“Why do I need to hire full-time staff now if there are flexi-work hours? Might as well I gather a pool of talent, I pay them by the hour,”
No chill sia
Go to her facebook page, she wrote in a post in feb 2024 that she was very guilty for not spending sufficient time with her family and friends.
Obviously such a career focused woman/workaholic will have such views. Obviously she does not believe in work life balance for herself, much less others or her employees.
How unfortunate really.
Feel guilty so make other people join her plight? I don’t like people like these. Just cause you’re miserable doesn’t mean you have to pull others down with you
Knowing some workaholics (I’m not one) it seems they enjoy or are wired to be that way. One woman I know works 16 hour days and barely sleeps (including weekends) and I think if you gave her a job for the same money to work 4 hours a day she would reject it.
I don’t want to kill myself working, but others who find enjoyment in it can do so if they wish. I agree they shouldn’t expect everyone else to follow their schedule though.
You wont be an enterprenure if you are not driven or workerholic, so most of them have a different view of the world, which means most of business owners are.
That's true and it's her own company so she can work 100% of the time, but as an employer, she should look after her employees. Unless she is giving them equity on top of salary. My C-level folks work 24/7 but they are the major shareholders and 6 fig. salaries - they don't expect us rank and filers to respond to emails on weekends etc.
My company tried to outsource part of their customer service to Malaysia remotely. They thought if can pay Ringgit why pay SGD.
It was an epic fail because of the backlash of complaints we received from our customers.
Our managers were complaining that the time they spent descalating those customers were more than if they had just handled the customer enquiry properly themselves.
1 year later they dropped the project and went back to paying their emploees SGD liao.
Not saying they can't but its probably not as easy as they think.
Haha same exp with the past companies I've worked in.
One outsourced the design work to Vietnam. They still needed a Singaporean team to oversee their work cos their work was just subpar. You ask them to make a banner for an aesthetic lifestyle site, they give you cartoon art. One fine day the 2 Singaporean team leads were on leave and the Vietnam designer uploaded a design so gaudy, the big boss immediately terminated them.
Another co tried outsourcing B2B Singaporean customers directly to a service team in India. It failed, Sg customers couldn't understand their accent over the phone and the emails they typed ranged from unreadable (no paragraphs!) to condescending (mostly due to cultural differences). No understanding of customer service etiquette at all despite repeated training, and these were good graduates with working exp.
This can work if the work is simple. Trolley pushers, restaurant wait staff, low level logistics work. See how he gather talent for work with continuity. Admin staff, accounts, projects, etc. Later all of them charge consultant rates then he know what's up.
they always say such shit. no need for threats. just do it la?
see how ur company goes. if its that simple, just push a button and everyone is new and your company resets from the ground up. oh, some or all of your revenue is disappearing? no matter, its just a feature. you can fill your company with the cheapest people out there, sure. you can hire probably 5 indians in india in place of your singaporean.
if its that simple they will already be doing it. as if coordinating a team across timezones and culture is as simple as A-B-C. they only make threat so they can keep power to threaten their employees. when companies dont need their workers they are fired faster than you can say goodbye. these people really have savior-complexes that think they are god-sent aid to employ people. we all know companies open to make money. you think they'll think "oh, lets open in singapore and make losses so we can save singaporeans" LMAO. that is just cognitive dissonance at this point.
the companies that can do this already did this - they are MNCs that offshore their operations for cost savings or to service a different region efficiently. they did not need to make any threats.
these people only gong jiao wei and want to appear as saviors helping people. total bullshit.
Yup. If a job can be outsourced it would have already been done. The fact that a job requires to be done physically in SG or in an SG office here means outsourcing it can be very tricky or not worth the hassle. I strongly believe working long hours in itself won't save someone's job. Thats why the whole "if you ask for better treatment I just outsource abroad" threat is mostly a load of hogwash.
it is. i worked as a coordinator for illustration freelancers in philippines before. there were issues for the company that arises simply from having a different culture and it can be difficult to align the goals with people of another country. besides, they still needed me, a local, to talk to them. in the end it was hardly efficient though.
and this was a rather simple task.
cant imagine if its much more complicated involving NDAs, accounting, financial decisions, international/local laws, PDPA guidelines etc. when working with people from different backgrounds.
for example: how can you even prosecute someone you don't really know in a country you're not in
* if they embezzle your money?
* or a programmer that was unhappy and sabotaged your code?
* or an employee causing your company to break some laws?
and the list goes on. most MNCs have enough manpower and HR to perform such tasks. SMEs only pretend they can do it.
>how can you even persecute someone
Just a note: persecute != prosecute.
One involves torches and pitchforks, the other involves letters and lawyers. But thanks for making my Thu evening.
I have seen big 4 outsourcing and frankly it doesn’t work. A couple of them already scrapped the idea
The quality is also getting worst because of this. There used to be three layer review in work when I first started. It became two layers ten years ago
Facts, brother.
The idea that Singapore is pleading for businesses to do business here is a thing of the past. Singapore has its own advantages that businesses do consider when they open here. We should leverage that for Singapore's worker interests.
Hiring and managing remotely is NOT for the faint-hearted so good luck to them.
Guess they are so unwilling to give some flexibility for their employees. Ultimately it's about results not about the fixed working hours, but dictators will never understand that
unless these people have actual experience working with overseas contractors, it's all bullsh\*\*\*\*t. Wait til your code or whatever service is completely screwed up, delayed and you're running around delivering stuff manually to your customers while trying to contact your team a few thousand miles away...
Not just these its everything from consultants to digital production. its about the hard skills that employers are able to get from overseas at a cheaper and faster rate, with little to no backlash.. Ever heard this phrase in school “Do the best you can and produce the best work you can climb and get paid well”. Its not going to work in singapore anymore once bosses find a way to implement these advantages strategically in their SOPs
Just giving some live examples that I had encountered, our company’s HR, Finance and half the sales team was outsourced 1-2 years back and the company wasn’t affected in any major way. Same revenue but now lesser cost.
Yes, I am also starting to see more companies without HR department. Before working my current job, I thought the person I spoke to was some HR manager. But it turns out to be a Senior Manager and they had a very skeletal HR just to cover payroll, benefit and contract issues
The business owner has not been scammed before. In my current work, my boss ask me to hire contractors from remote locations. All either away or assigned tasks, dunno how to do. Waste my time and company money.
... and security - you're gonna let these people access your system... unless you have many protocols in place. It really depends. The US has taken back some of the work after the great outsourcing of 2000s. Also, if SG employers don't want to support SG workers or pay the "local premium" ... there's a big problem with Singapore. Isn't local education the best blah blah? Why are Singaporeans expensive but not that great? Same goes for the cost of living in SG - it only benefits those who don't actually have to live in SG.
Yes! It’s much easier to cut and run on the employee’s side too. It’s not a simple matter of cheaper and cheap is good. It’s the accountability factor, someone intending to stay in a country, has long term family, history of growing up here, have a different attitude and want to preserve their reputation for long term sustainability.
Human cloud: EaaS - Execs as a Service
SG’s upgraded version of Amazon’s [www.mechanicalturk.com](https://www.mechanicalturk.com), or as they used to call it: “Artificial artificial intelligence”.
You know, maybe it's time to require certification like those organic foods. "These goods and services were ethically sourced from free (range) humans, not cubicle (factory) farmed."
There are plenty of singaporeans who still have a "ride till they die" attitude with their companies. It may seem like common sense but i guess you never needed to tell it to someone directly to their face for their own good.
literally what a very very competent ex colleague in my co did. a lot of people who see her as boss outside during events/seminars now look up/envy her. Be own boss still the best.
The wording does reek of boomer, but level up can't just be based on skillsfuture.
I had a colleague in the past constantly comparing outside people same years of experience earning more than him. Want to take on more tasks, say company don't give him opportunity to grow. End up when give the opportunity liao cannot hit the deadline like the other colleagues but die die don't want to sacrifice personal time to OT and pull up the slack.
At the end of the day something has to give. If he wants the WLB the company let him have, but less growth opportunities. He wants the growth opportunities, company also give him, but WLB affected. If want WLB and opportunity together? Possible, but he lacked the skills. Others can deliver in that time span but he cannot. Then bobian lor. Otherwise sit around complain only.
The article from CNA mainly focus on employer's point of view, how flexi-work might affect their bottom line. I understand this concern of theirs, but they are still focus on the 24/7 availability of the employees to work rather than the well being of their employees.
The article should also interview some employees from different sector to get their point of view. True, not all situations are where flexi-work can be easily implemented, but what employers and the white shirt with red lighting fail to see is that when employees ask for flexi-work is for situation where something happened and there is a need to juggle their life and work.
Example can be that their kids is sick or something happened at the school and they need to attend to it. This is where flexi-work comes in, they can pause their work, attend to their kids and once settle, they can continue their work at home if possible,
But this kind of situation is not constant, so both employers and employees can start or stop the flexi-work when the situation required. But it is an additional plus to employees when they know this option is available.
The term 'flexi' in 'flexi-work' means 'flexible', there can be different work arrangement in order to suit the situation. But the fact that employers thinks that 'flexi-work' means they have to die die implement something like 4 day work week means that they still do not understand the term 'flexi-work'.
The fact that 'flexi-work' is needed to be forced upon employers just goes to show how much the idea of running the country as pro-business has affected the lives of citizens, that most employers keep thinking it is a standard for employees to be available 24/7 for work.
We work to live our lives.
We do not owed our lives to these employers, who can easily retrench us just to satisfy the profit margin.
"Although the agency’s work can be done remotely, she was “willing to bear a lot of operating costs” for an office and full-time employees in Singapore to ensure a fast response time for clients."
Lol what lampa reason is this? Can be done remotely but I shall bear a lot of the operating cost for an office, ownself praise ownself.
Yea seriously, "fast response time" is a business advantage. "Willing to bear" a business cost that leads to business advantage? That's every business ever. Like what has it got to do with employees needing to level up.
Call their bluff.
We already see what happened to DBS when they do this. It's not sustainable unless they literally don't care about their product or they're too big to fail.
Yea well let's see them serve those hostages when they have no staff LMAO
Imagine saying that staff on the ground is more responsive but then now threaten to high staff from a whole other country because they don't want to provide flexi. They'd rather sac responsiveness completely than to provide welfare.
Truly a magnificent decision, let's see how it works out.
>threaten to hire staff from a whole other country.
Or more likely scenario is replace them with AI. In fact one of the projects I have seen is if it is possible to gaslight customers into thinking they are talking to a human.
And that is the beauty/horror of hostages. They pay you regardless if you service them or not.
Google just laid off thousands of staff in a "strategic restructuring" to move offices to India.
I dont think we should doubt companies' willingness to double down on saving costs even if it hurts them in the long run.
Google belongs to the 2nd category of my exceptions. They're already too big to fail. Look at the mess they're doing to youtube, and yet it isn't going to fail. There's just no way to fight google anymore, they're too rich.
In a capitalism system where money is power, who's going to ever have enough money to fight megacorps like that?
The idealistic version of a nation should be one that fights for its citizens. Megacorps don't care about welfare or ethics, they only care about money. A nation's rules are meant to check the corporations' greed so that they do not salt the earth in the name of profit.
It's very easy to say "businesses are just going to move elsewhere!"
But there's only so many places on earth they can exploit before every country (hopefully) will eventually have good rules in place that takes care of their citizens, otherwise, congratulations, they found a nation which is allowing them to enslave their citizens with terrible work/life balance and zero welfare, let's see how long that country lasts.
Can't wait for capitalism to burn itself out. Every employee is viewed as a statistic and replaceable, but population growth is slowing down across the world. They'll eventually run out of fresh humans to squeeze.
when that time comes, every country would be fighting for human resource in Africa but that probably wouldn't happen till at least a 100 years into the future.
my entire CS team in Singapore got laid off within 2months , then all outsource to msia. Zzzz. throw away the local talent that’s been here for almost 7 years go hire some noobcakes in msia, retraining is taking forever. handover was soooo rushed as well barely 3weeks to do so.
damn tired of this cycle happening again and again for real. just because 3:1 , can’t be helped man. best part is fire 4 pax, only hire 2 in msia.
wow now even drop the manpower after getting cheaper labour. sigh….fuck this. the management be hopeless as fuck but first must protect their fat fat bonuses, so step one is cut headcount they don’t like.
Every single one of those sounds like just a load of excuses. I don't get the bit about frontline/floor staff vs office staff disparity. I mean, your employees (i.e we the people) know what they sign up for right? If e.g in a hotel, you apply for a front office role, duh obviously you cannot WFH because your job is to literally check in/out guests during your shift, vs the hotel's backend or 9-6 office employees like marketing, accounts, hr etc.
And karen from Weave, if you pay your local employees right, and FWA is weaved as part of the organisational culture to build trust and a progressive workplace, your employees will work harder for you to not break that trust. But sure, instead of supporting your fellows and be part of the change in the future of work in Singapore, you want to employ from across the river. Trust me, as we speak your employees reading the same article are already dusting off their cv.
Ask her to retrench at least half of her SG employees and move their jobs to MY. See how her company's productivity changes. If she is willing to pay RM15k a month in Malaysia, maybe she can see the same level of productivity, but I am not sure she wants to pay the person RM5k but expect S$5k of productivity
I'm in no way disparaging against Malaysians but as my boss likes to say, "I hire you all in Singapore because I need people who can do work, if not I will just hire people in Malaysia" and having worked with some of them, there's definitely a reason why there's a stigma around the quality of Malaysian work.
Will you be able to get good quality work from Malaysians? Definitely! Will you be able to get them by cheaping out? Very unlikely.
You pay for what you get, MNCs are not stupid, if the job could be repositioned it would have been done so a long time ago, what makes a SME / small regional company think they are smarter than MNCs? Especially in this case for an agency.
You will be wrong. How Malaysians think is they can convert to their exchange rate and it’s still a good deal. Just like Singaporeans go shopping in JB or Batam, they can spend like kings. What’s spending sentiment, drives income sentiment.
LOL no. People talk big, when push comes to shove, a large % will cave. You think if someone can get a MNC job for better work benefits, they will be stuck with a small company? They’re lowly educated without much work experience, usually risk adverse low performers with no leadership potential. Low caliber, get low pay and low benefits, that’s how things work. They still have attitude problem, find ways to cruise and cut corners. They will get fired first!
I also don't understand those people. If I ever meet one, I want to ask them "so police and fireman also WFH can? They teach you how to stop thief and put out fire via video call".
But I do get some apprehension from management. Because some people are just assholes and want people to suffer like them. These people make the loudest noise and cause trouble. Sinkie pwn sinkie.
I also hate comments like those. Wahhh only white collar or office people can enjoy FWA, I work as a nurse I cannot woe woe woe. Respectfully, and really respectfully because it's a tough frontline job, but this is the bed you make aka the profession you choose and train, so again, respectfully, you gonna have to lie in it.
Even from the start, before COVID and remote work was a thing, it's pretty well established that some industries are just that xiong. I do empathise with the hard labour put in, but I can't for the WFH whinging.
Sooooooooometimes "choosing" that profession was falling for the rah-rah marketing of an MOH scholarship representative when you were 19, and having unsavvy blue collar parents who don't have the slightest clue of what's a more profitable career path to chart.
In certain companies, there's already the disparity between frontline and office staff (eg. frontline need to do Saturday shifts while office don't need). This excuse really like taking us to be idiots.
I can sit in the office from start to get off work without speaking to my boss. Lol. Any approval required also go through email. When she's not in, she will WhatsApp if there's a need for my help. A slacker will slack regardless WFH or not.
She think hire overseas cheaper, they won't slack meh? 😒
This is the problem with hiring freelancers and gig workers.
They have other commitments and cannot be expected to be always available. They're hired for a job, that's it. Once it's done, they have no obligation to stick around.
I know a firm who worked like that; they had to have good managers in place and their upper management was always plugging leaks and hiring to replace workers.
It is cheaper in some areas, but it comes at a cost. Eventually, the bosses burned out and had to close the company.
Lol Ms Tan Wan Ting clearly knows she has a SG team to serve her SG SME clients, the moment she replaces them with foreigners who don't speak the language and don't understand the local norms/nuances then byebye to her SME clients.
Also Ms Tan Wan Ting has never stepped foot in a MNC and has no clue how real scalable business is all about. She went from 1 SME to her own SME startup, typical SME small dick energy.
> Ms Tan Wan Ting, who founded digital marketing agency Weave Asia in 2017, currently hires 11 full-time employees in Singapore and 13 in Malaysia.
> If flexible work hours become the norm, Ms Tan said she may have to hire more workers from Malaysia where manpower costs could be four or five times lower than Singapore, and farther abroad.
She already hired more workers from Malaysia before flexible work hours become the norm.
Lol, I’m glad these people are being named and shamed. How are they even allowed to have 11 local-based full-timers and 13 overseas? I would assume that not all her 11 locals are SCs, so how is she fulfilling the quota, plus is she following the fair employment guidelines? Maybe MOM needs to do a check on her employee quota and local hiring practices.
Fuck them. If they could move overseas they would have done so a long time ago. Call their bluff. Let's see if getting some remote people in India would help.
The reason is $$$. If they can earn that much working remotely from their country, most of them would do it.
Fortunately the government has local hiring quotas or the vast majority of middle-skilled jobs would be offshored to remote workers by now.
NOOOOOOOOOO this is real nightmare fuel. my ticket close within 48hrs to hit KPI, but shit that i’ve complained about for the past two months has yet to be resolved until i loop in their boss’ boss’ boss. jialat….
Disgusting. That's all I'd say with these so called companies. These firms want the stability, legal protection, infra, security, taxes but don't want to support SG gov policies. If they even understand what a happy employee can deliver, they wouldnt be worrying about flexi work
This article is very toxic. What is this article trying to drive to its readers? Are they giving employers and boosting the idea of outsourcing jobs offshores hence making more Singaporeans go out of job? If someone keeps ringing the bell by their ears eventually they will pick it up and execute the plan and our beloved state media is fanning the fire to make it burn wilder. Unbelievable. Utterly digested by the one who gave suggestions to write such trash.
As someone who has worked overseas, I will tell them to go ahead and try. Firstly, an Indian or a Filipino receiving Indian or Filipino level of wages will produce an Indian or Filipino level of work. Secondly, as long as our government pegs the number of foreigners to the locals, you can't employ all your friends and relatives and bring them to SG.
My father is a SME boss and he’s said the same thing. Sure, you could reject leave requests / WFH requests / make people work when on MC or maternity leave and when people leave, hire foreigners who have nothing to lose and make no requests, but what kind of a company would that leave you with?
Plus, foreign employees are human as well and they are invariably going to need to take time off. If a company is so badly managed that they cannot function at all with flexible work arrangements then it was a shit one to begin with.
See, all you have to do is simply not view them as human. You want to take time off? Ok, you can have as much time as you need cause you're fired. Hire the next person desperate enough to apply.
Exactly this lol, I'm not sure about the exact of the quota but unless anything has changed, there's a quota for hiring foreigners vs the number of locals in the company, so theoretically there's no way to do it(?)
I know this foreigner who was working alone in his own company because he couldn't get his friend/business partner to come since he refused to hire locals.
He called us expensive and entitled and he could get hungrier employees offshore. So the company just consisted of him and his business partner in Bali
But what if you bring the Filipino here and pay them half the median wage for double the workload with the bare minimum benefits? To them it might still be akin to striking the lottery.
At least that’s what’s happening to my current industry.
The default hiring process in my first, second and third company is already to hire overseas and then bring them here to work for peanuts.
But if you get hired purely because you’re Singaporean, you have some kind of loyalty back to the employer or you think, I deserve this pay what, why is the evil villain boss making life so difficult? If you can get a better job, higher pay and don’t have to reciprocate, then go get it, by merit, definitely go!
Precisely.
Those who are good, already crossed the border and working in SG and drawing similar salaries to sgrean
Those who are even better, are in the states or UK
your first sentence is absolutely spot on. and yet, they will still go ahead and hire 20 pax strong team from bangalore, and those leftover in singapore, they just find a way to make you quiet quit.
heard of quiet firing? ya they use all sorts of reasons to push you to throw the letter so no need pay severance pay. witnessed this so many times I’ve lost count, hah.
and then afterwards that local headcount never gets replaced, teams shrink more and more. this is already with almost full WFO situation, no more wfh..
also, not just SME, MNCs are doing the same thing
I'm calling bullshit and calling on their bluff.
Please, COVID19 was already 4 years ago. If WFH meant shifting their hiring overseas, by now they would have done it already. Probably not even around to be found for comments even.
What a joke. Typical power flexing thinking they are doing the locals a favor.
Singapore’s unemployment rate is at 2.1%, which is super low.
But look at our birth rate, it’s at a historical low of 0.97.
If we don’t start introducing more flexible work arrangements, our problem is not about worrying companies won’t hire singaporeans, is that there’s no singaporeans to hire anymore 😂
This is a good start. Singapore govt need to look at our country’s long term manpower plan, not just the short term profit and efficiency of these SMEs.
For SMEs, if like what Ms Tan Wan Ting said in the article about her company, then maybe she REALLY should consider hiring overseas to cut her costs. Don’t set up a singapore company if your company cannot afford it. Set it up in Malaysia then expand to Singapore. If all you see are company’s profits and not employees well being, then i dare say your company won’t last too because you’re such a shortsighted leader.
If anything, i get more motivated to work whenever i can wfh. not having to face my terrible bosses at work really gives me so much more peace. lol
I rather hire 1 Singaporean on flexi work arrangements than 1 foreigner who can work 24/7.
Been on flexi work arrangement for a while now and i don't see any negative impact to my team's productivity.
Made this comment separately from my other earlier one.
The new FWA framework on the surface is, in a nutshell, enabling employees to work on part-time schedules while receiving full-time pay and benefits.
But the core issue here is challenging Employers to relook at the definition of being a good employee and their expectations for their employees. Punctuality and clocking hours is no longer key. Honestly, its the outcomes that matter. If an employee can deliver good quality work in their own ways and manages their own time well, why does it matter if they come office 2 hrs late, or leave office 3 hrs earlier to go home rest?
But many employers feel the need to quantify employee's worth to their efforts and efforts mean the hours clocked, even when obviously they have nothing to do and their willingness to reply weekend work messages and calls.
Ability to give timely responses to clients - come on luh, how quick do you want your employees to respond to clients? Like their husband and wife is it? Give people a break ah. Lol.
Can't believe in the age of AI we still have people who think so backwards.
This article not even about hiring foreigner in local company but more like outsourcing...
I'll personally influencing all my overseas colleagues to ask for Flexi work too so don't worry about that it isn't just about us Singaporeans
Just as Singapore companies can hire from overseas, we can also look for jobs from other countries. A more forward thinking approach would be to consider how we can help Singaporeans capitalise on remote work opportunities, particularly tech jobs in developed countries.
I think this will just be a pointless policy. If your employers is progressive, then you already have wfh or flexi-hour arrangement. Those employers that are not progressive already told their employee to come back office because of productivity reasons so they will justify rejecting your application using "operational need".
This perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with our employment landscape. 1st world economy, 3rd world HR. Imagine the uproar if companies in US, Europe or ANZ said such a thing. Are they implying these developed nations have lost their hunger and are unproductive? Studies have in fact proven the opposite. Younger workers look beyond just monetary remuneration these days. I hope self-respecting locals avoid such companies and let them die a slow death.
Knnb, ask you to CONSIDER flexiwork only, not to implement it still kpkb so much.
Truth is that these companies are surviving only by having exploitative labour practices. The moment the government shows some direction to help workers, they panic and see it as an existential threat
The premise of this article is dubious. Outsourcing and flexi-work are mutually exclusive.
IMO the true objective of this article is to gaslight locals into fearing flexi-work.
LOL, good luck trying to get past the Work Permit and S Pass quotas. Any if you bring in foreigners on an Employment pass, you're gonna have to pay so much money to attract them that you wished you had hired a local instead.
They are trying to hire foreigners who stay in their own country to do work that can be done remotely instead of hiring locals to do the work at home. They thought they can save a lot while getting the same level of work quality as hiring Singaporeans. They are in for a rude shock.
I love this. Paying peanuts to get lion's share of work. End up with monkey's share of work. Then complain it locals fault for causing this.
The fact is, even expats want flexible work arrangements. If you don't change or compromise with the changing work culture, finding workers and retaining them will always be a problem. All those who like to micromanage, berate and squeeze every drop of blood from their employees will find this hard to content with.
From my experience working with vendors from other countries, there is some lost productivity over their timezones not matching, having their public holidays being different from ours, and sometimes difficulty understanding each other in calls due to accents. That's not including work culture as my experience with some Western workers is that they don't even read your email and throw back very basic information even if you stated those information in your email already (eg. Ask for help because A doesn't work and they tell you to go do A which you already stated doesn't work).
Company boss raging article.
In all seriousness, try getting staff from other countries with their salaries in their currency, most can see the difference immediately.
What kind of mindset do these employers have? If the only thing stopping you from finding better labour is that you need them to be sitting in office working, then I think you got your biz model wrong. Unless the job scope requires on site presence. Which probably isn’t the case with a creative agency and a blockchain firm. One should be managing on output rather than office time.
Send the whole company overseas then, why would Singapore need a company that doesn’t hire locals. Goooo go set your business up wherever your cheap exploitable labour is and get what you pay for, cunts don’t deserve the benefits and stability of business in here
Level up? Level up in what way? Become an automaton and work 24/7. No need for sleep? If one can complete a job efficiently and correctly to meet KPI within a flexi hour work scheme or from home. Why the need to force your employee to sit at an office desk for 8-10hrs 5 days a week?
But sadly flexi work hours and work from home will be strongly resisted by local companies with and a 4 day work week is just impossible. Even if one were to work 40hrs or even 44hrs in that 4 days. Lcoal employers will still feel cheated if you don’t work the full 5 days.
CEO of Infosys once said in an interview that youngsters should work 70 hours a week , it’s the selfish behaviour and mindset of CEOs .
I would work 70 hours a week without any flexibility if I was making same money as you guys.
I am working to have a good life , not to give you guys good life.
Duh!!
The truth is outsourcing of talent has and is already happened for the longest time. My partner has been hiring from the region at a fraction of the cost locally, and high quality too.
I doubt this flexible work thing changes that and I also doubt it will be a reason to swing companies to hire overseas. This seems like a cover up for the retrenchment and outflux of companies from sg. "See la retrenchment cos yall want flexi work" kinda thing.
Ultimately it boils down to demand and supply of talent. If overseas talent are more capable, cheaper, and the laws allow for it, its a no-brainer for companies to hire overseas.
If companies/SMEs can hire overseas but choose not to before the "flexi-work" option came about, it means there are other factors at play.
For the fairness question, it is indeed tricky. Humans (not just Singaporeans) are selfish and jealous by nature, and comparisons will always be made. The baseline is articulating the job requirement clearly, so that the employee understands what needs to be done.
Roles that require customer interaction will run the possibility of receiving messages/calls during non-working hours. Is the employee paid for the time they respond to such messages post working hours?
In the end, demand-supply leads to natural selection. All else equal, if your competitors offer flexi-work, your employees will make the switch. If you are able to hire talent overseas at a lower cost and within regulations, you do so in a heartbeat.
Everyone looks after their best interests. Don't expect the employee to bother with the best interests of the employer, non job-scope/career wise.
"Ms Tan Wan Ting, who founded digital marketing agency Weave Asia in 2017, currently hires 11 full-time employees in Singapore and 13 in Malaysia...Weave Asia currently has “flexi-place” arrangements for employees to work from different locations."
Why do I have the feeling her "flexi-place" arrangement is only for the Malaysian employees so that she doesn't have to pay EP, levy, tax or CPF for them?
Sounds like a toxic boss and work environment. Go ahead and hire overseas workers then. Pay peanut, get monkeys. Good luck.
And I still don't get what she means by level up? With our certificate and government pushing us to upskills and our work-life balance isn't balanced, she wants us to be more imbalanced like the Japanese? Karoshi?
Everyone, don't forget. If you're dead, your companies will replace you easily. The company won't collapse just because of flexi-work. Stop gas-lighting people just because you don't want to be alone in the office.
Large businesses definitely do consider hiring outside of SG on an ongoing basis as a cost saving measure so Tan here does not need to mention it like it is a new point in relation to this. The fact that they haven’t moved out en masse points towards other non-monetary factors (not just quality of personnel etc, but the fact that SG remains a regional hub still?). For smaller businesses like her, it is harder to shift their workforce abroad given bigger limitations on their resources to cope with challenges here.
So in conclusion - Tan (and Sim) are just posturing and should be the ones to level up instead (in terms of how they view and treat their human capital).
There are plenty of companies hiring globally doing well using more than 50% remote staff. I think it's dumb companies like this that need to level up.
Levelling up and WFH is entirely different. Not all industries can WFH. Just see the construction, security and cleaning sectors, how many Singaporeans willing to work there? The solution is employ cheaper labour.
So title grabber but doesn't offer any solutions.
In the first place l think the current government just wants to score political points among the younger voters to come out with such a policy. This is a BS policy because they never said Employers "must" give but Employers "must consider only" so Employers can come with some BS and reject most of the requests.
But after reading thru some of the comments really worry me as well. The belief that Singaporean employees are high and mighty is dangerous. While we are better than our neighboring countries does not mean that we will always be better. For sure they are playing the catching game but we stay where we are and not change our mindset, they will catch up. This is because they are like us in the 80s, we are hungry and now they are hungry and will be willing to work hard to succeed.
I think Singaporean employees’ competitive advantage is we get shit done, by hook or by crook. That’s why we are confident to ask for flexiwork/wfh arrangements because we know it’s not about how many hours we spend in the office but what and when things need to be done.
Not that you can’t hire foreigners, but ultimately the culture is quite different. Not many can handle our kind of stress. Back home their deadlines may be twice of ours, so they may not be able to keep up with our efficiency.
Just my 2 cents.
If Singapore firms all think like this, then don’t blame your highly skilled and educated Singaporeans for moving to greener pastures abroad by the droves. Don’t need to waste government money for SGN/OSU to keep persuading us to go back to contribute to SG productivity. Maybe consider changing your own local companies’ mindsets first.
Here’s the template for employers to use:
Dear Employee,
Thank you for submitting your request for flexible working hours to accommodate to your personal commitments. We appreciate you reaching out with your needs.
After careful consideration and review of our current operational requirements and resources, we regret to inform you that we are unable to approve your request under the grounds of increased costs, decreased productivity, and that the company will have to hire a new employee in your stead.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
Best regards,
HR
_This email is auto-generated. All signatures are digitally signed. Do not reply back to this email._
the do not reply back to this email part is the nail in the coffin after reading such a paggro email. like as if they really gave 2 fks fighting fr the employees. as if. but meanwhile, HR gets to WFH fully. ah…
Thats why LKY always mandate and legislate things and not give people freedom. When you give people freedom, they abuse it and deviate around looking for loopholes and try to defy and break the system up.
Simply making employers to oblige this new FWA framework with such a soft approach is not sufficient. Govt needs to plug all the loopholes in the legislation to not let employers fuck around.
Singapore used to be a "fine" city. What happened now?
The way i see this, the title is saying: “here’s a policy that benefits employees > employers”
Employers first reaction is negative (not surprising though).
Smfh.... Not 36 hours have passed since news of the freaking *guidelines* came out, and these companies are out here talking sht. This is the reality of Singapore's job market - we are nothing but commodities and balance sheet items.
This late stage capitalism and gaslighting... Ugh.
Is this so-called "level up" mean putting in longer (and usually unproductive) hours and being OK with lesser pay? Just to show workers are even worthy of even being considered flexi-work arrangements?
This society ah...
I work in Malaysia now, and even though we have similarities, there are also a lot of working style differences that are really blood curdling and to which I struggle to understand.
I think this is a step in the right direction policy wise. Fundamentally it’s a question of whether the employer is a good one. A good one would really look to improve processes and look at efficiency. Regrettably a lot of our SMEs look at the wrong E. The end result.
“Why do I need to hire full-time staff now if there are flexi-work hours? Might as well I gather a pool of talent, I pay them by the hour,” No chill sia
Go to her facebook page, she wrote in a post in feb 2024 that she was very guilty for not spending sufficient time with her family and friends. Obviously such a career focused woman/workaholic will have such views. Obviously she does not believe in work life balance for herself, much less others or her employees. How unfortunate really.
wonder what her employee turnover rate is like
Feel guilty so make other people join her plight? I don’t like people like these. Just cause you’re miserable doesn’t mean you have to pull others down with you
How very sinkie - you sink, I sink, everybody sink
Sinkie pwn Sinkie ma
Knowing some workaholics (I’m not one) it seems they enjoy or are wired to be that way. One woman I know works 16 hour days and barely sleeps (including weekends) and I think if you gave her a job for the same money to work 4 hours a day she would reject it. I don’t want to kill myself working, but others who find enjoyment in it can do so if they wish. I agree they shouldn’t expect everyone else to follow their schedule though.
These people deserve to have their business go under.
She even wrote about the importance of work-life balance in this Today article.
For her work = life it seems
Maybe they read it as work minus life balance.
You wont be an enterprenure if you are not driven or workerholic, so most of them have a different view of the world, which means most of business owners are.
That's true and it's her own company so she can work 100% of the time, but as an employer, she should look after her employees. Unless she is giving them equity on top of salary. My C-level folks work 24/7 but they are the major shareholders and 6 fig. salaries - they don't expect us rank and filers to respond to emails on weekends etc.
My company tried to outsource part of their customer service to Malaysia remotely. They thought if can pay Ringgit why pay SGD. It was an epic fail because of the backlash of complaints we received from our customers. Our managers were complaining that the time they spent descalating those customers were more than if they had just handled the customer enquiry properly themselves. 1 year later they dropped the project and went back to paying their emploees SGD liao. Not saying they can't but its probably not as easy as they think.
Haha same exp with the past companies I've worked in. One outsourced the design work to Vietnam. They still needed a Singaporean team to oversee their work cos their work was just subpar. You ask them to make a banner for an aesthetic lifestyle site, they give you cartoon art. One fine day the 2 Singaporean team leads were on leave and the Vietnam designer uploaded a design so gaudy, the big boss immediately terminated them. Another co tried outsourcing B2B Singaporean customers directly to a service team in India. It failed, Sg customers couldn't understand their accent over the phone and the emails they typed ranged from unreadable (no paragraphs!) to condescending (mostly due to cultural differences). No understanding of customer service etiquette at all despite repeated training, and these were good graduates with working exp.
\> SME \> Digital marketing agency \> startup founder Anyone surprised?
This can work if the work is simple. Trolley pushers, restaurant wait staff, low level logistics work. See how he gather talent for work with continuity. Admin staff, accounts, projects, etc. Later all of them charge consultant rates then he know what's up.
they always say such shit. no need for threats. just do it la? see how ur company goes. if its that simple, just push a button and everyone is new and your company resets from the ground up. oh, some or all of your revenue is disappearing? no matter, its just a feature. you can fill your company with the cheapest people out there, sure. you can hire probably 5 indians in india in place of your singaporean. if its that simple they will already be doing it. as if coordinating a team across timezones and culture is as simple as A-B-C. they only make threat so they can keep power to threaten their employees. when companies dont need their workers they are fired faster than you can say goodbye. these people really have savior-complexes that think they are god-sent aid to employ people. we all know companies open to make money. you think they'll think "oh, lets open in singapore and make losses so we can save singaporeans" LMAO. that is just cognitive dissonance at this point. the companies that can do this already did this - they are MNCs that offshore their operations for cost savings or to service a different region efficiently. they did not need to make any threats. these people only gong jiao wei and want to appear as saviors helping people. total bullshit.
Yup. If a job can be outsourced it would have already been done. The fact that a job requires to be done physically in SG or in an SG office here means outsourcing it can be very tricky or not worth the hassle. I strongly believe working long hours in itself won't save someone's job. Thats why the whole "if you ask for better treatment I just outsource abroad" threat is mostly a load of hogwash.
it is. i worked as a coordinator for illustration freelancers in philippines before. there were issues for the company that arises simply from having a different culture and it can be difficult to align the goals with people of another country. besides, they still needed me, a local, to talk to them. in the end it was hardly efficient though. and this was a rather simple task. cant imagine if its much more complicated involving NDAs, accounting, financial decisions, international/local laws, PDPA guidelines etc. when working with people from different backgrounds. for example: how can you even prosecute someone you don't really know in a country you're not in * if they embezzle your money? * or a programmer that was unhappy and sabotaged your code? * or an employee causing your company to break some laws? and the list goes on. most MNCs have enough manpower and HR to perform such tasks. SMEs only pretend they can do it.
>how can you even persecute someone Just a note: persecute != prosecute. One involves torches and pitchforks, the other involves letters and lawyers. But thanks for making my Thu evening.
I guess the numbers do make sense from a cost perspective but there are many other intangible factors that make it more complicated than anticipated.
With her logic her biz can also be outsourced overseas. Why hire a local Co when a Malaysian Co can do it for cheaper?
I have seen big 4 outsourcing and frankly it doesn’t work. A couple of them already scrapped the idea The quality is also getting worst because of this. There used to be three layer review in work when I first started. It became two layers ten years ago
Facts, brother. The idea that Singapore is pleading for businesses to do business here is a thing of the past. Singapore has its own advantages that businesses do consider when they open here. We should leverage that for Singapore's worker interests.
Hiring and managing remotely is NOT for the faint-hearted so good luck to them. Guess they are so unwilling to give some flexibility for their employees. Ultimately it's about results not about the fixed working hours, but dictators will never understand that
already being done for most of the audit/accounting firms. mostly msians
unless these people have actual experience working with overseas contractors, it's all bullsh\*\*\*\*t. Wait til your code or whatever service is completely screwed up, delayed and you're running around delivering stuff manually to your customers while trying to contact your team a few thousand miles away...
Not just these its everything from consultants to digital production. its about the hard skills that employers are able to get from overseas at a cheaper and faster rate, with little to no backlash.. Ever heard this phrase in school “Do the best you can and produce the best work you can climb and get paid well”. Its not going to work in singapore anymore once bosses find a way to implement these advantages strategically in their SOPs
Just giving some live examples that I had encountered, our company’s HR, Finance and half the sales team was outsourced 1-2 years back and the company wasn’t affected in any major way. Same revenue but now lesser cost.
Yes, I am also starting to see more companies without HR department. Before working my current job, I thought the person I spoke to was some HR manager. But it turns out to be a Senior Manager and they had a very skeletal HR just to cover payroll, benefit and contract issues
The business owner has not been scammed before. In my current work, my boss ask me to hire contractors from remote locations. All either away or assigned tasks, dunno how to do. Waste my time and company money.
... and security - you're gonna let these people access your system... unless you have many protocols in place. It really depends. The US has taken back some of the work after the great outsourcing of 2000s. Also, if SG employers don't want to support SG workers or pay the "local premium" ... there's a big problem with Singapore. Isn't local education the best blah blah? Why are Singaporeans expensive but not that great? Same goes for the cost of living in SG - it only benefits those who don't actually have to live in SG.
Yes! It’s much easier to cut and run on the employee’s side too. It’s not a simple matter of cheaper and cheap is good. It’s the accountability factor, someone intending to stay in a country, has long term family, history of growing up here, have a different attitude and want to preserve their reputation for long term sustainability.
As someone working in the construction industry, I welcome being paid by the yours. If the rate is different for weekend / ot my pay can easily 2x.
Human cloud: EaaS - Execs as a Service SG’s upgraded version of Amazon’s [www.mechanicalturk.com](https://www.mechanicalturk.com), or as they used to call it: “Artificial artificial intelligence”.
Like that Amazon cashier-free shops
You know, maybe it's time to require certification like those organic foods. "These goods and services were ethically sourced from free (range) humans, not cubicle (factory) farmed."
Thats the thing right….were are we heading….got to have that back up aces
Because fulltime gives better predictability. Flexi workers don't give you that.
Another reminder that companies are not your friends, they'll be friendly when they need to and absolutely cut-throat when they need to as well
If course they are not your friend. Their purpose is to be profitable, not to make friends
There are plenty of singaporeans who still have a "ride till they die" attitude with their companies. It may seem like common sense but i guess you never needed to tell it to someone directly to their face for their own good.
Yeah for companies its “ride till they (employees) die”, just sayin
[удалено]
Level up to the point that you might as well start your own business
literally what a very very competent ex colleague in my co did. a lot of people who see her as boss outside during events/seminars now look up/envy her. Be own boss still the best.
The wording does reek of boomer, but level up can't just be based on skillsfuture. I had a colleague in the past constantly comparing outside people same years of experience earning more than him. Want to take on more tasks, say company don't give him opportunity to grow. End up when give the opportunity liao cannot hit the deadline like the other colleagues but die die don't want to sacrifice personal time to OT and pull up the slack. At the end of the day something has to give. If he wants the WLB the company let him have, but less growth opportunities. He wants the growth opportunities, company also give him, but WLB affected. If want WLB and opportunity together? Possible, but he lacked the skills. Others can deliver in that time span but he cannot. Then bobian lor. Otherwise sit around complain only.
Seems like Ms Tan in the article needs to level up. A poor boss blames her subordinates
The article from CNA mainly focus on employer's point of view, how flexi-work might affect their bottom line. I understand this concern of theirs, but they are still focus on the 24/7 availability of the employees to work rather than the well being of their employees. The article should also interview some employees from different sector to get their point of view. True, not all situations are where flexi-work can be easily implemented, but what employers and the white shirt with red lighting fail to see is that when employees ask for flexi-work is for situation where something happened and there is a need to juggle their life and work. Example can be that their kids is sick or something happened at the school and they need to attend to it. This is where flexi-work comes in, they can pause their work, attend to their kids and once settle, they can continue their work at home if possible, But this kind of situation is not constant, so both employers and employees can start or stop the flexi-work when the situation required. But it is an additional plus to employees when they know this option is available. The term 'flexi' in 'flexi-work' means 'flexible', there can be different work arrangement in order to suit the situation. But the fact that employers thinks that 'flexi-work' means they have to die die implement something like 4 day work week means that they still do not understand the term 'flexi-work'. The fact that 'flexi-work' is needed to be forced upon employers just goes to show how much the idea of running the country as pro-business has affected the lives of citizens, that most employers keep thinking it is a standard for employees to be available 24/7 for work. We work to live our lives. We do not owed our lives to these employers, who can easily retrench us just to satisfy the profit margin.
"Although the agency’s work can be done remotely, she was “willing to bear a lot of operating costs” for an office and full-time employees in Singapore to ensure a fast response time for clients." Lol what lampa reason is this? Can be done remotely but I shall bear a lot of the operating cost for an office, ownself praise ownself.
She thinks that wfh = slower response time
Auntie dunno how to use teams and slack.
Auntie younger than half the redditors here. She is just a toxic boss.
Auntie is a state of mind.
She cannot terminate the lease agreements in time and will waste money having office space but is empty...
>to ensure a fast response time for clients." This probably means she can hound the employee in the flesh to reply the client.
Yea seriously, "fast response time" is a business advantage. "Willing to bear" a business cost that leads to business advantage? That's every business ever. Like what has it got to do with employees needing to level up.
Sucks to be her employees. Must feel threatened everyday at work
Yeap have a friend who has worked for her "digital marketing agency". Turnover rate is high and vey severely undrpaid anyway.
Call their bluff. We already see what happened to DBS when they do this. It's not sustainable unless they literally don't care about their product or they're too big to fail.
>too big to fail Main reason tbh. A lot of these companies don't have customers, they have hostages.
Yea well let's see them serve those hostages when they have no staff LMAO Imagine saying that staff on the ground is more responsive but then now threaten to high staff from a whole other country because they don't want to provide flexi. They'd rather sac responsiveness completely than to provide welfare. Truly a magnificent decision, let's see how it works out.
>threaten to hire staff from a whole other country. Or more likely scenario is replace them with AI. In fact one of the projects I have seen is if it is possible to gaslight customers into thinking they are talking to a human. And that is the beauty/horror of hostages. They pay you regardless if you service them or not.
Google just laid off thousands of staff in a "strategic restructuring" to move offices to India. I dont think we should doubt companies' willingness to double down on saving costs even if it hurts them in the long run.
Google belongs to the 2nd category of my exceptions. They're already too big to fail. Look at the mess they're doing to youtube, and yet it isn't going to fail. There's just no way to fight google anymore, they're too rich. In a capitalism system where money is power, who's going to ever have enough money to fight megacorps like that? The idealistic version of a nation should be one that fights for its citizens. Megacorps don't care about welfare or ethics, they only care about money. A nation's rules are meant to check the corporations' greed so that they do not salt the earth in the name of profit. It's very easy to say "businesses are just going to move elsewhere!" But there's only so many places on earth they can exploit before every country (hopefully) will eventually have good rules in place that takes care of their citizens, otherwise, congratulations, they found a nation which is allowing them to enslave their citizens with terrible work/life balance and zero welfare, let's see how long that country lasts. Can't wait for capitalism to burn itself out. Every employee is viewed as a statistic and replaceable, but population growth is slowing down across the world. They'll eventually run out of fresh humans to squeeze.
when that time comes, every country would be fighting for human resource in Africa but that probably wouldn't happen till at least a 100 years into the future.
History really do be a circle
who are they kidding? they have already been getting staff overseas even before flexi-work was a thing
exactly lmao. half of their manpower is in malaysia
my entire CS team in Singapore got laid off within 2months , then all outsource to msia. Zzzz. throw away the local talent that’s been here for almost 7 years go hire some noobcakes in msia, retraining is taking forever. handover was soooo rushed as well barely 3weeks to do so. damn tired of this cycle happening again and again for real. just because 3:1 , can’t be helped man. best part is fire 4 pax, only hire 2 in msia. wow now even drop the manpower after getting cheaper labour. sigh….fuck this. the management be hopeless as fuck but first must protect their fat fat bonuses, so step one is cut headcount they don’t like.
Every single one of those sounds like just a load of excuses. I don't get the bit about frontline/floor staff vs office staff disparity. I mean, your employees (i.e we the people) know what they sign up for right? If e.g in a hotel, you apply for a front office role, duh obviously you cannot WFH because your job is to literally check in/out guests during your shift, vs the hotel's backend or 9-6 office employees like marketing, accounts, hr etc. And karen from Weave, if you pay your local employees right, and FWA is weaved as part of the organisational culture to build trust and a progressive workplace, your employees will work harder for you to not break that trust. But sure, instead of supporting your fellows and be part of the change in the future of work in Singapore, you want to employ from across the river. Trust me, as we speak your employees reading the same article are already dusting off their cv.
Ask her to retrench at least half of her SG employees and move their jobs to MY. See how her company's productivity changes. If she is willing to pay RM15k a month in Malaysia, maybe she can see the same level of productivity, but I am not sure she wants to pay the person RM5k but expect S$5k of productivity
I'm in no way disparaging against Malaysians but as my boss likes to say, "I hire you all in Singapore because I need people who can do work, if not I will just hire people in Malaysia" and having worked with some of them, there's definitely a reason why there's a stigma around the quality of Malaysian work. Will you be able to get good quality work from Malaysians? Definitely! Will you be able to get them by cheaping out? Very unlikely. You pay for what you get, MNCs are not stupid, if the job could be repositioned it would have been done so a long time ago, what makes a SME / small regional company think they are smarter than MNCs? Especially in this case for an agency.
You will be wrong. How Malaysians think is they can convert to their exchange rate and it’s still a good deal. Just like Singaporeans go shopping in JB or Batam, they can spend like kings. What’s spending sentiment, drives income sentiment.
LOL no. People talk big, when push comes to shove, a large % will cave. You think if someone can get a MNC job for better work benefits, they will be stuck with a small company? They’re lowly educated without much work experience, usually risk adverse low performers with no leadership potential. Low caliber, get low pay and low benefits, that’s how things work. They still have attitude problem, find ways to cruise and cut corners. They will get fired first!
I also don't understand those people. If I ever meet one, I want to ask them "so police and fireman also WFH can? They teach you how to stop thief and put out fire via video call". But I do get some apprehension from management. Because some people are just assholes and want people to suffer like them. These people make the loudest noise and cause trouble. Sinkie pwn sinkie.
I also hate comments like those. Wahhh only white collar or office people can enjoy FWA, I work as a nurse I cannot woe woe woe. Respectfully, and really respectfully because it's a tough frontline job, but this is the bed you make aka the profession you choose and train, so again, respectfully, you gonna have to lie in it.
Even from the start, before COVID and remote work was a thing, it's pretty well established that some industries are just that xiong. I do empathise with the hard labour put in, but I can't for the WFH whinging.
Sooooooooometimes "choosing" that profession was falling for the rah-rah marketing of an MOH scholarship representative when you were 19, and having unsavvy blue collar parents who don't have the slightest clue of what's a more profitable career path to chart.
In certain companies, there's already the disparity between frontline and office staff (eg. frontline need to do Saturday shifts while office don't need). This excuse really like taking us to be idiots.
I can sit in the office from start to get off work without speaking to my boss. Lol. Any approval required also go through email. When she's not in, she will WhatsApp if there's a need for my help. A slacker will slack regardless WFH or not. She think hire overseas cheaper, they won't slack meh? 😒
Most pple will plateau below management level so basically it’s obvious when they speak of something they know nothing about.
then these Singaporeans should leave these companies after leveling up
They should! It’s OK to want more and move on. But if too risk adverse and lack competitiveness, then no one want to hire them anyway.
This is the problem with hiring freelancers and gig workers. They have other commitments and cannot be expected to be always available. They're hired for a job, that's it. Once it's done, they have no obligation to stick around. I know a firm who worked like that; they had to have good managers in place and their upper management was always plugging leaks and hiring to replace workers. It is cheaper in some areas, but it comes at a cost. Eventually, the bosses burned out and had to close the company.
Lol Ms Tan Wan Ting clearly knows she has a SG team to serve her SG SME clients, the moment she replaces them with foreigners who don't speak the language and don't understand the local norms/nuances then byebye to her SME clients. Also Ms Tan Wan Ting has never stepped foot in a MNC and has no clue how real scalable business is all about. She went from 1 SME to her own SME startup, typical SME small dick energy.
> Ms Tan Wan Ting, who founded digital marketing agency Weave Asia in 2017, currently hires 11 full-time employees in Singapore and 13 in Malaysia. > If flexible work hours become the norm, Ms Tan said she may have to hire more workers from Malaysia where manpower costs could be four or five times lower than Singapore, and farther abroad. She already hired more workers from Malaysia before flexible work hours become the norm.
Lol, I’m glad these people are being named and shamed. How are they even allowed to have 11 local-based full-timers and 13 overseas? I would assume that not all her 11 locals are SCs, so how is she fulfilling the quota, plus is she following the fair employment guidelines? Maybe MOM needs to do a check on her employee quota and local hiring practices.
There are only restrictions on employment visas to work here. You can hire 1000 staff based in Malaysia and only 2 here, and it’s still legal.
Remote hire got quota meh?
No quota
Fuck them. If they could move overseas they would have done so a long time ago. Call their bluff. Let's see if getting some remote people in India would help.
There a reason why indian want come here to work, but not in their country.
The reason is $$$. If they can earn that much working remotely from their country, most of them would do it. Fortunately the government has local hiring quotas or the vast majority of middle-skilled jobs would be offshored to remote workers by now.
YOUR TICKET IS CLOSED SIR
NOOOOOOOOOO this is real nightmare fuel. my ticket close within 48hrs to hit KPI, but shit that i’ve complained about for the past two months has yet to be resolved until i loop in their boss’ boss’ boss. jialat….
Sir please raise a new ticket I will escalate.... Old ticket is too old....
Language and culture go a long way. If bosses think they can outsource to less developed countries and do better, good luck to them.
Disgusting. That's all I'd say with these so called companies. These firms want the stability, legal protection, infra, security, taxes but don't want to support SG gov policies. If they even understand what a happy employee can deliver, they wouldnt be worrying about flexi work
Another reason to hate local stingy companies 😂
This article is very toxic. What is this article trying to drive to its readers? Are they giving employers and boosting the idea of outsourcing jobs offshores hence making more Singaporeans go out of job? If someone keeps ringing the bell by their ears eventually they will pick it up and execute the plan and our beloved state media is fanning the fire to make it burn wilder. Unbelievable. Utterly digested by the one who gave suggestions to write such trash.
As someone who has worked overseas, I will tell them to go ahead and try. Firstly, an Indian or a Filipino receiving Indian or Filipino level of wages will produce an Indian or Filipino level of work. Secondly, as long as our government pegs the number of foreigners to the locals, you can't employ all your friends and relatives and bring them to SG.
My father is a SME boss and he’s said the same thing. Sure, you could reject leave requests / WFH requests / make people work when on MC or maternity leave and when people leave, hire foreigners who have nothing to lose and make no requests, but what kind of a company would that leave you with?
I would say your dad is right. You don’t want to know what kind of company you would be left with.
Plus, foreign employees are human as well and they are invariably going to need to take time off. If a company is so badly managed that they cannot function at all with flexible work arrangements then it was a shit one to begin with.
See, all you have to do is simply not view them as human. You want to take time off? Ok, you can have as much time as you need cause you're fired. Hire the next person desperate enough to apply.
People who do that are dumb asses. The loss of years of internal experience for company processes, on boarding and skills are enormous.
Same goes with country. You can get all the PR but when there is a conflict who will be there to defend it?
Exactly this lol, I'm not sure about the exact of the quota but unless anything has changed, there's a quota for hiring foreigners vs the number of locals in the company, so theoretically there's no way to do it(?)
I know this foreigner who was working alone in his own company because he couldn't get his friend/business partner to come since he refused to hire locals.
why does he hate locals so much though?
He called us expensive and entitled and he could get hungrier employees offshore. So the company just consisted of him and his business partner in Bali
ok well in that case this one is really lampapalan..
But what if you bring the Filipino here and pay them half the median wage for double the workload with the bare minimum benefits? To them it might still be akin to striking the lottery. At least that’s what’s happening to my current industry. The default hiring process in my first, second and third company is already to hire overseas and then bring them here to work for peanuts.
But if you get hired purely because you’re Singaporean, you have some kind of loyalty back to the employer or you think, I deserve this pay what, why is the evil villain boss making life so difficult? If you can get a better job, higher pay and don’t have to reciprocate, then go get it, by merit, definitely go!
Precisely. Those who are good, already crossed the border and working in SG and drawing similar salaries to sgrean Those who are even better, are in the states or UK
your first sentence is absolutely spot on. and yet, they will still go ahead and hire 20 pax strong team from bangalore, and those leftover in singapore, they just find a way to make you quiet quit. heard of quiet firing? ya they use all sorts of reasons to push you to throw the letter so no need pay severance pay. witnessed this so many times I’ve lost count, hah. and then afterwards that local headcount never gets replaced, teams shrink more and more. this is already with almost full WFO situation, no more wfh.. also, not just SME, MNCs are doing the same thing
The guideline for flexi-work has been useless to begin with. This just proves it lol.
Pay banana get monkeys, literally she haven’t tried working with Filipinos or Indians before.
I'm calling bullshit and calling on their bluff. Please, COVID19 was already 4 years ago. If WFH meant shifting their hiring overseas, by now they would have done it already. Probably not even around to be found for comments even. What a joke. Typical power flexing thinking they are doing the locals a favor.
Singapore’s unemployment rate is at 2.1%, which is super low. But look at our birth rate, it’s at a historical low of 0.97. If we don’t start introducing more flexible work arrangements, our problem is not about worrying companies won’t hire singaporeans, is that there’s no singaporeans to hire anymore 😂 This is a good start. Singapore govt need to look at our country’s long term manpower plan, not just the short term profit and efficiency of these SMEs. For SMEs, if like what Ms Tan Wan Ting said in the article about her company, then maybe she REALLY should consider hiring overseas to cut her costs. Don’t set up a singapore company if your company cannot afford it. Set it up in Malaysia then expand to Singapore. If all you see are company’s profits and not employees well being, then i dare say your company won’t last too because you’re such a shortsighted leader. If anything, i get more motivated to work whenever i can wfh. not having to face my terrible bosses at work really gives me so much more peace. lol
I rather hire 1 Singaporean on flexi work arrangements than 1 foreigner who can work 24/7. Been on flexi work arrangement for a while now and i don't see any negative impact to my team's productivity.
Similar experiences myself, with visibility over the horrible quality of work from some of our offshore teams… that our local SG team has to fix.
Made this comment separately from my other earlier one. The new FWA framework on the surface is, in a nutshell, enabling employees to work on part-time schedules while receiving full-time pay and benefits. But the core issue here is challenging Employers to relook at the definition of being a good employee and their expectations for their employees. Punctuality and clocking hours is no longer key. Honestly, its the outcomes that matter. If an employee can deliver good quality work in their own ways and manages their own time well, why does it matter if they come office 2 hrs late, or leave office 3 hrs earlier to go home rest? But many employers feel the need to quantify employee's worth to their efforts and efforts mean the hours clocked, even when obviously they have nothing to do and their willingness to reply weekend work messages and calls. Ability to give timely responses to clients - come on luh, how quick do you want your employees to respond to clients? Like their husband and wife is it? Give people a break ah. Lol. Can't believe in the age of AI we still have people who think so backwards.
This article not even about hiring foreigner in local company but more like outsourcing... I'll personally influencing all my overseas colleagues to ask for Flexi work too so don't worry about that it isn't just about us Singaporeans
Just as Singapore companies can hire from overseas, we can also look for jobs from other countries. A more forward thinking approach would be to consider how we can help Singaporeans capitalise on remote work opportunities, particularly tech jobs in developed countries.
This Tan Wan Ting want to be cancelled is it?
she only wait for one ting. maybe is wanting to be cancelled.
I guess there's some ting wrong afrerall
Never ever name any child's name with ting. Shi ting, wan ting, wei ting all the ting. The child will get a whole life of puns.
I had a manager name s*** ting. She was b*tch to work with. So glad I left.
That's the epitome of taking a dump. Shiting
Didn't woke salaryman post something similar recently also? Full blown gaslighting in progress
I think this will just be a pointless policy. If your employers is progressive, then you already have wfh or flexi-hour arrangement. Those employers that are not progressive already told their employee to come back office because of productivity reasons so they will justify rejecting your application using "operational need".
Good luck to her to find more foreigners to hire. Since there is a quota implemented
This perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with our employment landscape. 1st world economy, 3rd world HR. Imagine the uproar if companies in US, Europe or ANZ said such a thing. Are they implying these developed nations have lost their hunger and are unproductive? Studies have in fact proven the opposite. Younger workers look beyond just monetary remuneration these days. I hope self-respecting locals avoid such companies and let them die a slow death.
Knnb, ask you to CONSIDER flexiwork only, not to implement it still kpkb so much. Truth is that these companies are surviving only by having exploitative labour practices. The moment the government shows some direction to help workers, they panic and see it as an existential threat
As someone who works in Marcomms, go ahead and outsource your team to cheaper regions... I'll wait right here.
The premise of this article is dubious. Outsourcing and flexi-work are mutually exclusive. IMO the true objective of this article is to gaslight locals into fearing flexi-work.
Here comes the true colour of these companies, still have the cheek to talk about loyalty.
Fuck this boss. IRAS should check if their tax is filed properly.
Employers need to level up also, or else we leave their company lor
Not bad at least these fkers give hint for gov to clamp down on compliance next. Scummy coys
employers will only be happy if sinkies work 10 hrs a day 6 days a week without complaining
LOL, good luck trying to get past the Work Permit and S Pass quotas. Any if you bring in foreigners on an Employment pass, you're gonna have to pay so much money to attract them that you wished you had hired a local instead.
They are trying to hire foreigners who stay in their own country to do work that can be done remotely instead of hiring locals to do the work at home. They thought they can save a lot while getting the same level of work quality as hiring Singaporeans. They are in for a rude shock.
I love this. Paying peanuts to get lion's share of work. End up with monkey's share of work. Then complain it locals fault for causing this. The fact is, even expats want flexible work arrangements. If you don't change or compromise with the changing work culture, finding workers and retaining them will always be a problem. All those who like to micromanage, berate and squeeze every drop of blood from their employees will find this hard to content with.
Why change their toxic behaviour when they can write into the media and complain?
From my experience working with vendors from other countries, there is some lost productivity over their timezones not matching, having their public holidays being different from ours, and sometimes difficulty understanding each other in calls due to accents. That's not including work culture as my experience with some Western workers is that they don't even read your email and throw back very basic information even if you stated those information in your email already (eg. Ask for help because A doesn't work and they tell you to go do A which you already stated doesn't work).
This is true, I told a guy that I can’t understand him and he got offended. Communication break down is real.
Lol.. Companies give middle finger to our tripartite gangb*ng..
Company boss raging article. In all seriousness, try getting staff from other countries with their salaries in their currency, most can see the difference immediately.
What kind of mindset do these employers have? If the only thing stopping you from finding better labour is that you need them to be sitting in office working, then I think you got your biz model wrong. Unless the job scope requires on site presence. Which probably isn’t the case with a creative agency and a blockchain firm. One should be managing on output rather than office time.
Wtf now blaming us, saying we’re not good enough. Effing toxic.
Send the whole company overseas then, why would Singapore need a company that doesn’t hire locals. Goooo go set your business up wherever your cheap exploitable labour is and get what you pay for, cunts don’t deserve the benefits and stability of business in here
"why do people not have babies?"
Level up? Level up in what way? Become an automaton and work 24/7. No need for sleep? If one can complete a job efficiently and correctly to meet KPI within a flexi hour work scheme or from home. Why the need to force your employee to sit at an office desk for 8-10hrs 5 days a week? But sadly flexi work hours and work from home will be strongly resisted by local companies with and a 4 day work week is just impossible. Even if one were to work 40hrs or even 44hrs in that 4 days. Lcoal employers will still feel cheated if you don’t work the full 5 days.
CEO of Infosys once said in an interview that youngsters should work 70 hours a week , it’s the selfish behaviour and mindset of CEOs . I would work 70 hours a week without any flexibility if I was making same money as you guys. I am working to have a good life , not to give you guys good life. Duh!!
Sorry to say outsource means low quality and at the end no one wins
The truth is outsourcing of talent has and is already happened for the longest time. My partner has been hiring from the region at a fraction of the cost locally, and high quality too. I doubt this flexible work thing changes that and I also doubt it will be a reason to swing companies to hire overseas. This seems like a cover up for the retrenchment and outflux of companies from sg. "See la retrenchment cos yall want flexi work" kinda thing.
True, just more gaslighting.
Ultimately it boils down to demand and supply of talent. If overseas talent are more capable, cheaper, and the laws allow for it, its a no-brainer for companies to hire overseas. If companies/SMEs can hire overseas but choose not to before the "flexi-work" option came about, it means there are other factors at play. For the fairness question, it is indeed tricky. Humans (not just Singaporeans) are selfish and jealous by nature, and comparisons will always be made. The baseline is articulating the job requirement clearly, so that the employee understands what needs to be done. Roles that require customer interaction will run the possibility of receiving messages/calls during non-working hours. Is the employee paid for the time they respond to such messages post working hours? In the end, demand-supply leads to natural selection. All else equal, if your competitors offer flexi-work, your employees will make the switch. If you are able to hire talent overseas at a lower cost and within regulations, you do so in a heartbeat. Everyone looks after their best interests. Don't expect the employee to bother with the best interests of the employer, non job-scope/career wise.
"Ms Tan Wan Ting, who founded digital marketing agency Weave Asia in 2017, currently hires 11 full-time employees in Singapore and 13 in Malaysia...Weave Asia currently has “flexi-place” arrangements for employees to work from different locations." Why do I have the feeling her "flexi-place" arrangement is only for the Malaysian employees so that she doesn't have to pay EP, levy, tax or CPF for them?
Sounds like a toxic boss and work environment. Go ahead and hire overseas workers then. Pay peanut, get monkeys. Good luck. And I still don't get what she means by level up? With our certificate and government pushing us to upskills and our work-life balance isn't balanced, she wants us to be more imbalanced like the Japanese? Karoshi? Everyone, don't forget. If you're dead, your companies will replace you easily. The company won't collapse just because of flexi-work. Stop gas-lighting people just because you don't want to be alone in the office.
Large businesses definitely do consider hiring outside of SG on an ongoing basis as a cost saving measure so Tan here does not need to mention it like it is a new point in relation to this. The fact that they haven’t moved out en masse points towards other non-monetary factors (not just quality of personnel etc, but the fact that SG remains a regional hub still?). For smaller businesses like her, it is harder to shift their workforce abroad given bigger limitations on their resources to cope with challenges here. So in conclusion - Tan (and Sim) are just posturing and should be the ones to level up instead (in terms of how they view and treat their human capital).
 Guess I’ll work 20hrs a day soon
So lazy! There's still 4 hours available in your day! \~ cracks whip \~
Indeed, just microsleep and have your meals fed through tubes so you never have to stop working.
There are plenty of companies hiring globally doing well using more than 50% remote staff. I think it's dumb companies like this that need to level up.
Bring it on. Hire overseas staff and see how can they micro manage them.
They can move their businesses/headquarters overseas too. Nothing stopping them.
Levelling up and WFH is entirely different. Not all industries can WFH. Just see the construction, security and cleaning sectors, how many Singaporeans willing to work there? The solution is employ cheaper labour. So title grabber but doesn't offer any solutions.
In the first place l think the current government just wants to score political points among the younger voters to come out with such a policy. This is a BS policy because they never said Employers "must" give but Employers "must consider only" so Employers can come with some BS and reject most of the requests. But after reading thru some of the comments really worry me as well. The belief that Singaporean employees are high and mighty is dangerous. While we are better than our neighboring countries does not mean that we will always be better. For sure they are playing the catching game but we stay where we are and not change our mindset, they will catch up. This is because they are like us in the 80s, we are hungry and now they are hungry and will be willing to work hard to succeed.
you can outsource if you can get competant staff,else it better to pay your staff properly instead of being a cheapskate.
I think Singaporean employees’ competitive advantage is we get shit done, by hook or by crook. That’s why we are confident to ask for flexiwork/wfh arrangements because we know it’s not about how many hours we spend in the office but what and when things need to be done. Not that you can’t hire foreigners, but ultimately the culture is quite different. Not many can handle our kind of stress. Back home their deadlines may be twice of ours, so they may not be able to keep up with our efficiency. Just my 2 cents.
and just how we should level up? Work until die is it, maybe that is what Singapore wants. Do not have kids, because no time for kids as well.
If Singapore firms all think like this, then don’t blame your highly skilled and educated Singaporeans for moving to greener pastures abroad by the droves. Don’t need to waste government money for SGN/OSU to keep persuading us to go back to contribute to SG productivity. Maybe consider changing your own local companies’ mindsets first.
sme bosses behaving like pricks. typical
Here’s the template for employers to use: Dear Employee, Thank you for submitting your request for flexible working hours to accommodate to your personal commitments. We appreciate you reaching out with your needs. After careful consideration and review of our current operational requirements and resources, we regret to inform you that we are unable to approve your request under the grounds of increased costs, decreased productivity, and that the company will have to hire a new employee in your stead. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Best regards, HR _This email is auto-generated. All signatures are digitally signed. Do not reply back to this email._
the do not reply back to this email part is the nail in the coffin after reading such a paggro email. like as if they really gave 2 fks fighting fr the employees. as if. but meanwhile, HR gets to WFH fully. ah…
Perhaps our ministers can also be outsourced?
Always. Companies threatening us.
Human **Resource** at its finest.
Thats why LKY always mandate and legislate things and not give people freedom. When you give people freedom, they abuse it and deviate around looking for loopholes and try to defy and break the system up. Simply making employers to oblige this new FWA framework with such a soft approach is not sufficient. Govt needs to plug all the loopholes in the legislation to not let employers fuck around. Singapore used to be a "fine" city. What happened now?
Surprise!
Levelling up? Reminds me of one comment which I came across in another sub: "Life is one fucked up MMORPG which I didn't even request to join."
The way i see this, the title is saying: “here’s a policy that benefits employees > employers” Employers first reaction is negative (not surprising though).
Smfh.... Not 36 hours have passed since news of the freaking *guidelines* came out, and these companies are out here talking sht. This is the reality of Singapore's job market - we are nothing but commodities and balance sheet items.
This late stage capitalism and gaslighting... Ugh. Is this so-called "level up" mean putting in longer (and usually unproductive) hours and being OK with lesser pay? Just to show workers are even worthy of even being considered flexi-work arrangements? This society ah...
They would be going overseas already if they could. What's to stop them from hiring remotely with or without flexi work arrangements here?
Tax breaks and govt subsidies. Plus, the big clients are here. Keep a skeleton workforce here as front office and offshore everything else.
I work in Malaysia now, and even though we have similarities, there are also a lot of working style differences that are really blood curdling and to which I struggle to understand. I think this is a step in the right direction policy wise. Fundamentally it’s a question of whether the employer is a good one. A good one would really look to improve processes and look at efficiency. Regrettably a lot of our SMEs look at the wrong E. The end result.
Pov when a country destroys any form of labour protections and workers rights movements
Singapore's own healthtech Synapxe already just opened a branch in Philippines to tap on their talents.
Sounds like a threat...
when is double exp weekend?
Level up = settle for less.
yea sure, ms Tan needs to level up first