That's the question for the people living in the highly competitive society of Singapore where good jobs opportunities up for grabs are far and few. There have been many reports of Singaporeans succumbing to unreasonable career demands such as spending more than 12 hours a day at work and force themselves to undergo streneous programmes to upgrade their skills while struggling to juggle with their already heavy workload. As a result, these people get so stressed out from work that they have little or no energy left for their marriage and family, eventually leading to breakdowns in marriage and communication problems within the family.
For a small country like ours, divorce rates are already at alarming altitudes. According to a government report, divorce cases have tripled over the past two decades, from 2313 in 1983 to 6561 in 2003 and it is still growing at a alarming rate. In the past few years after the Asian ecomonic crisis struck, people were clinging on ferociously to their iron-turned-styrofoam rice bowls as if a gust of wind has threatened to blow them away. All attention was placed on jobs security such that everything else automatically became secondary. People started to shift their time spent with family to office matters in a desperate bid to save their jobs and the outcome was predictable.
Of course there are still cases where couples managed to pull through everything, but it has to be agreed that career demands have take a toll on marriages, in one way or another and to different degrees. I guess that the government understands the repurcussions of the increasing divorce rates to our already ageing-population as high divorce rates mean less families and less children. Therefore the government should take the first step to save marriages by doing something to the unreasonable career demands that compel people to put their jobs in front of their families.
To do this, it is important for the government to impose laws and regulations banning employers from making their employees work unreasonably long hours and make sure that there are duly compensated for the extra work they have done. In addition, it is also a feasible idea that companies organise more family day activities so as to improve family ties while not neglecting work. Lastly, it will also be good that employees be given the liberty to choose a flexible working schedule, so as to ensure that employees strike a balance between work and family so that neither one is chugged aside while the other gets all the attention.
We have to realise that human resource is the only resource that we have. If we cannot protect the communion between two human beings when we put the significance of occupation above that of family, then it will be an inevitable fact that Singapore will eventually lose out in terms of its global competiveness. This, the government has to think about it carefully and consider the above suggestions.
1 comment:
It was mentioned that government should ban employees from making their employees to work unreasonably long hours. However, I do not believe that such a law is possible to implement as different jobs have different demands. For example, a doctor cannot refuse to offer their professional help in a case of emergency even if they had worked for long hours. In such a case, it is difficult to determine the amount of working hours seen as unreasonably. Instead, having a more flexible working schedule can allow the employees to have a better allocation of their time between work and family. If such a freedom is allowed, employees can attend family gathering before returning to work. For example, parents are able to support their children participating in any major competition, and then returning to finish off matters at work after the competition. In this way, both the family and work are not neglected.
Besides the government and companies coming up with measure like family day to allow the employees to form stronger family bonds, individuals should also play a part in ensuring sufficient time is allocated to their family. It is often a practice to bring unfinished work home. Although this is unavoidable, one should not be concern only on finishing their work and sacrifice the time to catch up with their family members. Hence, individuals should also learn to allocate their time between work and family so as to strike a balance between the two. One can have a light chat with his family members before heading off to finish his work or while taking a break in between. These time spent may seem insignificant but it ensures that individuals always put in their effort to show their care to their family members, thus building strong family ties at the same time.
Post a Comment