Singapore Employers Prefer Staff To Work In The Office
SINGAPORE – Statistics from employment portal Indeed showed that employers in the city-state now prefer their workers to work from the office even though employees continue to favour remote work, reported CNBC on Monday morning (17 July, SGT).
As a matter of fact, the mention of the phrases “remote work” and “work from home” in the job descriptions of Singapore job postings on Indeed declined significantly. In May 2023, merely 6.6 percent of job postings explicitly stated either of those two phrases. That’s low compared to the levels seen in 2021, which peaked to nearly 12 percent in December of that year.
In comparison, Indeed noted that the interest of job hunters in remote work remains high with 3.5 percent of job searches including such work arrangements. Additionally, “remote work” and similar phrases are consistently among the top search terms for Singapore.
The data shows that the work arrangement preference of employers is at odds with that of job hunters in the city-state.
“Jobseekers continue to value the flexibility offered by remote work,” remarked Indeed’s Senior Economist for Asia Pacific, Callam Pickering.
“It’ll be interesting to see whether this apparent disconnect between employers and jobseekers hampers the ability of some employers to attract suitable candidates going forward.”
Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report revealed that around 70 percent of corporate executives in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region think that their organisations would be compelled “to wind back progress” on flexible working.
“Today’s economic climate is causing some [corporates] to pull back on the flexibility and learning and development initiatives introduced during the pandemic,” added LinkedIn’s Principal Economist Guy Berger.
