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SINGAPORE – On Good Friday last month, 3D animator Hong Yeu Wing, 29, worked until 6 p.m. before his mother reminded him that it was a holiday.
“I had stopped looking at the calendar and just kept track of what I had to do the next day,” says Hong, who described it as a “pale” moment.
Employees in Singapore, many of whom started working from home long before the circuit breaker measures were applied on April 7, say their daily routines have changed.
Without the need to travel to the office, people wake up later. Working days extend to dinner and evenings.
Some people turn into the night, preferring the quiet moment of the morning to think. And with less to occupy on weekends, work creeps in to fill the space.
World energy market data reflects these habits. In New York, electricity consumption has dropped by as much as 18 percent in the morning. In many parts of Europe, demand continues until 10 p.m. until midnight, at least an hour later than before.
SP Group, which operates the nation’s power grid, has no such breakdowns of energy data. But The Sunday Times found similar behavior patterns among many in Singapore.
IT STARTS LATE
Rasheed Abu Bakar, 38, is one of many parents who enjoy a longer lie.
The director of a public affairs consultancy used to wake up at 6.15 in the morning to take his oldest son, six, to elementary school.
Now, after getting up at dawn for Ramadan prayers, he returns to bed until 8 in the morning when the whole family wakes up. You no longer have to deal with the rush of the morning.
But not traveling has its drawbacks.
“The act of leaving the office and taking the train used to help me mentally disconnect. Now, there is no urgency to go home because I am already where I need to be,” says Rasheed, whose wife, 38, is a manager in the sector. educational.
It can be difficult to turn it off when the chime of a new email follows you down the hall. And being out of the office, Rasheed feels the need to be even more connected.
“We work in an industry where relationships are important and face-to-face communication is crucial to building them. So I feel like I need to make up for not being there in person,” he says.
LONG NIGHTS
Although mornings start later, Ms. Sher-Li Torrey notes that the nights have lengthened.
The founder of the social company Mums @ Work says that before Covid-19, working mothers used to go online from 9:30 p.m. at 10:30 p.m., after her children had gone to bed.
Now, however, they log in closer to midnight and work until about 1 a.m.
“Mothers say they are more tired because they have to watch their children during the day and this leaves them more work to clear up at night,” says Ms. Torrey, who is also a member of the Council for Families for Life.
He adds that in today’s economic climate, people may fear for their jobs and spend more hours demonstrating that they are on top of things.
“The unspoken stress is there, to impress their bosses and minimize the fact that they have to watch over their children.”
“It’s mentally draining to have to keep the two of you apart, like when you’re on a video call and you worry about a kid appearing in the background,” adds the 43-year-old mother of two.
Not only parents are burning the midnight oil. Left to their own devices, employees like Mr. Daniel David Chan have adopted a semi-night routine.
“I prefer to work late and now that we work from home, my natural habits have resurfaced,” says Chan, who used to linger between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., but now works until about 3 a.m. on some days.
The 34-year-old head of product and customer experience for the Ebb and Flow group, a technology-driven food and beverage company, is married with no children. His wife, 29, is a public servant.
What day is it
With work spread over weekends and holidays, nearly a third (31 percent) of workers say they spend more time working than before, according to a survey by global cybersecurity company Kaspersky.
Social media strategist Nina Chua, a confessed workaholic who used to leave the office at 11 p.m., now works until midnight on some days.
On top of that, he spends about half a day every other weekend doing job-related research, such as watching webinars or reading background material for client proposals.
“If the circuit breaker wasn’t in place, it would probably be with friends or doing other things. But now, I take weekends and holidays as extra time to space work,” says the 33-year-old man, who is single.
He adds that it’s easy for the job to expand and fill your available time.
“Normally, I would limit myself to half an hour to prepare a proposal, but now, while I investigate, I go through the rabbit hole reading about all kinds of related topics and emerge only 1 hour and a half later,” he says.
During working hours, productivity has also increased. Lunch breaks are shorter and employees are more focused.
Gone are the days of spontaneous meetings that “break the flow” when you’re working hard on something.
“You should respond to a tap on the shoulder right away, but you can choose when to reply to a message on (the business communication platform) Slack,” says David Sng, 32, who leads growth and expansion in the Southeast Asian company of financial technology.
HALF DAY LULL
Virtually all office employees are familiar with the post-lunch eating coma. At home, too, work slows down in the afternoon. Some recharge with a nap, play video games, or make multiple trips to the fridge.
Others, like Mr Sng, fit into a high-intensity interval training run or workout with friends through the Zoom video conferencing app.
“The rules of when you work and socialize have become very fluid. My company offers a lot of flexibility and I don’t think anyone would mind if you work from 5pm to 9am as long as you do the work,” says Mr. Sng, whose wife She is a lawyer of little more than 30 years. The couple has no children.
NEW ROUTINES
As people adjust to working from home, they have devised new rituals to help them blur the boundaries between home and work.
Ms. Atheena Som, 29, a customer success manager at a technology company, wears office clothes to shift gears to work mode.
He also intends to start taking lunch breaks for an hour, rather than rushing to eat in 15 minutes, to give himself a mental break in the middle of the day.
The mother of two boys, ages four and two, instituted “fancy Fridays” about a month ago where the family would dress up and order dinner to announce the weekend.
These dinners give your helper a break from the kitchen and allow the family to support local food and beverage stores.
“We have much to be thankful for. Our family and relatives are healthy and our needs are met.
“In these times, we should celebrate as much as we can,” she says.
Her husband, 47, is the chief operating officer of TheEngage, a strategic marketing consultancy.
Creating new routines is important, says Ms. Torrey, because remote work arrangements are here to stay.
A recent survey by Engagerocket, an employee engagement and performance software provider, in association with the Singapore Institute of Human Resources and the Institute of Human Resource Professionals, found that approximately 90 percent of employees want to continue working from home in a certain capacity after the circuit The switch ends.
Ms Torrey says: “The fusion of family and work is the future. Remote work and remote work had been happening gradually before Covid-19 sped things up.
“Companies and people who thrive in these circumstances are not going to let it go.”
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