Employers that rebuild jobs around flexible hours will get grants and incentives, Acting Minister for Manpower Jasmin Lau said on 14 October. Speaking at the Institute of Policy Studies’ Young Singaporeans Conference 2026, she said the government is working on “flexible load jobs”, roles that some call fractional or part-time, and is studying which sectors and roles to start with.
“It will come with grants and incentives for employers to do so. We don’t expect it to be national scale right from the start, because it has to be tested with some employers in some sectors to see whether it works,” Ms Lau said.
How flexible load jobs would work
The idea is for employers to bundle tasks differently so that each worker can work at a different rhythm. Pay would follow the work. Ms Lau said workers in these roles must understand they may be paid differently based on the tasks, outputs and outcomes they deliver.
She framed the roles as temporary by design. People would take them for as long as they need, for caregiving or while children are young, and move back to full roles when they return to the workforce fully. She said the scheme would go beyond marriage and parenthood policy and support anyone who needs flexibility in their working life.
Ms Lau sits on the Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup, chaired by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah. The workgroup is looking at financial costs, work-life support, caregiving, housing, healthcare, preschool and education, and will release its findings by early next year.
What employers can already tap
The new scheme would add to support already on the books. In a written parliamentary reply on 7 October, MOM named two grants introduced since the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests took effect in December 2024:
- SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+), launched this year, funds workforce transformation projects that redesign roles and work processes, which can make flexible arrangements possible.
- EDGE Grant helps employers adopt digital tools and equipment that support flexible work, such as software that automates processes, enables remote work or makes shift scheduling more flexible.
Employers can also use the Productivity Solutions Grant for IT and HR tools that facilitate flexible work. Enterprise Singapore’s PSG supported 7,900 unique entities in 2025, though MOM does not track whether those purchases went towards flexible work.
For senior workers, MOM’s Part-time Re-employment Grant pays S$2,500 per resident worker aged 60 and above, capped at S$125,000 per company, to employers that offer part-time re-employment, flexible work arrangements and structured career planning. It runs until 2027.
Flexible work is already common. MOM’s surveys found seven in 10 firms offered scheduled flexible work arrangements in 2025, the year after the guidelines took effect.
On the right to disconnect
Ms Lau called the “right to disconnect” an “extremely useful practice”, and said the public service, as a large employer, can model it, with leaders not expecting staff to respond on weekends. She warned against rigid rules on working hours, though.
“As a mother of young children, I cannot work during certain hours,” she said. She shuts off work to pick her children up from preschool and returns to it later at night. “So I don’t want also that we end up in the situation that people lose this flexibility, because now suddenly we’re not allowed to work.”
What it means for you
For workers, the trade-off is clear: more control over hours, with pay tied to output. For employers, the grants for flexible load jobs are not yet open, and the sectors that go first are still being chosen. Until then, Job Redesign+, EDGE and the Part-time Re-employment Grant are the routes available today.
