4-day work week in F&B, Recharge Fridays in tech: How companies are redefining the future of work

Tenya Singapore’s staff members Ong Hui Min (left) and Nguyen Thi Xuan Tuyet use the extra day off to spend time with family, among other things. ST Photo: Desmond Wee

For these three firms, making their staff happier and engaged during the pandemic and beyond is serious business.

When Tenya Singapore used to advertise for staff on a five-day work week, it would often get zero applicants, says Mr Bhakt Yap, its administration manager.

But when it changed to a four-day work week for service and kitchen staff on July 4, the Japanese restaurant quickly filled eight positions. These included two supervisory staff who are not eligible for the four-day work week, but were attracted by its advertisements.

The fast casual chain, which opened during the pandemic, is a franchise of top Japanese tendon chain restaurant, Tempura Tendon Tenya.

Its Orchard Central branch has 10 full-time staff, of whom seven are on a four-day week; while the Ion Orchard outlet has nine full-time staff, with six on a four-day week.

"Many locals do not want to join F&B (food and beverage) operations partly because there's no work-life balance and the long hours and weekends are burnt. They don't really have a lot of time to spend with their loved ones," says Mr Yap, 54.

"It's very difficult to find people to work, so we need to come up with some kind of benefit to entice these people to join.

"Hopefully, there's also a change of mindset and people will find F&B is very interesting because you have work-life balance working four days instead of the usual five or six days a week."

Under its previous five-day roster, staff would regularly work more than the Ministry of Manpower's stipulated 44 hours, chalking up 50 to 55 hours over a week because of the industry's chronic labour shortage.

Now, Tenya's rank-and-file staff work 11 hours per day during their four days and the company uses part-timers to fill the gaps.

However, full-timers may be recalled if, say, there is a Covid-19 outbreak among staff, causing a shortage.

To further entice new hires, the business raised starting salaries in June from $2,000 to $2,300 previously, to $2,300 to $2,400, depending on experience.

Existing staff salaries were also adjusted by about 10 to 15 per cent.

"We set a certain percentage for labour costs and even though we increased the salaries, we are still able to keep the labour costs less than that percentage," he says, as the total increment is less than what was previously paid for overtime work and part-timers.

Kitchen crew member Ong Hui Min, 33, has used her extra day off to hike with friends, spend time with her sisters and their kids, and bake almond cakes.

"I feel it's better because I can focus and concentrate on my work after three days of rest. I also have more time with my family," says Ms Ong, who hopes to start an online business.

Similarly, Ms Nguyen Thi Xuan Tuyet, 34, a service crew member, welcomes the extra time with her husband and 12-year-old son. The boy recently came to Singapore from Vietnam to study, so she has been showing him around the island.

"I can do yoga, exercise, cook or read a book. Before, I worked five days and had two days off, so I didn't have much time with my family," she says.

Mr Yap adds that Tenya is looking to add on more staff benefits. Current perks include a $50 supermarket birthday voucher and referral fees when employees get their friends to join and stay on.

"When I enter the restaurant now, I think a lot of them seem to be happy and they don't look tired. Which is good because, if you're tired, you don't have the heart to prepare the food properly."

Recharge Fridays are a 'guilt-free' way to take leave
 

Mr Tobias Leong lost some 12kg over the last year - and it started because of one extra day off a month.

When his employer, Zendesk, introduced a company-wide Recharge Friday programme in September last year, the 31-year-old chanced upon a free muay thai trial at Evolve MMA, a mixed-martial arts academy near his home.

"It looked like people were having fun. I decided to just give it a shot, commit for one year and see how far I could go," says the software engineering manager, who has worked with Zendesk, which builds software to improve customer relationships, for a year.

He was then at his heaviest of 75kg, thanks in part to the pandemic, and the first few classes were tough.

"Muscles that I didn't even know existed were sore, but after that, you get better and better and then you start to want to go more," he says.

Weekly classes turned to six times a week at one point as he made friends with gym mates who encouraged him in his fitness journey. He applied the same discipline he learnt to clean up his diet and now weighs around 63kg.

"It went from 'I have to do it' to 'I want to do it' and then when you have pockets of time, you make time for it," says Mr Leong, who used his Flexible Spending Account, a yearly fixed cash benefit for staff, to pay for part of the gym fees.

Ms Meiyea Neo, Zendesk's senior human resource director for Asia-Pacific who is in her 40s, says its employee surveys showed that burnout in the pandemic was a real challenge and workers were "looking for more focused leadership efforts and communication around well-being and flexibility".

The company, which hires more than 6,000 people globally, of which about 300 are in Singapore, had previously experimented with programmes that minimised meetings.

As these were based on teams' individual schedules, finding something that worked for almost everyone was an uphill task.

The Recharge Friday programme, which gives staff "time and space to focus on self-care and work-life balance", seems to be a hit so far. It is a paid day off every month, on top of annual leave. Teams that cannot take an entire day off because of business-critical functions get a half-day off every Friday.

"In less than six months, we have seen the positive impact of continuing Recharge Fridays, with over half the comments from a recent employee engagement survey in May citing how positive it has been for their well-being," says Ms Neo. She adds that scores for the well-being component also went up by four points compared with the previous year.

The company practises what it calls a "fully flexible" workplace designation and has done away with previous terms such as "in office" and "remote". Under its Extended Stay Policy, staff can work from anywhere for up to 90 days during a calendar year.

Mr Leong calls Recharge Fridays a "guilt-free way of taking leave because the whole company is on leave".

He appreciates the fact that Zendesk does not just highlight employees doing cool activities, such as mountain-climbing, when it posts about Recharge Fridays on social media platform LinkedIn.

There are photos of staff just chilling out or reading a book, which "puts at the forefront of your mind why these things are important, that you should take care of yourself".

He adds: "You can sense the mood on a week when Recharge Friday is happening - it's totally different. Sometimes, colleagues meet that day to go out and have brunch. Everyone's in a good mood."

Remote-first but keeping office bonds strong
 

Ms Fiona Kwen, 38, used to see her husband for two hours a day.

She works office hours in marketing and Mr Lee Han Xiang, 39, hews to the European and American clocks as a self-employed trader.

Within a precious window from about 7 to 9pm, they catch up with each other while taking care of their two daughters aged six and one. Afterwards, he will be absorbed with work, while she puts the kids to bed. When she wakes in the morning, he will be fast asleep, having ended his day at about 3am.

Since she joined Currencycloud as its Asia-Pacific marketing manager in September last year, the couple have more face time.

Ms Kwen now works from home as the company follows a remote-first approach. Currencycloud, which was acquired by Visa last year, is a global platform that enables banks and fintechs to provide foreign exchange solutions for cross-border payments.

The shift radically changed the dynamic of their days.

"I think what really stood out was I get to spend a lot more time with my husband," says Ms Kwen. She can now lunch with Mr Lee, who starts his day at about 12.30pm, without being interrupted by their children.

"Our tables at home are next to each other, so it's easier to turn around and ask him, 'What do you think of this?', sometimes when I seek validation," she says.

She catches up with her colleagues in person about once a week as she feels it is a "healthy balance".

Mr Lee says: "I get to truly communicate with Fiona during the day. Before she was working from home, it was a short period (every day) and it was not like we could sit down together and have a face-to-face conversation because we had to take care of the kids first.

"After her work ends, we're able to go for walks and keep fit. Before that, it was never possible. By the time she came back, it was dinner time."

And because they have enough couple time, they can focus better on the kids later in the day, he adds.

Mr Rohit Narang, 48, managing director of Asia-Pacific (Apac) at Currencycloud, says its London headquarters experimented with flexible work programmes before the pandemic. By the time he set up its Apac operations in April last year, remote-first was the default working mode. The firm has 24 employees in Singapore.

However, the company consciously creates opportunities for employees to come together, which is in line with its core values of "better together" and "be human". This takes the form of big events such as festive get-togethers, as well as smaller team-based sessions.

"It's a good segue where it's not an imposition, but people like it because they like the social affiliation. And they get to know their colleagues a little better, which helps them in their professional life," Mr Narang adds.

But he says "being in a remote-first environment and being in a pandemic-driven remote-first environment are two different things".

It is common for staff to "literally finish one call and move to the next one". "You don't get your time to get your coffee and other things as well. That can get a little challenging."

That is why the company introduced a mental health day every quarter, where employees can go off-screen. It also has multiple channels on Slack, an office messaging programme, where staff can interact based on interest groups from pets to sports.

"In a remote office environment, the feeling of togetherness can be a little hard to create," he says.

"But I think people have also realised during the pandemic that you have to make the best of what you get. So when we do meet, I feel like many people put in a lot of extra effort that they would not do otherwise."

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.