An alternative policy suggestion to menstrual leave, contextualised to Singapore

I came across this on my LinkedIn feed today. LinkedIn is no Reddit, but the comments seem largely supportive.

In principle, I am fully in favour of the "health and wellness first" approach to employee management. It hurts to see my sister being expected to periodically feign optimal performance whilst being essentially functionally incapacitated. Therefore, by the standard of only this metric, a "2-day menstrual leave policy" (hereafter, "MLP") may sound like a good idea. However, since equity and equality are necessarily dichotomous, it may be possible that these distinctions engendered by such "progressive" policies may conversely entrench the very attitudes that they seek to dispel. This may be a problem because the pursuit of equity undermines the equality of opportunity, if employers with productivity-maximising objectives must decide between "menstruating people [sic]" and not, ceteris paribus. It won't be difficult to see how this effectively systemically "further" disincentivises the hiring of the former— a 2-day MLP, if fully claimed, calculates to your affected workforce clocking a 10% absence in a 4-week calendar month of working days. This conundrum extends beyond menstruation. If the principle of providing MLP is to cater for people whose conditions are out of their control, then where can we draw the line before it "looks" immediately discriminatory? To what extent might we consider mental health deterioration sufficiently debilitating? How about persons with chronic conditions who may require frequent hospital visits? If we draw the line in blood because "menstruating people [sic]" are more visible and numerous, then we fail to consider the invisible statistic of people who couldn't even make it past the hiring board, and thus necessarily cannot comprise the present statistic of your workplace, much less report requests to HR. Moreover, since not all "menstruating people [sic]" face the same intensity of "menstruating pain", are those who are "not affected" still allowed to claim under MLP? Who's to say who's suffering from how much pain? From the perspective of someone who's not a manpower policymaker, I think that a more holistic and inclusive approach might be to ensure that the start state of all employees (or candidates), in terms of working days, are equal. We may exapt a potential solution from some existing policies. Currently, civil servants in Singapore are entitled to 2 days of paid Ordinary Sick Leave (hereafter, "OSL") per annum capped at 1 day per block, which allows employees to call in sick without an MC; this is different from Annual Leave in that it is functionally an MC for you to stay at home to self-recuperate. Perhaps organisations could consider expanding the scope of OSL to implicitly serve as MLP, under a new "Ordinary Medical Leave" ("OML") scheme that covers any necessary hospital appointments, minor sickness, manageable viral infections, or any other reasonable medical reason that justifiably compromises employee performance or workplace health and safety. By providing all employees with a healthcare scheme of (12x2+2=) 26 days OML, mandated by the Ministry of Manpower, we can fulfil the intentions of the MLP— whilst also reaping the overflow downstream benefit of reduced outpatient load in our public healthcare facilities, by reducing the number of people who may visit the polyclinic just to acquire a MC but can self-medicate. To be effective, we must ensure that the OML is paid, so that employees will not be disincentivised from taking OML, and excess OML must not be allowed to be converted to Annual Leave, to protect the purpose of the scheme. In refutation of the possible counterpoint that employees may "game" the system and maximise OML even when not sick, HR can approve OML on a case-by-case basis, capped at 2 days per block. Moreover, considering this to have an impact on your workplace performance already betrays your prejudice and surfaces the exact problems of the original MLP proposal.

However, it may be possible that systemically requiring HR to approve OML on a case-by-case basis would lead to the same problem of "who's to say who needs a break", and may result in some employees hesitating to apply for the break they require if the workplace culture is unaccepting— which defeats the purpose of the scheme. Truly, such as an upstream system should not be allowed to be obstructed by the conservative or toxic mindsets of downstream actors. Thus, perhaps an improvement could be an auto-approve system for OML, and in its pitch we could also address the recently prevailing "4-day work week" ideation and desires, as a "compromise" wherein we retain the 5-day work week but adopt the spirit of a flexible, people-first working schedule.

At its core, my proposed OML scheme seeks to ensure equality of opportunity to employment, by ensuring an equal value of "guaranteed working days per annum", thus removing it from consideration during the hiring process. Therefore, in principle, the scope of this topic includes the issue of disparity between the number of paid maternity and paternity leave. Let's discuss that. Currently, mothers are entitled to 16 weeks of government-paid maternity leave, with up to 4 weeks allowable to transfer to the legally-registered father. Fathers are entitled to 2 weeks of paternity leave. At point of hiring, this thus calculates to a Minimum Possible Difference of ( (16-4)-(2+4)= ) 6 weeks of leave between male and female future parents, with a Maximum Possible Difference of (16-2=) 14 weeks. Making up for the Maximum Possible Difference (hereafter, "PD"), ceteris paribus, would not be optimal because the 4 weeks of shared parental leave means that it may be possible for a father to log (2+14+4=) 20 weeks of paternity leave. Even if we abolish the transfer policy, this scheme clocks a total "damage" of (16+16=) 32 weeks of absence per pair of parents. There is nothing principally wrong with this, but if we want to preserve the "equity consideration" of a mother's physical recuperation, then this scheme is incompatible with that notion. Thus, considering the Minimum PD of 6 weeks would be more productive. However, this value supposes the zero-sum game of transfer between a couple, but this assumption may not be true since it may be possible for any given mother to utilise the full 16 weeks, and any given father to claim (2+4=) 6 weeks. Therefore, a more realistic consideration would be the "Effective" PD of ( 16-(2+4)= ) 10 weeks. Within the bounds of consideration of only parental leave, we can logically conclude that a fair policy would be to increase the paternity leave quota by 10 weeks. This preserves the equity consideration at start state as fathers get 12 weeks which is less than a mother's 16 weeks, but employers can consider an effective employee absence of (16, or (12+4)= ) 16 weeks of parental leave.

However, less MC, parental leave is not the only source of employee absence possible in the working year. The described Effective PD would neglect to consider the unique Singapore situation of Operationally Ready National Service (ORNS). In Singapore, there's an interesting statistic where the total percentage of labour force and active armed forces personnel exceeds 100%. This is possible because every male Singapore Citizen and 2nd Generation Permanent Resident is obligated to serve up to 40 working days of reservist for 10 ORNS cycles, on top of an initial 2 years of full-time National Service (NS). This absence from work is sponsored by the government, but must be considered for a fair assessment of workplace attendance. 40 working days calculates to (40/5=) 8 weeks of deployment per annum. This brings our Effective PD from 10 weeks to (10-8=) 2 weeks. Thus we arrive at our solution: by adding 2 more weeks of paternity leave, and 26 days of OML per annum capped at 2 days per block (with implied MLP), we can equalise the effective entitled workplace absence of all candidates. We have now ensured the equality of opportunity to employment, whilst achieving "health and wellness first" and "family-oriented" outcomes. Furthermore, not disincentivising couples from having children will contribute to building the future local workforce. However, this may result in the downstream labour problem of disparity between local workers and expats who don't have ORNS commitments, and ceteris paribus, would have an Effective PD of 8 weeks compared to Singaporean fathers— and we must further balance between protecting Singaporean employment with preferring the world's best and brightest to work with and in Singapore, competing on our side rather than against us, to ultimately also benefit Singaporeans.