Government will consider accreditation, look into sick bays for childcare leave implementation

[SINGAPORE] The government is actively looking at creating an accreditation mark to recognise work-life friendly workplaces, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah said in Parliament on Thursday (Sep 10).

“It’s a question of how onerous you make it for the employer,” she said. “We’re already asking them, or we will be asking them to change workplace norms and practices.”

She was responding to suggestions from People’s Action Party MP Cassandra Lee (West Coast-Jurong West GRC) to support working parents.

This comes after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s announcement during the National Day Rally that working parents of Singaporean children will become entitled to more childcare leave from next year.

Indranee said the government would not want employers to “treat accreditation as though it was PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examination)”, with a number of points to hit, which would place additional stress on them. “So we’ll find the right way to do this.”

Lee also reiterated her previous suggestion to create sick bays in childcare centres, which she said would provide flexibility between parents leaving work immediately and making arrangements to leave work in a few hours’ time.

Indranee said that she would ask Senior Minister of State for Social and Family Development Goh Pei Ming to look into the suggestion.

Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC MP Lee Hong Chuang, noting that childcare needs can arise on short notice, also proposed allowing parents to encash childcare leave.

Operational constraints – especially for smaller businesses – may mean that they would not be able to use up this leave entitlement, he said. He added that the money could be given to their own parents to settle the care of their children.

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But Indranee said: “No amount of money given to the parent to encash the leave is going to help the child, who’s at home without somebody to look after them.”

The government is supporting businesses by taking on the cost of child-related leaves, which should allow employers to either hire temporary staff or reward existing employees who take on additional covering responsibilities.

Indranee emphasised that the longer-term solution is for workplaces to recognise and accept that leave for caregiving needs such as parental leave “is now part and parcel of HR policy”, and plan and design workplace norms and practices around this.

“This would include job redesign, flexible work arrangements, short-term covering arrangements, and, where appropriate, artificial intelligence and automation,” she said.

“All employees – not only parents with children, but also singles and married persons without children – will benefit from improved workplace culture and norms that help them to better balance work and personal responsibilities, including caregiving needs.”