Written Answer by Mrs Josephine Teo Minister for Manpower to PQ on Flexible Work Arrangements

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1757 OF 2019 FOR SITTING ON 2 SEPTEMBER 2019

QUESTION NO. 1352 FOR WRITTEN ANSWER

NMP: Ms Anthea Ong

To ask the Minister for Manpower in each of the last three years, what is the average utilisation rate of flexible work arrangements (FWAs) by employees broken down by (i) whether their employer receives the Work-Life Grant and (ii) type of FWA utilised disaggregated by gender and age.

Answer

1.  We do not collect utilisation rate of Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) because it does not show if employees require more FWAs or not. A low FWA utilisation rate could be due to employees not requiring FWAs at the point in time. A more useful indicator is the accessibility of FWAs for employees who need it. Among employees aged 25 – 64 who required FWAs in 2018, more than 8 in 10 had access to the FWA that they needed, an increase from 7 in 10 in 2016^[1]. The percentage is broadly similar across age and gender. 
2. The Work-Life Grant (WLG) is only disbursed to companies after their employees have regularly utilised the FWAs. The amount disbursed depends on the number of employees who utilised the FWAs, up to $105,000 per company. We do not track the utilisation of FWAs by all employees in each company. However, as part of the WLG conditions, every beneficiary company must adopt the Tripartite Standard on FWAs, which includes informing all their employees on the types of FWAs offered and outcomes of their applications, and engaging them on alternatives if their requests cannot be granted. To provide greater support to companies to implement FWAs, the budget for the enhanced WLG was recently increased to $100 million, up from $30 million. We strongly encourage employers to tap on the grant to offer FWAs to their employees.