SINGAPORE – Even as Singapore workers look forward to better work-life balance under the Tripartite Guidelines On Flexible Work Arrangement Requests that take effect from Dec 1, the great return to the office seems inevitable.
Sixty-one per cent of workers aged 18 and up are now working from the office, up 7 percentage points year-on-year, according to data from Blackbox Research’s platform SensingSG, which polls 1,500 Singaporeans and permanent residents aged 18 and up every three months.
In contrast, 27 per cent of respondents still enjoy hybrid work arrangements, down 7 percentage points year-on-year. Only 5 per cent now work mainly from home, down 2 percentage points year-on-year.
“We expect to see a continued gradual decline in remote and hybrid working in 2025,” says Mr Glenn Wray, Blackbox Research’s head of strategy.
The new guidelines stipulate that Singapore employers must “fairly consider” formal requests from their staff for flexible work arrangements (FWAs). Besides telecommuting, these may include staggered hours, flexi loads, job sharing and compressed working hours.
Bosses can reject such requests for business reasons, such as cost and feasibility.
The Ministry of Manpower’s employment conditions data shows a steady decline in companies offering scheduled FWA, from a high of 90.5 per cent in June 2021, when Covid-19 raged, to 68.1 per cent in June 2023.
However, such flexible arrangements are still higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 52.7 per cent in 2019.
Judging from recent workplace movements, workers still enjoying hybrid arrangements today will find themselves trading their shorts for suits more often in 2025.
“We are definitely seeing an increasing trend in organisations looking to return to the office (RTO), or increase the number of days in the office,” says Ms Kirsty Poltock, a director at recruitment firm Robert Walters Singapore.
“A common trend is that more and more organisations are looking to move to four days in the office and one day of work from home (WFH). However, there is still a proportion of employers who are offering three days in the office with two days of WFH.”
Global multinationals and tech giants, once seen as shining examples of progressive employers, have been steadily calling for workers to spend more time on-site, citing gains in collaboration and culture.
In the most recent high-profile case, American technology giant Amazon announced in September that all its employees must work in the office five days a week from 2025, up from three days currently.
Amazon chief executive officer Andy Jassy has denied that the move is a “backdoor layoff”.
KPMG’s CEO Outlook, which polled 1,325 CEOs between July and August, paints an even more extreme scenario – 83 per cent of bosses expect full RTO within the next three years, up from 64 per cent in 2023.
Eighty-seven per cent of respondents said they were likely to reward employees doing in-person work with favourable assignments, pay rises or promotions.
The professional services firm surveyed companies with annual revenues of over US$500 million (S$670 million) across 11 markets, including China, India and Japan, and 11 industry sectors. Singapore was not included.
Closer to home, super app Grab told staff in late October that they would have to work five days in the office starting Dec 2.
In response, some workers are “coffee badging” – a buzzword coined by American videoconferencing device maker Owl Labs in 2023 to describe those who show up in the office to grab a coffee and be counted, and then leave to work elsewhere.
To counter this, some companies across different industries overseas have been tracking their employees’ locations through electronic tapping in and out of company badges or other means.
These include Big Four accounting firms EY and PwC (the latter’s United Kingdom staff were affected), as well as Citigroup, a global investment bank and financial services company, according to a September report in business and tech news website Business Insider.
Longstanding friction between employers and employees over RTO demands can have adverse effects, experts say.
“It is important to distinguish what is a policy and how it is enforced. We are seeing many companies struggling to police their policies. In multiple instances, the mandate is not being enforced,” says Mr Ravin Jesuthasan, senior partner and global leader for transformation services at Mercer, a US-headquartered human resources consultancy.
“Leaders assumed that the level of discontent from employees being made to return to the office full time would go down, but the noise level just kept getting ratcheted up.”
Ms Shulin Lee, 41, managing director of legal recruitment firm Aslant Legal, says many workers she has spoken to, even those outside the legal profession, “feel silenced” and are afraid to ask for flexibility, lest they be labelled slackers.
“Now, companies are facing a serious retention problem. The best talent doesn’t just have options – they’re actively seeking workplaces that respect their ability to excel without being chained to a desk,” she adds.
