MORNING STAR COMMUNITY SERVICES BOARD
PROPOSAL FOR BABIES AT WORK PROGRAMME
Date of proposal: 15 Oct 2019
PURPOSE
1
This paper seeks the Board Meeting’s support and approval for a new
programme allowing new staff members to bring their young children (aged 03-12
months) to work as part of Morning Star Family friendly benefits for staff members in
order to increase retention, recruitment, and possibly staff morale.
BACKGROUND
2
Morning Star Community Service has the mission to ‘enrich and strengthen
family relationships in Singapore’ and such missional view could be extended to staff
members who are starting their families, which may also help children needs to be
met by their parents, and potentially building a stronger family bond between parent
and child.
3
Such an arrangement could also be encouraged to minimize operational
disruption, loss of knowledge, and loss of staff member’s skills. Female staff members
may be encouraged to return earlier from maternity leave (e.g. needing to only
complete 8 weeks of maternity leave instead of 16 weeks or prevent the need for
mothers to extend maternity leave) and this thus reduces the need to seek staff
replacement.
4
This programme could also encourage mothers to be more effective and
dedicated workers as a form of gratitude towards the company allowing mothers to
minimize the emotional guilt of leaving their child elsewhere, and to assist families to
manage their finances better for not spending extra on infant care services.
CONSIDERATIONS
5
Corporate Services is proposing to:
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
Allow desk bound staff members to bring their new-born to work after the
mother’s maternity leave, until their infants reach 12 months old or until the
infants start walking.
Allow staff members who are non-deskbound who recently became new staff
members to be desk-bound in HQ until their infants reaches 6 months old or
until the infants start crawling, in order to allow them to bring their new born
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
to work, minimizing attrition in the event that new staff members are not able
to seek alternative long term child care arrangements.
To set aside one of the smaller meeting rooms as a space for nursing, and to
provide diaper changing facilities in the disabled toilet.
ACCOUNTABILITY
6
Staff members will be required to agree on the policies outlying adoption of
this programme. Not all staff members will be automatically granted to be part of this
programme, and generally staff member will have to agree to the following points:






Responsibilities of the care of the child lies upon staff members at all time, and
infant is not allowed to be left alone.
The staff member must agree to nominate another team member who may
stand in for care of the infant for no more than a pre-determined time each
day, and this team member must be agreeable to such arrangement. Such an
arrangement may be needed for meetings, attending to clients, or attending
to situations where the parent may not viably bring the child along.
The staff member must not bring the child along to external meetings, and
alternative care will need to be arranged.
Each staff member shall make his/her workstation suitable and safe for the
child.
Should the child be ill or fussy for prolonged period of time causing disruption
in the workplace, or preventing staff member from accomplishing of required
work, the staff member shall remove child from the workplace. The staff
member will be required to apply for necessary leave for the time away from
work.
Staff members are to agree that time to time, on certain operational peak
period at work especially when their full attention is needed (e.g. student care
outing, school holidays, company event etc), to not bring their child to work,
and agree to arrange for alternate care.
Details to the agreement will be listed in the policy for this programme, in which other
staff member not involved in this programme will also be provided with an avenue for
feedback.
7
This programme is opened to all staff members with new born. However it is
not compulsory for all new staff members to adopt this programme, and is subjected
to the job role of the new staff member and operational requirements of the
department. Staff members may still opt to place their child in their choice of external
care. Mothers are welcome to utilize the small meeting room set aside for
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
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8
With the proposed new programme, the management of Morning Star
proposed to run a pilot programme for 3 months starting Q1 in 2020.
References
1. Babies at Work Fact Sheet. By Parenting in the Workplace Institute
2. Return on Investment from Babies-at-Work Programme. By Parenting in the
Workplace Institute
3. Frequently Asked Questions about Babies-at-Work Programs. Parenting in the
Workplace Institute
Prepared by: Ms Sherlee Choliluddin, Manager, CS
Vetted by: Mr Freddie Low, Executive Director
Approved by : Board Members
Put up all the other alternatives as well
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