Daily Lessons from Life 25 June 2011 - Promoting family bonding beyond govt measures: DPM Teo

"Promoting family bonding beyond govt measures: DPM Teo - RazorTV Jun 25, 2011

Creating a more pro-family environment for Singapore goes beyond government measures such as the Baby Bonus, paid maternity leave, childcare and education support, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs, Teo Chee Hean at the Family Day Out Carnival at Marina Bay on Saturday (June 25).

Speaking at the event, DPM Teo said that employers should put in place pro-family policies at the workplace to promote better work life balance.

Community and commercial providers also play an important role in offering family support services.

More than 36,000 Singaporeans attended the Family Day Out carnival, which marks the end of the month-long National Family Celebrations 2011, an annual event that promotes family life."

Creating a pro-family environment definitely goes beyound government measures. It starts with do people want to get married and become parents in the 1st place. If they do, they have to decide if they know how to raise a family and be effective parents. The rest kicks in likes public policies and employers' initiatives.

Lessons for me are:

1. government can try to provide pro-family polices to encourage employers to help the employees to have work-life balance so that their families can be properly looked after in terms of balance of time allocated;

2. the employers can go beyond what the government policies called for as long as they can afford it. Of course, sometimes they need to decide if they are willing to invest in pro-family measures 1st so that the productivities of the employees can go up or they should see productivities decline before implementing pro-family measures;

3. the emplyees themselves are the KEY. Do they want to have a family instead of just focusing on building a successful career? There will be trade-off, there will be some very good employers who go the full 9 yards to be pro-family. There will also be employers who scoffed at the idea of pro-family as they believed that there is no free-lunch! If you don't work harder and smarter than the next person, you have not created any value add and should be out-of-job!

It takes 3 to dance here. Not a Tango! But a community line dancing!! :-)

Happy National Family Day. Or is it?