SINGAPORE – Progressive employers, line managers and human resources (HR) departments will be instrumental in the success of a plan to expand the parental leave scheme and in managing the expectations of all employees, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah.
In turn, parents who want to take time off work to look after their newborn babies should provide their employers with advance notice to help with planning. They could also offer to onboard the people covering their workload, she added.
Pointing out that the Government “will pick up the tab” for employees on the mandated government-paid paternity leave, Ms Indranee said employers can consider giving extra pay to the colleagues who take on the additional workload to ensure fairness.
“But you need really good HR for this,” said Ms Indranee, who is also Second Minister for Finance and National Development.
“You need an HR (department) which can manage this, and have that negotiation, conversation, compromise, and a more flexible workplace.”
Ms Indranee was on The Usual Place, a podcast by The Straits Times, on Aug 30 to discuss changes in paternity leave and the increase in shared parental leave – key announcements in Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s National Day Rally speech on Aug 18.
These include:
- Parents-to-be will get another 10 weeks of shared leave on top of their current leave entitlement, bringing the total duration of paid parental leave to 30 weeks by April 1, 2026. This no longer draws from the 16 weeks of maternity leave allotted for mothers.
- Two out of the four weeks of paternity leave entitlement will no longer be voluntary. From April 1, 2025, these additional two weeks of government-paid paternity leave will be made mandatory.
The Government will reimburse or pay for both types of leave, capped at $2,500 per week.
Ms Indranee said that the feedback following the rally was that young parents were really happy about the move to give them more time with their newborns. Meanwhile, employers cautiously welcome the changes, she noted. They are supportive overall, but are concerned about the operational part of planning around schedules.
Having flexible work arrangements is a key strategy that would make a big difference in addressing some of these concerns of employers, said Ms Indranee. However, this “has not been fully absorbed and realised” at the workplace.
She stressed that flexible work arrangements do not just mean working from home, but could also mean allowing part-time work or completion of tasks in blocks. Beyond parental leave, employees may take various types of leave for purposes such as caring for an aged parent or looking after an older child, she said.
“So long as you get the work done and you meet your employer’s targets and so on, then where you do it and the time when you do it... Those are things that can be arranged.”
Changes in the workplace would encourage a societal and cultural shift in looking at parental leave. It would also encourage more fathers to take paternity leave, said Ms Indranee.
Since government-paid paternity leave was introduced in 2013, take-up rates have more than doubled from about 25 per cent to more than 50 per cent of fathers in recent years, according to the latest data from the National Population and Talent Division.
In 2022, the take-up rate for paternity leave stood at 53 per cent – the same as two years before – while maternity leave was 74 per cent.
The plan to increase paternity leave was a targeted move to signal that a child’s early years is “not just (for) the mums to do it, but the dads as well,” said Ms Indranee.
In Singapore, where many women have a career, maintaining a balance between spouses is necessary.
The minister said: “If you also expect (women) to bear the full responsibility for child-raising, then it’s very difficult. The only way that you can balance this is if both parents take part in child-raising.”
Will the latest measures move the needle on Singapore’s birth rate?
In February 2024, Ms Indranee told Parliament that preliminary estimates indicated a resident total fertility rate (TFR) of 0.97 in 2023 – the first time in Singapore’s history when the figure has dropped below 1.
On the podcast, she highlighted the measures that the Government has put in place to encourage couples to have children, and to have more than one.
These include increasing the Baby Bonus Cash Gift to help defray some costs when the child is born, expanding the number of childcare places, lowering the fee caps for childcare options and ensuring housing priorities for families.
Looking at these measures individually may not encourage couples to have children, said Ms Indranee, who also discussed this issue with Kiss92 FM DJs on Aug 30.
“When you put (them) all together, what you’re coming up with is a Singapore that’s very conducive for families,” she noted.
“What we say is a Singapore made for families. When you have that, then hopefully it will encourage those who would like to have children, to have them.”
Host: Natasha Zachariah (natashaz@sph.com.sg)
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Edited by producers: Eden Soh
Executive producers: Ernest Luis and Lynda Hong
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