9 in 10 employees working overtime: survey

Work-life balance does not yet exist in Singapore, according to an overwhelming majority of employees who took part in a survey on the subject in Singapore.

According to a JobStreet survey released on Monday, nearly nine in 10 (or 88 per cent) polled said they are working beyond their official hours.  Heavy workload and unreasonable deadlines were the main reasons for pulling in a long shift.

Of this group, 70 per cent choose to complete the unfinished work in office, while the remaining 30 per cent chose to bring work home. A total of 650 workers and 135 employers were polled during the survey done last month.

The survey also threw up two interesting facts arising from employers’ work-life balance initiatives:

(a)    45 per cent indicated that the company pays lip service to work-life balance with policies in place just for show

(b)     42 per cent indicated that they chose not to use the company’s initiatives for work-life balance with majority citing the concerns of receiving an inferior performance review as the main reason.

Employers were quick to refute the second point though, with 74 per cent of the 135 surveyed said they do not view workers who use the company’s work-life balance initiatives as being less committed to their jobs.

A concern raised was employees potentially abusing the system.

To this, respondents suggested corporate tax relief and enforcement of policies as steps that the government can take to encourage more companies to promote work-life balance at offices.