CTE Overcrowding Allow for maimum use of CTE via encouraging staggered working hours, ERP is a good short-term solution. A longer term solution is required
Or as we are now living in information age, profession that can be conducted at home should be encouraged. A good example is some brokering houses are taking initiative to enable their dealers to conduct their business at home. If 20% of the workforce can be done remotely, this can sure reduce traffic.
First convince the Employer, then suggest .... Do you think Employer will buy your idea. Do you have a solid proposal for all the Employers in Singapore to buy your idea!
To make your idea work, first you must know your environment and the Employers' mindset and plans, then come out with a proposal that will benefit the Employers, Environment and People; then your idea will work. - From Mi.
This idea of staggering work hours is not new but it is not successful for various practical reasons: 1.) an office needs to start at about the same time because work is often related. If it is not, well we can work at home. If i hold a meeting, i can't be waiting for people to come in at various times. Sure i can always hold it later, but often every other dept also wants to have meetings at the popular hours. Also if you have staggered hours coming in, do you have staggered hours going off? 2.) your suppliers, distributors, your counter-parties etc have their timing too. If they come in at 8, you'll need to be there at 8. Otherwise...3.) your competitors. If they open their shops at 10, you will not choose to open at 11. 4.) some others have no choice. like restaurants, they need to open for lunch and the various people need to come in to cook, set the tables etc.
As to work from home, some tried, but then human beings need interactions and people still end up in the office. Even video-conferencing is successful up to a point only. People still prefer a handshake and a face-to-face meeting.
But yes, i have witness many small changes here and there in the work place and on the whole, bosses are pretty enlightened about work from home. lastly, there is the practical issue of monitoring people working from home. Not all work can be measured so easily and hence you can't be sure the worker is working at home. :-)
I agree with Cycleman above. Maybe is our culture here in Singapore. In Australia & US, some companies practise staggered hours for their employees. We could study how they do it, for a start.
Working at home is possible, only for certain profession- Housing Agent, Insurance Agent and professionals, part time accountants,etc..; those who need less supervision from their supervisor.
It is possible, to have all these; if the employers and employees have a change of mindset. Both must come to a mutual agreement and the agreement must be properly planned and designed. Mutual Trust and Respect must be the key word.
Maybe, in the future when the younger generation take over.
I'm a driver myself. I have an idea regarding to the partition between traffic going and coming. It has trees growing in between. Can we remove those trees and create a movable partition. During morning traffic flow to city, it can shift to create from 4 lane to 6 lane. Leaving the coming flow from city to 2 lane. In the evening when traffic is heavy from city to home, we can switch to the reverse 2 to 6 lanes.
I posted this suggestion somewhere else in the past... if we were to set up remote "office hubs" in the HDB neighbourhoods, run by either the govt or third-party agents, it would enable employees to work in an "office away from the office".
These hubs will provide basic connectivity (internet connections, phone lines, photocopying etc) for a monthly rental fee (probably using savings from taking less transport) and will be located near or close to child care centres etc so that working mothers would be able to spend more time with their children during their coffee breaks and lunch hours.
Because everyone in these hubs are there to work, the prevailing atmosphere would be more conducive than working from one's home, especially when you take away the lure of the bed, the fridge and the TV.
Eventually of course, these hubs would be used by employees from different companies, industries or work natures, and would actually add more vibrancy to human interactions and even our marriage rates.
However, I do also understand that achieving the employers' trust and mindset change is the key, but I believe employers would be more acceptable to allowing a "middle-ground" solution like this, than adopt the (relatively) more radical concept of letting employees work directly from home.
With regards to the original problem posted here, this will ease the traffic flow problem because less people would need to squeeze into town at the same time. Instead they would only need to go into the office at say, 11am for the weekly meeting.
Having said that, I do recognise that this may not work for certain professions, but if it helps to cut down traffic by just 10%, while improving the quality of family life and subtly changing society's mindsets about such alternative work arrangements, it's definitely worth a second thought.
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