Companies in the Republic have started to follow the public sector’s footsteps in offering two weeks of paternity leave to their employees.
The doubling of the leave provided to new fathers was announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the National Day Rally on Aug 23, with the Public Service enjoying the benefits with immediate effect.
The Government-led initiative is currently on a voluntary basis to give companies and employers time to adjust, Mr Lee said at the Rally. Since then, two companies, DBS Bank and Singtel, have announced they will be offering the additional week of paternity leave.
DBS will implement the scheme with retrospective effect from January 2015, the bank said in a press release.
“The enhanced paternity leave scheme will be a welcome addition to our suite of family-friendly programmes, aimed at promoting work-life balance for our staff. We hope that through these, employees will have more flexibility to better balance their family needs and careers,” said DBS Group Head of Rewards Cheong Meng Foong.
Similarly, Singtel said paternity leave benefits for staff at the telco as well as subsidiary IT solutions company NCS will take effect from Jan 1, 2015, and can be taken flexibly within 12 months from the birth of the staff’s child.
Ms Aileen Tan, Group Chief Human Resources Officer at Singtel, said that for employees to perform optimally, their needs at home should also be well taken care of.
“While their absence would have some implications on business operations, we have made our assessments, which show that we will be able to manage our resources accordingly,” she added.
In its press release, Singtel also supported Mr Lee’s call at the Rally to raise the re-employment age from 65 to 67.
Said Ms Tan: “Many of our staff feel 62 is too early to stop work. Our older colleagues have a wealth of experience that is hard to come by, and we constantly provide retraining to help them stay relevant. If they are healthy, productive and want to keep contributing, we are more than happy to have them in our team.”
news source & image credits: channelnewsasia.com
