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Pros and Cons of Engaging A Part-Time or Contract Employee

The gig economy in Singapore has been rapidly growing in recent years. Traditionally, fresh graduates would rush to look for full time jobs even before their graduation. However, survey results show that a higher proportion of these graduates are taking on temporary jobs instead of permanent full-time jobs after university.

According to survey results from the 2017 Graduate Employment Survey, which polled close to 11,000 fresh graduates from the three local universities (National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University), 80.2 per cent of graduates who found work within half a year of finishing their examinations secured permanent full-time jobs. This is lower than the figure reported in 2015, which was 83.1 per cent.

The rise of the gig economy is also largely attributed to the increase in demand for these gig workers as well. Companies today are actively hiring freelancers due to the shift in nature of work. Certain industries such as food delivery services rely heavily on freelancers. Additionally, some departments within large organisations are very project-focused. Hiring freelancers help to reduce the human capital cost given that they are only hired when there is a spike in projects with tight deadlines.

However, while part-timers or freelancers can help to address the labour issue for short-term projects, there are certain cons to relying on these gig workers instead of hiring a full-time employee.

Can Data Help To Address Employer's Biggest Compensation Headache - Pay Equity?

Pay equity has always been the most talked about HR aspect throughout the world. Be it gender pay equity or internal job pay equity - employers struggle to find sweet spot that balances both employers' and employees' expectations of compensation.

For instance in Singapore, the gender pay gap in Singapore has not improved in the last decade. According to a study conducted by consumer research firm, ValuePenguin, men still end close to 20 per cent more than women. In certain industries such as Health and Social Sciences and Manufacturing, the gender pay gap can be as wide as 40 per cent.

Employers themselves do not have it easy.

There is constant pressure, from within the organisation and society, to close the gender pay equity within the workplace.

According to John Schwarz, CEO of Visier, a workplace analytics company, he narrowed down three main reasons for the distinct pay gap between genders.

We are glad to attend the HR Leaders Summit 2019 in Hong Kong organized by KeyMedia last week. It has been a great sharing session with the HR professionals in Hong Kong on how they can eliminate manual payroll and provident fund filing with the use of online payroll software. Industries nationwide are being disrupted by new technology and culture changes. Attracting and retaining talent is becoming more of a challenge in a hyper-competitive environment.

The workplace is a complicated environment – office rumours, ghost stories, bootlicking to managers and bosses, the list goes on. Most of us would have also been caught in these undesirable situations. While some might be easy to slide away from, certain situations might be considerably tricky to handle.

Here are some tips on how to manage these tricky workplace situations.