Thursday, August 21, 2008
22:25 by FoxTwo I was reading this article over at Channelnewsasia.com - Work-Life Balance, and I had a thought.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Ok I am not claiming to b a model employee, far from it. However I do have a personal policy - don't stay and do "overtime" when you don't need to. And when I do leave the office, I do not even think about work. Work can wait. Once I am out of the office, work is out of my mind.
As a result, people say they seldom see me "stressed out".
The trouble with many companies in Singapore is the "Chinese mentality". You cannot arrive late for work. If you're late too many times, management will take notice and perhaps issue you warning letters, or even send you for counseling. It's fine if you stay behind in the office past office hours - in fact they encourage it, to show that you are "hardworking" and "contributing" to the company. When someone goes home on time at 5.30pm (or 6pm, or whatever time), the manager notices. When it becomes a regular thing that this person goes home on time, the manager "counsels" the employee.
I was in a few companies that have these kind of practices.
In a typical workday, you cannot be 100% occupied with work the full 8 hours of the day. It's impossible. The only way for you to be busy all 8 hours of the day, is to be overloaded with work. In one of my previous companies, the moment you have your web browser up, you're "skiving". They don't even bother to look at what's actually on the browser screen. For us IT folks, it's normally a forum somewhere with a solution to a problem we're facing.
In fact, this particular company went overboard in blocking websites. Blocking Youtube and Facebook I understand - those sites takes up network bandwidth for streaming media, and wastes time (Facebook). However, blocking blogs, forums, lifestyle, etc is too much. In fact I even wrote a post about this here - they even blocked blogs! Humour blogs to boot!
The managers are typical "cheena" types. You cannot be seen "reading newspapers". You cannot be seen "surfing the web". You must always be "busy". Otherwise, they'll start to question why the need for so many headcounts in the department if the headcounts are seen "not doing work".
Even when people go on MC (call in sick), the bosses still bug them by calling them about work, telling them they need to attend meetings etc when they come back etc. In fact, one of them was even called back to the office, and told "he cannot be sick because he has too many things to do" by the boss. Speaking of being sick, the company will penalise you if you use up more than 5 days of your 14 days entitlement of MCs, but no incentives if you don't use up any at all.
I have a friend who, due to unfortunate circumstances, fell sick and used up all 14 days of her MC. At year end, during appraisals, she was given a bad rating and hence, zero bonus. You can bet she was furious, and quit.
I had a job interview earlier this year. The interviewer told me that the organisation "frowns upon" people leaving the office at 6pm, hence it is "the norm" that people stay till 8pm or 9pm. If we are called back to work on weekends, tough luck. It's up to the individual manager's kind-heartedness to give you time-off. Even if time-off is given, we are not supposed to claim it immediately. In other words, if I was called back on Sunday to work, I cannot claim my time-off the following day. I must still turn up for work at the appointed time.
You can bet that I didn't take up the position offered in that company.
I am fortunate that the company I am in now is very pro work-life balance. In the current company, I do not dread going to work (although, like any lazy-assed human, I don't look forward to going to work too). However I know that if I'm at the office, nobody's eying me to catch me the moment I "slip up". In fact, just today, a colleague called me up to get some information, and she said she'd been "banned" from the office because she's sick. Her boss told her to stay out of the office till she got better, even if she doesn't have an MC. I'm sure her kids are happy because "mommy's home all day".
Now, the example above is good, but not because it shows the boss is nice. On a deeper level, the managers understand that a sick person is definitely not going to be performing well. Secondly the sick person will probably infect other people, and thus rendering more people sick and shutting down the department. Most of us are actually mobile - we're on laptops and blackberries. If there's work to be done, any Internet connection will work fine for us. We can easily enter the corporate network via VPN and do what is needed. For us IT folks, chances are we'd all have some form of Internet connection at home anyway.
The point is - once the management shows such understanding towards employees, employees will in turn reciprocrate. The employee is more likely to perform better as a result. In fact I have never heard any colleague complaining about coming to work. The only things we complain about are the stupid users, as usual :)
So yeah, companies in Singapore need to catch up. If the company treat the employees like slaves, expect a high turnover. If the company treat the employees well and with respect, hardly any of them will leave the organisation. In my previous company, I hear someone grumbling and saying they wish they could quit almost on a daily basis. Here, nothing like that happens. Nobody ever talks about quitting.
22:25 by FoxTwo I was reading this article over at Channelnewsasia.com - Work-Life Balance, and I had a thought.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Ok I am not claiming to b a model employee, far from it. However I do have a personal policy - don't stay and do "overtime" when you don't need to. And when I do leave the office, I do not even think about work. Work can wait. Once I am out of the office, work is out of my mind.
As a result, people say they seldom see me "stressed out".
The trouble with many companies in Singapore is the "Chinese mentality". You cannot arrive late for work. If you're late too many times, management will take notice and perhaps issue you warning letters, or even send you for counseling. It's fine if you stay behind in the office past office hours - in fact they encourage it, to show that you are "hardworking" and "contributing" to the company. When someone goes home on time at 5.30pm (or 6pm, or whatever time), the manager notices. When it becomes a regular thing that this person goes home on time, the manager "counsels" the employee.
I was in a few companies that have these kind of practices.
In a typical workday, you cannot be 100% occupied with work the full 8 hours of the day. It's impossible. The only way for you to be busy all 8 hours of the day, is to be overloaded with work. In one of my previous companies, the moment you have your web browser up, you're "skiving". They don't even bother to look at what's actually on the browser screen. For us IT folks, it's normally a forum somewhere with a solution to a problem we're facing.
In fact, this particular company went overboard in blocking websites. Blocking Youtube and Facebook I understand - those sites takes up network bandwidth for streaming media, and wastes time (Facebook). However, blocking blogs, forums, lifestyle, etc is too much. In fact I even wrote a post about this here - they even blocked blogs! Humour blogs to boot!
The managers are typical "cheena" types. You cannot be seen "reading newspapers". You cannot be seen "surfing the web". You must always be "busy". Otherwise, they'll start to question why the need for so many headcounts in the department if the headcounts are seen "not doing work".
Even when people go on MC (call in sick), the bosses still bug them by calling them about work, telling them they need to attend meetings etc when they come back etc. In fact, one of them was even called back to the office, and told "he cannot be sick because he has too many things to do" by the boss. Speaking of being sick, the company will penalise you if you use up more than 5 days of your 14 days entitlement of MCs, but no incentives if you don't use up any at all.
I have a friend who, due to unfortunate circumstances, fell sick and used up all 14 days of her MC. At year end, during appraisals, she was given a bad rating and hence, zero bonus. You can bet she was furious, and quit.
I had a job interview earlier this year. The interviewer told me that the organisation "frowns upon" people leaving the office at 6pm, hence it is "the norm" that people stay till 8pm or 9pm. If we are called back to work on weekends, tough luck. It's up to the individual manager's kind-heartedness to give you time-off. Even if time-off is given, we are not supposed to claim it immediately. In other words, if I was called back on Sunday to work, I cannot claim my time-off the following day. I must still turn up for work at the appointed time.
You can bet that I didn't take up the position offered in that company.
I am fortunate that the company I am in now is very pro work-life balance. In the current company, I do not dread going to work (although, like any lazy-assed human, I don't look forward to going to work too). However I know that if I'm at the office, nobody's eying me to catch me the moment I "slip up". In fact, just today, a colleague called me up to get some information, and she said she'd been "banned" from the office because she's sick. Her boss told her to stay out of the office till she got better, even if she doesn't have an MC. I'm sure her kids are happy because "mommy's home all day".
Now, the example above is good, but not because it shows the boss is nice. On a deeper level, the managers understand that a sick person is definitely not going to be performing well. Secondly the sick person will probably infect other people, and thus rendering more people sick and shutting down the department. Most of us are actually mobile - we're on laptops and blackberries. If there's work to be done, any Internet connection will work fine for us. We can easily enter the corporate network via VPN and do what is needed. For us IT folks, chances are we'd all have some form of Internet connection at home anyway.
The point is - once the management shows such understanding towards employees, employees will in turn reciprocrate. The employee is more likely to perform better as a result. In fact I have never heard any colleague complaining about coming to work. The only things we complain about are the stupid users, as usual :)
So yeah, companies in Singapore need to catch up. If the company treat the employees like slaves, expect a high turnover. If the company treat the employees well and with respect, hardly any of them will leave the organisation. In my previous company, I hear someone grumbling and saying they wish they could quit almost on a daily basis. Here, nothing like that happens. Nobody ever talks about quitting.
Labels: Singapore, workplace ethics
