As working parents prepare to receive more childcare leave, employers and managers will need to ensure that employees without children do not end up shouldering a disproportionate share of the workload, human resources experts said.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in his National Day Rally speech on Aug 23 that working parents with children aged 12 and below will get between eight and 12 days of childcare leave a year, depending on the number of children they have.
Under the new scheme, a working couple who has three or more eligible children will have up to 24 days between them.
Employers should plan for absences, manage workloads carefully and foster a broader culture of flexibility to prevent resentment between parents and employees without children, recruiters said.
Sam Belcher, group chief executive of recruiting firm The Edge Partnership, said the new measures “have raised queries around fairness”.
“The intention of the government is clear and well-purposed,” he said, but a “downside scenario is that employees without children may have to work longer hours and pick up the slack”.
Belcher said the key is how workplaces manage flexibility, as there are many circumstances beyond raising children where employees may require it, such as bereavement, personal health issues or caring for an ageing family member.
He added that companies offering flexibility are less likely to leave non-parent employees feeling perpetually disadvantaged.
David Leong, managing director of recruitment firm People Worldwide Consulting, said family-friendly policies should not inadvertently result in workplaces becoming “single-unfriendly”.
“The danger is not parental leave itself. The danger is when the organisation treats the single employee as the automatic spare capacity whenever somebody with children is away,” he said.
“If every family-friendly benefit is operationally funded by the goodwill and extra hours of another employee, then the company has not actually solved the problem... It has merely transferred the cost from the organisation to the colleague.”
Leong said preventing this is fundamentally a manpower planning responsibility.
“Employees usually do not resent helping a colleague occasionally. Resentment starts when helping becomes an unwritten job description,” he noted.
Allie Teh, senior manager for sales and marketing at Robert Walters Singapore, said the issue need not be viewed as one of singles versus parents, or that additional childcare leave would necessarily result in a heavier workload for single employees.
Regardless of their family circumstances, employees remain responsible for managing their work and ensuring proper handovers when they are away, she said.
Where absences are anticipated, teams should plan ahead and redistribute work where necessary, while ensuring that no individual or group consistently bears the additional workload, she added.
Maddy Goh, managing partner at Inicio Group, said employers should plan coverage early, cross-train employees and review priorities when colleagues are on leave to prevent additional responsibilities from repeatedly falling on the same team members.
“If the same employees are regularly covering those gaps, it is worth looking at the workload rather than allowing this to become the team’s normal way of operating,” she said.
Goh noted that employees without children may have other priorities, such as caring for ageing parents or supporting other family members.
“An employee’s availability should not be assumed based on their family circumstances. Their willingness to help is valuable but occasional support can become a problem when it turns into a recurring expectation,” she said.
Goh said a more inclusive workplace should support employees at different life stages, while ensuring support for working parents does not come at the expense of other employees.
Tan Weixi, managing partner at Workplace Asia, said employers and managers should avoid creating a situation where “parents feel guilty for taking leave and singles feel punished for not having children”.
When an employee is away, managers should consider what work genuinely needs to be completed and what can wait, rather than simply deciding who should take on the additional workload.
“Ultimately, this policy will test whether organisations are genuinely serious about flexibility – not just for parents, but for everyone with a life outside work,” said Tan. — The Straits Times/ANN
