With the September one-week school holiday coming soon, I hope organisations will be more flexible in letting parents work from home to let them have valuable family time for bonding activities with their children.

Organisations could implement this as a one-time employee benefit for the Year of Celebrating SG Families, or as a pilot for such arrangements for parents during future school holidays.

This can be done formally with organisational guidelines put in place or informally by individual managers after considering operational needs.

Over the last two years, we have learnt how to work from home productively, after being thrown in at the deep end due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over the last few months, workers - especially those who missed office interactions - have rushed to return to the workplace. Many organisations justify returning to working onsite by saying that it is better for operations and teamwork.

However, many surveys show that employees saw the benefits of flexible work arrangements in work-life harmony and time saved from commuting to work, while they delivered results.

We can now review what we have learnt and make adjustments to reap more benefits from work-from-home arrangements.

Organisations and managers who care about their employees' well-being, including the area of family life beyond work results, will enjoy better employee engagement and build good employer branding to attract and retain talent.

Yeo Miu Ean