(Bloomberg) -- Seven in 10 Singapore employees want a four-day work week to help them achieve better balance in their lives, the Straits Times reported Monday, citing a July poll conducted by Milieu Insight.

Some companies in Singapore are already experimenting with a shorter work week, according to the report. New York-listed PropertyGuru Group Ltd. is giving staff more rest days, while maintaining the same number of working hours. Smaller businesses including barbershop-chain Sultans of Shave and dental practice DP Dental are also reducing the number of work days.

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Flexible employment arrangements have been in the spotlight in recent years, after the Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people to work from home. In a six-month experiment that is the largest of its kind in the world, 70 companies in the UK are currently allowing staff to work a four-day week without a reduction in wages.

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PropertyGuru employees can compress their full week’s 40 work hours into four days a week, or nine days a fortnight with no change in pay as part of a flexible work program that started in 2021, the company said in an email to Bloomberg.

The Singapore National Employers Federation will be watching the outcomes of the UK trial but will not endorse it, the Straits Times quoted SNEF executive director Sim Gim Guan as saying, adding “There is no one-size-fits-all type of work arrangement that can apply to all workplaces.”

(Update with details of PropertyGuru’s program in seconds, fourth paragraphs.)

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Author: Chanyaporn Chanjaroen