SINGAPORE: Jonathan Ng quit his job in sales nine years ago to become the sole caregiver to his then five-year-old daughter, who is on the autism spectrum and has an intellectual disability.
For years, he subsisted on rental income from his home and the Agency for Integrated Care’s Home Caregiving Grant. The total came up to under S$2,000 (US$1,500) a month.
Now in his early 50s, Mr Ng recently started teaching two classes at a private academy to supplement his income, earning up to S$70 a week.
His employment hinges on being able to bring his now 14-year-old daughter to work with him, where she sits unobtrusively in his classes.
“If I cannot bring (her), then I cannot work,” Mr Ng told CNA during a rare break in his day while his daughter was in dance practice.
Yet this arrangement was only possible because his supervisor also has a child with special needs, advertised the job in a peer support chat group, and was prepared to accommodate his caregiving needs from the outset.
Caregivers like Mr Ng, mothers and senior citizens are among the targets of a new push to normalise flexible work arrangements so that more of such individuals can join or stay in Singapore’s labour force.
In 2023, there were 89,500 locals not working mainly due to caregiving responsibilities, or about 8 per cent of locals outside the labour force. The majority – 86.3 per cent – of them were female, according to the Manpower Ministry’s labour force survey.
From December, all employers in Singapore must have a process for employees to request flexible work arrangements like staggered hours and job sharing. Employers must give each request proper consideration and provide reasonable business grounds if they reject it.
Caregivers who spoke to CNA welcomed the spirit of these changes, but were sceptical that they can be implemented. The guidelines, which apply to existing employees, were also not enough to address the concerns of those looking for jobs, caregivers said.
Asked about the new guidelines, Mr Ng felt they would not improve his job prospects as companies would only do what their business and the job role can accommodate.
“(A) company will focus on their own profitability,” he said. “Some employers may think about (flexible work arrangements) more, but ultimately, I feel it’s the nature of the company, the nature of the job.”
Caregivers in the thick of the jobseeking process, or who have tried different roles in hopes of finding a fit with their responsibilities at home, voiced difficulties when they spoke to CNA.
Mdm Arveen Kaur, 37, took a two-year break from work to be a stay-at-home mother to her daughter, who was born in 2021.
With the girl now two and in full-time childcare, Mdm Kaur has spent the past nine months looking for a job in learning and development. As of end-April, she had received five callbacks from over 50 applications, with no concrete offers.
Most hiring managers did not probe into the two-year gap in her resume. But one recruiter asked her whether she was “really ready” to come back to the working world and if she had “sorted (her) home”.
Mdm Kaur, who has worked in human resources for the past decade, said this made her decide not to bring up the possibility of working from home, in hopes of getting to the interview stage.
Arveen Kaur took a two-year break from the workforce after having her daughter, and has been looking for a job for months. (Photo: Arveen Kaur)
She was happy about the new guidelines as they gave her hope that employers would be more open to considering flexible workers like herself.
But asking about flexibility at the interview stage “will backfire”, said Ms Sher-li Torrey, founder of career portal Mums@Work, which supports working mothers by listing jobs with flexible work arrangements.
Ms Torrey based her observation on the experiences of some of Mums@Work’s 60,000 members. The new guidelines do not protect jobseekers looking for flexibility, she said, while noting that the move is meant to be one that normalises flexi-work over the long term.
She also observed that employees on flexible work arrangements may not experience “outright discrimination”, but that “subtle things” can be enough to signal the employer’s displeasure.
This may happen in cases where a manager is just implementing a flexible work arrangement that has already been decided, but without believing in the principles behind it, she said.
She gave an example of a Mums@Work member working in a small local business, who returned to work after having children and had an arrangement to leave the office at 4pm.
At 4pm every day, the woman’s manager would go to her desk and remind her to leave on time so that he would not be accused of mistreating her.
The woman’s employer supported the flexible work arrangement. But her manager, who did not like it, managed to “beat the system” by not directly criticising her, said Ms Torrey.
About eight months in, unable to bear these repeated interactions, the woman quit her job.
For another caregiver, Ms Nur Hidayah Abidin, it was the pace of her entire industry, and not an individual manager, that made it difficult to balance her career with caregiving.
The 29-year-old has been a caregiver for her brother, who is three years older and has an intellectual disability and schizoaffective disorder, since she graduated from polytechnic.
She moved out of the family home when she got married in 2021, but is the main person coordinating her brother’s medical appointments as her mother does not speak English.
Family life remains unpredictable. Ms Hidayah can pick up the phone and end up spending hours on the line figuring out an administrative procedure or a medical emergency.
When she was working her first full-time job in insurance administration, her employer was understanding and allowed her to take the day off at short notice if needed.
While the environment was generally supportive, she recalled a colleague once saying: “She’s been taking leave, and we constantly have to step up for her.” This saddened her.
“I knew that I had to be present at work. But when duty calls, it calls, and you have to step up for your family first and foremost,” she said.
Nur Hidayah Abidin realised her dream job in public relations was incompatible with her caregiving responsibilities. (Photo: CNA/Davina Tham)
At the interview for her next job, the hiring manager wanted assurance that she could deliver on her duties. Ms Hidayah did not feel comfortable sharing that she was a caregiver.
When she landed her dream job in a public relations firm, only two-and-a-half months passed before she realised that the profession would not accommodate her caregiving duties.
“I felt the need to be (available) on demand at all times at the computer,” she said. “I was also actually quite afraid of taking phone calls from my mum and brother during work hours.”
Ms Hidayah said it took her a long time to accept that “caregiving will always be in my blood, it will always be part of my identity”.
After taking her shot at public relations, she moved to the social services sector as a communications executive in Caregivers Alliance (CAL) this year, where she has found ample support for her caregiving duties.
The non-profit organisation runs training programmes and provides a network of support for caregivers, particularly those looking after people with mental health issues.
CEO Tim Lee said that jobseeking is one of various needs that caregivers bring to the table, aside from the need for social support and a break from their responsibilities.
Many caregivers who work with CAL have given up their jobs. When a loved one gets better, the caregiver may want to return to work, but find it difficult to do so after a few years out of employment, said Mr Lee.
Others cannot envisage ever going back to full-time work because their caregiving duties are “forever”, he said, and this impacts not just their income but their sense of self-worth from having a career.
As for running a caregiver-friendly workplace, Mr Lee said what matters is having compassion for employees, as well as a strong financial foundation so that the company can afford to give its staff flexibility.
Taking a wider perspective, caregivers also cited a need for more daycare options so that they can leave loved ones and go to work with peace of mind.
Mr Ng, whose teenage daughter has autism, is the only family member available to look after the girl, after his wife washed her hands off her care soon after her autism diagnosis.
The girl’s parents are still legally married and live together with Mr Ng’s elderly parents, but are estranged. The grandparents are in their 80s and unable to cope with caring for their granddaughter on a daily basis.
When Mr Ng’s daughter was growing up, he had difficulty finding childcare suitable for a child with special needs. When he eventually found one, she was there a few hours each day.
She now attends a special education school until midday, as well as regular speech therapy and enrichment lessons.
Mr Ng has found it impossible to juggle work with his caregiving schedule, which includes bringing his daughter to and from school and other appointments.
Getting a sitter so he can work more hours does not make financial sense. According to him, the lowest rate for a sitter is S$18 an hour, on par with what he would earn teaching during that time.
And he is uneasy about leaving his daughter with someone other than family, given her limited verbal abilities. “It must be somebody that you can totally trust,” he said.
“If I go to work, then she must go somewhere. And then you don’t know what is going to happen at that ‘somewhere’. And she has no ability to tell you what happened.”
The particulars of Mr Ng’s case might be less common. But another caregiver cited the availability of care facilities among the obstacles to returning to work.
Mark Chin has been a full-time caregiver to his mother-in-law since he retired from his architecture firm. (Photo: CNA/Davina Tham)
Mark Chin, 65, is a retired architect and live-in caregiver for his elderly mother-in-law, who has vascular dementia. His father-in-law, who has Alzheimer’s disease, is in an eldercare home.
For a long time, Mr Chin’s plan was to sell his architecture firm and step back from work in 2021, when he reached the then retirement age of 62.
To ease the leadership transition, he would make himself available to younger colleagues. “I could stay on and do whatever they want me to do,” he said.
But when first his father-in-law and then mother-in-law fell ill around that time, he found himself taking more distance from work as his caregiving duties grew, while his wife continued at her job.
His family has arrived at an arrangement that works for now, but finding places in eldercare homes in a suitable location, with standards of care that meet their expectations, has been a challenge. Mr Chin’s mother-in-law is still on a waitlist.
Even after becoming a caregiver, Mr Chin was still keen to work. Last year, he applied for a civil service job that he felt was relevant to his experience and interests. He did not get the job and was not given a reason for the rejection.
“I know professionally I can still contribute, but because of the situation I have to stop. You just have to accept it,” he told CNA at his mother-in-law’s home.
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For years, he subsisted on rental income from his home and the Agency for Integrated Care’s Home Caregiving Grant. The total came up to under S$2,000 (US$1,500) a month.
Now in his early 50s, Mr Ng recently started teaching two classes at a private academy to supplement his income, earning up to S$70 a week.
His employment hinges on being able to bring his now 14-year-old daughter to work with him, where she sits unobtrusively in his classes.
“If I cannot bring (her), then I cannot work,” Mr Ng told CNA during a rare break in his day while his daughter was in dance practice.
Yet this arrangement was only possible because his supervisor also has a child with special needs, advertised the job in a peer support chat group, and was prepared to accommodate his caregiving needs from the outset.
Caregivers like Mr Ng, mothers and senior citizens are among the targets of a new push to normalise flexible work arrangements so that more of such individuals can join or stay in Singapore’s labour force.
In 2023, there were 89,500 locals not working mainly due to caregiving responsibilities, or about 8 per cent of locals outside the labour force. The majority – 86.3 per cent – of them were female, according to the Manpower Ministry’s labour force survey.
From December, all employers in Singapore must have a process for employees to request flexible work arrangements like staggered hours and job sharing. Employers must give each request proper consideration and provide reasonable business grounds if they reject it.
Caregivers who spoke to CNA welcomed the spirit of these changes, but were sceptical that they can be implemented. The guidelines, which apply to existing employees, were also not enough to address the concerns of those looking for jobs, caregivers said.
Asked about the new guidelines, Mr Ng felt they would not improve his job prospects as companies would only do what their business and the job role can accommodate.
“(A) company will focus on their own profitability,” he said. “Some employers may think about (flexible work arrangements) more, but ultimately, I feel it’s the nature of the company, the nature of the job.”
Related:
HOW CAREGIVERS ARE TREATED AT WORK
Caregivers in the thick of the jobseeking process, or who have tried different roles in hopes of finding a fit with their responsibilities at home, voiced difficulties when they spoke to CNA.
Mdm Arveen Kaur, 37, took a two-year break from work to be a stay-at-home mother to her daughter, who was born in 2021.
With the girl now two and in full-time childcare, Mdm Kaur has spent the past nine months looking for a job in learning and development. As of end-April, she had received five callbacks from over 50 applications, with no concrete offers.
Most hiring managers did not probe into the two-year gap in her resume. But one recruiter asked her whether she was “really ready” to come back to the working world and if she had “sorted (her) home”.
Mdm Kaur, who has worked in human resources for the past decade, said this made her decide not to bring up the possibility of working from home, in hopes of getting to the interview stage.
Arveen Kaur took a two-year break from the workforce after having her daughter, and has been looking for a job for months. (Photo: Arveen Kaur)
She was happy about the new guidelines as they gave her hope that employers would be more open to considering flexible workers like herself.
But asking about flexibility at the interview stage “will backfire”, said Ms Sher-li Torrey, founder of career portal Mums@Work, which supports working mothers by listing jobs with flexible work arrangements.
Ms Torrey based her observation on the experiences of some of Mums@Work’s 60,000 members. The new guidelines do not protect jobseekers looking for flexibility, she said, while noting that the move is meant to be one that normalises flexi-work over the long term.
She also observed that employees on flexible work arrangements may not experience “outright discrimination”, but that “subtle things” can be enough to signal the employer’s displeasure.
This may happen in cases where a manager is just implementing a flexible work arrangement that has already been decided, but without believing in the principles behind it, she said.
She gave an example of a Mums@Work member working in a small local business, who returned to work after having children and had an arrangement to leave the office at 4pm.
At 4pm every day, the woman’s manager would go to her desk and remind her to leave on time so that he would not be accused of mistreating her.
The woman’s employer supported the flexible work arrangement. But her manager, who did not like it, managed to “beat the system” by not directly criticising her, said Ms Torrey.
About eight months in, unable to bear these repeated interactions, the woman quit her job.
Related:
A DREAM JOB AT ODDS WITH CAREGIVING
For another caregiver, Ms Nur Hidayah Abidin, it was the pace of her entire industry, and not an individual manager, that made it difficult to balance her career with caregiving.
The 29-year-old has been a caregiver for her brother, who is three years older and has an intellectual disability and schizoaffective disorder, since she graduated from polytechnic.
She moved out of the family home when she got married in 2021, but is the main person coordinating her brother’s medical appointments as her mother does not speak English.
Family life remains unpredictable. Ms Hidayah can pick up the phone and end up spending hours on the line figuring out an administrative procedure or a medical emergency.
When she was working her first full-time job in insurance administration, her employer was understanding and allowed her to take the day off at short notice if needed.
While the environment was generally supportive, she recalled a colleague once saying: “She’s been taking leave, and we constantly have to step up for her.” This saddened her.
“I knew that I had to be present at work. But when duty calls, it calls, and you have to step up for your family first and foremost,” she said.
Nur Hidayah Abidin realised her dream job in public relations was incompatible with her caregiving responsibilities. (Photo: CNA/Davina Tham)
At the interview for her next job, the hiring manager wanted assurance that she could deliver on her duties. Ms Hidayah did not feel comfortable sharing that she was a caregiver.
When she landed her dream job in a public relations firm, only two-and-a-half months passed before she realised that the profession would not accommodate her caregiving duties.
“I felt the need to be (available) on demand at all times at the computer,” she said. “I was also actually quite afraid of taking phone calls from my mum and brother during work hours.”
Ms Hidayah said it took her a long time to accept that “caregiving will always be in my blood, it will always be part of my identity”.
After taking her shot at public relations, she moved to the social services sector as a communications executive in Caregivers Alliance (CAL) this year, where she has found ample support for her caregiving duties.
The non-profit organisation runs training programmes and provides a network of support for caregivers, particularly those looking after people with mental health issues.
CEO Tim Lee said that jobseeking is one of various needs that caregivers bring to the table, aside from the need for social support and a break from their responsibilities.
Many caregivers who work with CAL have given up their jobs. When a loved one gets better, the caregiver may want to return to work, but find it difficult to do so after a few years out of employment, said Mr Lee.
Others cannot envisage ever going back to full-time work because their caregiving duties are “forever”, he said, and this impacts not just their income but their sense of self-worth from having a career.
As for running a caregiver-friendly workplace, Mr Lee said what matters is having compassion for employees, as well as a strong financial foundation so that the company can afford to give its staff flexibility.
Related:
LACK OF CAREGIVING OPTIONS
Taking a wider perspective, caregivers also cited a need for more daycare options so that they can leave loved ones and go to work with peace of mind.
Mr Ng, whose teenage daughter has autism, is the only family member available to look after the girl, after his wife washed her hands off her care soon after her autism diagnosis.
The girl’s parents are still legally married and live together with Mr Ng’s elderly parents, but are estranged. The grandparents are in their 80s and unable to cope with caring for their granddaughter on a daily basis.
When Mr Ng’s daughter was growing up, he had difficulty finding childcare suitable for a child with special needs. When he eventually found one, she was there a few hours each day.
She now attends a special education school until midday, as well as regular speech therapy and enrichment lessons.
Mr Ng has found it impossible to juggle work with his caregiving schedule, which includes bringing his daughter to and from school and other appointments.
Getting a sitter so he can work more hours does not make financial sense. According to him, the lowest rate for a sitter is S$18 an hour, on par with what he would earn teaching during that time.
And he is uneasy about leaving his daughter with someone other than family, given her limited verbal abilities. “It must be somebody that you can totally trust,” he said.
“If I go to work, then she must go somewhere. And then you don’t know what is going to happen at that ‘somewhere’. And she has no ability to tell you what happened.”
The particulars of Mr Ng’s case might be less common. But another caregiver cited the availability of care facilities among the obstacles to returning to work.
Mark Chin has been a full-time caregiver to his mother-in-law since he retired from his architecture firm. (Photo: CNA/Davina Tham)
Mark Chin, 65, is a retired architect and live-in caregiver for his elderly mother-in-law, who has vascular dementia. His father-in-law, who has Alzheimer’s disease, is in an eldercare home.
For a long time, Mr Chin’s plan was to sell his architecture firm and step back from work in 2021, when he reached the then retirement age of 62.
To ease the leadership transition, he would make himself available to younger colleagues. “I could stay on and do whatever they want me to do,” he said.
But when first his father-in-law and then mother-in-law fell ill around that time, he found himself taking more distance from work as his caregiving duties grew, while his wife continued at her job.
His family has arrived at an arrangement that works for now, but finding places in eldercare homes in a suitable location, with standards of care that meet their expectations, has been a challenge. Mr Chin’s mother-in-law is still on a waitlist.
Even after becoming a caregiver, Mr Chin was still keen to work. Last year, he applied for a civil service job that he felt was relevant to his experience and interests. He did not get the job and was not given a reason for the rejection.
“I know professionally I can still contribute, but because of the situation I have to stop. You just have to accept it,” he told CNA at his mother-in-law’s home.
Continue reading...