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SINGAPORE: On Monday (April 5), a 10-member team from Certact Engineering will be in the office in full force for the first time in a year.
The team, which deals with management, sales and other non-production matters at the local precision engineering company, has split in two since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, taking turns working from home or office every other day.
But with COVID-19 measures in the workplace easing, the team has volunteered to return to the office full time.
For the company’s much larger production team, a spilled equipment fix will remain.Certact Engineering currently has 53 employees.
Managing Director Ellis Eng said the work of the 10-member team involves linking with suppliers and the company’s internal production team. Working remotely has made these processes a bit more tedious for some.
“It’s just the nature of being in the semiconductor manufacturing industry,” he said. “While they have volunteered to come back, I have also told them that if they want to work from home, they can do so at any time.”
To accommodate more employees who want to return to the office while maintaining safe distancing measures, the company has converted a meeting room into a workspace.
“We (have to) make arrangements as our office is not very big,” Ms Eng said, adding that shields are already in place to act as barriers between workstations.
EASE OF RULES FROM APR 5.
Singapore authorities announced last week that the quota of employees who can return to their workplace will rise from 50 percent to 75 percent as of April 5.
The current limit requiring employees to work from home for at least half of their work time will also be removed. Split team arrangements are also not required.
READ: Back to the office: 7 things you need to know as Singapore shifts to a more flexible way of working amid COVID-19
Still, employers were urged to continue staggering start times for their employees and implement flexible work hours whenever possible.
Restrictions against cross-deployment will be maintained, while existing security measures, such as physical distancing and regular cleaning of common spaces, have yet to be implemented.
At Mastercard, employees will have the freedom to decide how many days they want to work in the office starting April 12, said its executive vice president of customer delivery, Asia Pacific, Shafi Shaikh.
At the moment, employees can only work in the office for a maximum of 10 days out of every four weeks. Those wishing to enter the office must register through an online system that monitors the daily capacity limit, which will increase to 75 percent as of April 12.
READ: Comment: What if people don’t want to go back to the office?
Mastercard said it continues to encourage employees who take public transportation to avoid rush hour. Other security measures will also be maintained, such as temperature controls in the office.
“Through ongoing communication with our employees, including staff surveys, our people tell us that they value flexibility, but they also want some degree of being back in the office,” Shaikh said, adding that the focus of the The company will continue to “revolve. around flexibility with security.”
OTHERS CHOOSE “WAIT AND SEE”
There are other companies that are holding back the changes for now.
When the CNA contacted Google, it confirmed that the return to the office “will remain voluntary” until September for its employees around the world.
The tech giant also said that employees who are working in a country other than the one in which they are employed will have more time to return until September 1, although those who require more time “may request an extension based on exceptional circumstances or difficulties.” .
During the height of the pandemic, Google had allowed some employees to move abroad for personal reasons, such as returning to their home countries.
File photo of Google’s Singapore office. (Photo: Tang See Kit)
Twitter, which last year allowed its employees to work from home “forever” if they wanted to, said its team “is still evaluating” the latest relaxation measures in the workplace.
“Twitter was one of the first companies to opt for a work-from-home model in the face of COVID-19, and we do not anticipate being one of the first to return to offices,” he said in an email response to CNA.
“So if our employees can work from home effectively and want to continue to do so forever, we will.”
Sixty percent of its Singaporean employees have expressed a desire to work from home forever. That said, your office will be ready to welcome those who wish to return to the office or explore a hybrid arrangement, he added.
READ: Comment: Do you really want to work from home forever like some Twitter employees can?
Relocation company Moovaz, whose office is located in Ayer Rajah Crescent, said it is in no rush to change its existing hybrid work arrangement and will be taking a wait-and-see approach for the next month or so.
Currently, its 43 employees can work from home up to four days a week. A rotating schedule ensures that only 30 percent of staff members are in the office at the same time, according to the people who run Miki Ng.
Moovaz said he has made several other changes to work processes over the past year, such as having a greater reliance on cloud-based systems. He has also set aside a budget to help employees complete their personal insurance coverage to include risks that can come from working from home, among other changes to company policies.
Since productivity and staff morale are not affected by remote work, he added that these changes have created “a certain rigidity that makes it not so easy” to go back to pre-pandemic ways.
READ: Comment: Please don’t finish work from home. It is not too bad
The same goes for the marketing and communications agency Archetype, which currently allows employees to work in the office only if they want to. Since the office is capped at 20 to 40 percent of the workforce at any one time, employees will have to reserve spaces in advance.
Ms Mabel Chiang, its managing director from Singapore, said there were concerns about commuting to work before vaccines were available.
“So we made the flexible option where people can book at the office if they want to come in,” he told CNA. “That is our current arrangement and it will be until the vaccination is released to the general public.”
Being in the consulting business, Ms Chiang said the company doesn’t need employees to be physically in the office to keep the engines running. The pandemic has taught him to be agile and thrive in a new normal, he added.
For example, the agency has implemented several initiatives to help ensure the well-being of its employees by encouraging teams to avoid scheduling business meetings on Fridays and sending emails after 7 p.m.
Ms. Chiang added that a hybrid work arrangement is one that the agency is considering for the long term, such as employees working three days at the office and the rest of the week at home.
When that happens, you could modify your office space by removing some workstations to create more collaborative spaces, he said.
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