family ! This seems to be the regular complaint of most people in the workforce today. How do employers view these complaints of employees? Are these complaints unfounded? Seriously, many are claiming that the heightened pace of work is affecting health, family and personal relationships and even their children's health.

Look around you next time you walk into one of our Foodcourts. You would see five-year olds being fed food which are dished out as fast budget meals for busy office workers ! Yes, many children’s meals are skimpy and many eat-out at foodcourts because they have full-time working mums and no one to cook meals at home.

To be fair to vendors in our Foodcourts and working parents here, this problem is not confined to Singapore but seems to be common among all the bigger and developed world’s cities. A survey conducted among families in the United States have shown :

• Children with fulltime working mums are more likely to skip breakfast and end up eating a lot more snacks to fill their stomachs as a result and face greater risk of being overweight.

• The children with working mums also spend more time watching TV, videos and playing computer games.

• All workers are saying that they now have less time than ever for our personal and family responsibilities and that stress levels are high.

Much of the stress is created they say by Work-family conflict. Researchers attribute a chief reason for all this may be the fact that there are more employers in public companies nowadays and these companies are constantly under pressure by stakeholders and shareholders to watch their bottomline and in a weak business year, may cut back on staff and personal welfare as a result.

The same considerations have led many companies during bad times to Corporate downsizing of staff numbers in an effort to boost bottomline and with the resulting effect that one staff may actually have to cover as much work as 3 or 4.

When the staff were asked how they would cope with these new challenges, according to a research conducted in the United States, the main response of the workers were :

78% say they have no choice but " work harder and longer hours"

60% say they cut down on outside activities including socializing after work;

55% say they have sacrificed sleep or got less sleep.

25% of women surveyed and 15% of the men said they can have fewer children because of heavy work demands

42% of professional women and 30% of men said they had not yet started a family because of heavy work demands.
Singapore situation

In Singapore, of late the Government has responded by introducing and urging more pro-family policies and incentives to employers to support a family-friendly culture in the workplace. The Singapore Government reduced the previous six-day work and school week to a 5-day school week and a 5-day work week throughout the civil service.

However it has been nearly a year since the change has been effected and yet we hear of people still going back to their offices to work on Saturdays as they simply couldn’t clear their work within the five-day week. So it looks like for some people, there is no slow-down or lessening of the workload, and if that is the case, then it defeats the purpose of the new legislation allowing for the five-day week. In fact, most workers argue that the five-day week without any lessening of the workload, actually increases the pressure and stress because it just means the worker is expected to work even faster in order to deliver the work by the fifth day instead of on the sixth day !
So where does this leave us with ?

Ultimately I believe this situation is a clarion call to each and every worker to enter into his/her own soul-search. Ultimately only you yourself and no one else can regulate your work-life balance. Yes it’s in the hands of the workers themselves ultimately. The change in work culture if it is to change at all must ultimately depend on the heart condition of each and every worker and their combined determination to want to give more time to their social life, family life, their children, their home or their hobby or sports. Then certainly everyone will be happy with a good honest day’s work and look eagerly to lock up their offices and knock off from work especially on Friday evenings !

But alas, in Singapore, this is hardly the case! Instead we know there are workers willingly either taking work home to do over the weekend or coming back to the office on Saturdays and even Sundays !

And there are workers so intent on working that they habitually skip lunch, dinner and even skip their family dinners and other social functions with no better reason than this : “Sorry I’ve to work late!”

Yes it’s so easy to condemn such workaholics in general and workaholic parents in particular and wag a finger at them for not caring for their children or their spouse ! I know I’ve been condemning the Singapore workaholic culture for as long as I can remember – but then it was before I had this conversation at my hairdressers’.

Well, I used to wag a finger at workaholic parents who work six/seven days a week and clock up OT (overtime). Then one day, I was at my hairdressers’ and I was attended to by a new shampoo girl who appeared to love talking very much – though I must say that’s not bad at all for her trade – in fact, it’s a valuable professional asset for hairdressers to have the gift of the gab as it helps build client relationships. And so we chatted. I asked her the usual questions :
How long have you been in this line of work? Where did you work before you came here? Are you Singaporean? Are you married or single?

When’s your off-day ?

I found out she’s a young mother with two little daughters. She showed me her daughters’ photos which she carried in her wallet.
We went on chatting until I got to know, to my horror, that she works a full 7-day week and she doesn’t take her “off-day” because on her off-day she chose to work and cover her colleagues’ jobs when they take off. I was appalled to hear this and immediately I dished her a strong lecture on the importance of the mother’s role in early childhood development and I told her off for neglecting her children, her husband ! She was quiet and allowed me to finish before speaking and sharing her story.

Then she shared with me her trying condition:

She has to support her family. Her husband has no special skill and only a basic education, so he does some contract work for an uncle who is a sub-contractor. However the economy has affected the contracting business and payment from clients are often delayed, so the poor uncle has run into some serious cashflow problems now. Therefore her husband doesn’t get his full pay till many months later. Meantime, they have bills to pay – their HDB rent, utility and phone bills and her children’s daycare centre. That’s why she must work every day and try to earn enough from her meager earnings!

“ I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all those things to you just now, “ I blurted out my apology, feeling very ashamed and embarrassed that I had been too quick to condemn what I thought was just another workaholic ! I had no idea what she is going through.

Back home as I reflected on this conversation, another thought surfaced and cut a new perspective in my consciousness regarding the changing roles of husband and wife in our society. The traditional view that the man in the home should be the sole breadwinner supporting the livelihood of his family has seriously been knocked apart in this family. So similarly in many families no doubt which you and I do know and hear of . Therefore it is imperative that men and women today are prepared to accept new gender and parenting norms if they hope to come out with flexible workable solutions for their family life. Do you agree ?

We invite you to email to us Your Views and Suggestions on :

“ Transformation in Gender roles for our Work Life and Home Life”
We will be posting this discussion in January 2006.

Email your comments to nellie@bones-n-flesh.com