SG Complains

Five-Days Workweek = Poor Work-Life Balance? (Laugh)

According to AsiaOne News:

IS IT time to take Singaporeans out of the comfort zone?

In a controversial speech in Parliament last Wednesday, Nominated MP Loo Choon Yong said the move by the public and private sectors in 2004 to have a five-day work week could have eroded the Singaporean work ethic.

The purpose of the move was to promote better work-life balance and give the fertility rate a boost.

But the number of live births nudged up only slightly from 37,485 in 2003 to 39,490 in 2007 Indeed, ‘We should accept that as a people, our procreation talent is not our forte – nothing to crow about,’ said Dr Loo.

‘I urge the Government to take steps to determine whether our productivity and competitiveness have been affected by the five-day week and to review the policy if necessary.’

Dr Loo’s comments come at a time when businesses in Singapore are considering a shorter work week as a wayof reducing wage costs.

Read the full article at AsiaOne News:

- I simply want to laugh at how the MP talks about our lives as if they are the real life players of the computer game “THE SIMS” that they can control how much time we work or play or procreate.

Everyone is different and everyone works differently everywhere, there won’t be the “ONLY WAY” to be productive or to be successful in procreation.

The best is to allow the bosses of Singapore decide what is best for their employees because if an employee is unhappy, there are NO guarantees that the worker can jeopardize the company.

The bosses here in SINGAPORE should not follow WHATEVER the Government says especially the private sector, you are almost FREE to do what you want to your OWN company other than breaking the law.

In the end of the day, is the sustainability of the company is at stake…not the word of anyone in the parliament who happened to open their mouth to voice their next big idea.

The whole incident is another “divide and conquer” technique similar to the “return your tray after food” discussion where there won’t be a common ground in the debate.

There will always be disagreement and different views on different agenda.

My company employ mes to work only 4 and 1/2 days instead (Friday 1/2 day) and in fact the idea is to be VERY PRODUCTIVE to complete whatever necessary during the 4 and 1/2 day work week and ENJOY 2 1/2 day FREE TIME.

The Friday 1/2 day off can be use for running any errant that is inconvenient to do during the weekend.

The shorter work weeks forces me to multitask more and make every hour counts, my clients are happy for the efficient working methods and I am happy for more free time to enjoy LIFE itself.

However, not every industry can utilize this method hence like I mentioned in the beginning…THERE ARE NO FIXED RULE.

MP should think more about sustainability of the country as a whole instead of picking on individual work week duration…this only disunite the whole country and won’t work together when a REAL crisis strikes.

But, all the above said….there are no way we can change the government now since we VOTED them in…in the first place hence resulting in these kinds of ideas….being generated.

However, it is great that they are actually thinking of new ideas everyday to improve Singapore as a whole but hopefully they can really reverse those really bad ones and keep it under the wraps…and hidden from public media.