When Singapore’s offices emptied out in 2020, flexible work was sold as the cure for an overworked city. Employees would get their commutes back, set their own hours and finally see their families at dinner.
Six years on, the cure appears to have come with side effects. According to the Jobstreet by SEEK Singapore Workplace Culture Study 2026, 52 per cent of employees say workplace stress has increased since 2019. Only 27 per cent say they have gained more flexibility and work-life balance.
Also Read: Building burnout-resistant teams
Employers broadly agree. Some 48 per cent of them say stress has risen, while 30 per cent think the balance has improved. Nearly half of both groups (46 per cent of employees and 45 per cent of employers) say job scopes have become more demanding.
In short, Singaporeans gained control over where they work, not over how much they work.
The flexibility paradox
The study’s central finding is a contradiction that many remote workers will recognise. Flexible arrangements changed the location and timing of work, but not its volume or complexity. Once the office walls disappeared, so did many of the natural boundaries that used to end the working day.
The commute that once marked the start and finish of work is gone. So is the shared understanding that leaving the building means being off duty. What replaced them, for many, is a state of constant, low-grade availability: the laptop on the dining table, the Slack ping at 9.30 pm, the “quick call” during school pickup.
This happened even as Singapore formalised flexible work. The government’s Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests, which took effect in December 2024, require employers to properly consider workers’ requests for flexible arrangements. The guidelines govern access to flexibility. They say nothing about how much work fills those flexible hours.
The finding fits a wider pattern e27 has tracked: burnout is no longer just a personal problem but an operations problem.
Same storm, different worries
The study suggests both sides see the same forces reshaping work, but feel them in very different places.
AI and automation are cited as a primary driver of workplace change by 56 per cent of employees and 53 per cent of employers. Economic uncertainty, inflation and the cost of living are named by 53 per cent of employees and 46 per cent of employers.
Also Read: The Philippines uses AI as a burnout shield; Singapore uses it for deep work
From there, the concerns split along predictable lines. For employees, the pressure is personal. Sixty per cent cite salary growth and the cost of living as their main worry, 48 per cent are focused on job security, 37 per cent struggle to protect work-life balance, and 33 per cent feel squeezed by competition for roles. It is the anxiety e27 contributors have described as global uncertainty turning into workplace anxiety.
For employers, the pressure shows up on the balance sheet and the org chart. Fifty-two per cent are preoccupied with how AI and automation will change workflows and team structures. Forty-nine per cent are wrestling with salary expectations in an inflationary environment, and 24 per cent cite restructuring and running leaner teams.
That last figure is the hinge of the whole story. When nearly a quarter of employers are running leaner teams, the work does not vanish with the departed headcount. It gets spread across whoever is left. That would explain why job scopes have grown, and why stress has risen alongside flexibility. Working from anywhere has become a convenient way to absorb the extra workload.
It is a local version of what e27 has called Big Tech’s efficiency paradox of record profits and record layoffs. There is also a regional warning attached: the AI layoff trap points straight at Southeast Asia.
Where the money is going, and where it isn’t
The most revealing data in the study concerns employers’ spending plans. The money is overwhelmingly flowing into technology and skills: 34 per cent of employers plan to invest in AI and digital skills, 25 per cent in new workplace technology tools, and 23 per cent in upskilling and reskilling.
The measures most likely to relieve the pressure employees describe are far lower on the list. Only 14 per cent plan wellbeing and mental health initiatives, 13 per cent plan workload management improvements, and just 12 per cent plan to hire more people to ease the workload.
Put bluntly, companies are trying to solve a capacity problem with software. Training a stretched employee to use an AI assistant may make them faster. It does not give them fewer things to do. Without changes to workload or headcount, technology investment risks simply raising the speed at which already exhausted people are expected to work.
That may be a rational short-term bet for employers watching costs. But the bill tends to arrive later, in the form of burnout, declining work quality and the quiet departure of the high performers who have the most options elsewhere.
Fixing the design, not the location
The study’s recommendations are less about where people work than about how the work is designed. They are practical rather than revolutionary.
- First, companies should run regular workload and priority audits that compare targets against actual headcount, so that scope creep is caught before it becomes chronic stress.
- Second, when business goals change, managers should state explicitly what will be paused or dropped, rather than stacking new priorities on top of old ones.
- Third, middle managers need proper training to run distributed teams and protect boundaries. Other research has found that the manager has an outsized effect on wellbeing at work. Fourth, performance should be judged on outcomes rather than responsiveness or how visibly “online” someone appears. That matters in a city where two in five employees already feel watched at work.
None of this is new to HR professionals. The hard part is that each step costs management time and, in the case of hiring, real money, which is exactly what most employers are not budgeting for.
A caveat on the numbers
The figures presented here do not come with sample sizes, survey dates or a methodology, so they are best read as directional rather than definitive. The comparisons with 2019 are also based on what respondents remember, not on data tracked over time.
Also Read: SEA’s CEOs want innovation, but employees feel stuck in execution mode
Still, the overall shape is hard to dismiss when both employees and employers report it. Neighbouring markets have treated flexibility as a competitive advantage; in the Philippines, flexible work is no longer a perk but the price of talent. Singapore’s experience suggests flexibility alone is not enough. Unless companies also limit how much work it carries, the freedom to work from anywhere can turn into the obligation to work from everywhere.
The post Work from anywhere, work all the time: Inside Singapore’s flexibility paradox appeared first on e27.