Speech by Minister Indranee Rajah at the Food & Beverage Management Association Gala Dinner

Mr Lens Gwee, President, Food & Beverage Management Association

FBMA Executive Committee Members

Award recipients

Ladies and gentlemen

Opening

Thank you, everyone for that very warm welcome. I am very glad to be here, and I want to thank FBMA for having me.

FBMA was founded in 1989. What started as a way for food and beverage professionals to gather has really grown to where the trade sets its standards, trains its people, and speaks on behalf of the industry.

This is not a small sector. Food services employ about 240,000 workers across close to 12,000 establishments. It is also one of the few industries that almost every Singaporean interacts with every day.

The Pinnacle Award

Tonight, we present your inaugural Pinnacle Award, which recognises excellence, professionalism and the people in F&B. It covers five categories across an F&B career: Emerging Leader, Beverage Leader, Restaurant Manager, Banquet Manager, and F&B Leader. Together, they cover the whole journey, from someone starting out to someone who sets the direction for others.

So I want to congratulate all the award recipients. I want to congratulate FBMA as well for coming up with these awards and giving your members inspiration and goals to work towards. I hope that all of you will continue to champion this trade and inspire others to join the sector.

Work-life harmony

Dennis Ng (President of FMBA) spoke about work-life harmony and people, and that is a very good segue for me because we do understand that attracting and retaining people in this industry is not always easy, especially in the last few years. You have to contend with rising costs, high rentals and a tight labour market. But as we probe further, many also share that the hours are long. Your peak hours are when others are enjoying themselves over dinner or are at home. Your busiest days are weekends and public holidays, when everyone else is with their families.

There is tension between two good things. On the one hand, your industry runs on service excellence, and this takes years of hard work and commitment. It is part of what makes Singapore’s food scene so dynamic and vibrant. But the pursuit of this can sometimes also come at the expense of rest, well-being and time with family. Both are important, and the question is how they can co-exist.

In some sectors you can work from home, but it is difficult to do this when you are in the frontline industry such as yours. But we think that every sector can review its work processes to see how work goals can be aligned with broader life goals.

The truth of the matter is, you want the people who are working for you to be happy. Because if they are not happy, they leave. At the same time, you have commercial goals, revenue targets and commercial objectives that you need to achieve. The question is how to make this a win-win. We know that, with the recent announcements, industries and companies have been asking themselves how they are going to manage this. And that is also part of the work that the Marriage & Parenthood Reset Workgroup is looking at. There are a few strategies. One of the key things is flexibility: flexibility in how people work and in the workplace. It comes down to two things: when people work, and how much—flexi-time and flexi-load. In the F&B industry, that could mean setting rosters early enough for people to plan their personal commitments around them, letting shifts be swapped, or offering part-time hours to those who want to keep working but cannot do full weeks.

To do this sustainably, employers can take the first step by speaking to employees to understand their needs. Employer-employee conversations are really important because, even among restaurants, the culture, operating hours and work processes differ from restaurant to restaurant and organisation to organisation. Having that conversation with employees and working something out that meets your needs as well as theirs makes a big difference. We also want to see how jobs can be redesigned. Through the SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+), employers can tap on Government support to redesign jobs and transform their workforce. This is not a static area because my Workgroup is looking at it, and we will see how we can improve. One of the things we want to do is to work with your industry to understand it better and see how we can collaborate with you.

We introduced the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests to set out the process for workers to formally request flexible work arrangements and for employers to consider these requests on reasonable business grounds. The guidelines are a step in the right direction. But supervisors and colleagues are also very important in creating a workplace culture where employees feel supported in utilising their parental leave and flexible work arrangements. I also want to say that flexible work arrangements are not just for parents with young children. There are singles who have to look after aged parents; there are married couples who may not have children but have relatives to look after; and there are those who have to look after young children as well as aged parents. So basically, the workplace of today is very different from the workplace of 10 or 20 years ago. Workplace norms and cultures have to be rethought and redesigned.

Another area to think about is covering arrangements. In office work, something may be able to wait.  But in a restaurant, a station cannot be left empty, and you need systematic covering arrangements. And on costs, the Government has heard from all of you. We understand, and that is why we have decided to reimburse employers for the financial cost of all child-related leave, up to the reimbursement cap.  This significantly reduces the cost borne by employers, so we hope that you will think about how to use the money you are able to save through this—either to pay co-workers or cover covering arrangements—and also see how you can backfill more easily.

F&B and family life

Let me just end by saying that when we look at F&B as a workplace, there’s also F&B as an industry.

Singaporeans spend more time eating out than cooking at home. According to the Household Expenditure Survey, the average resident household spent around $1,400 a month on food in 2023. Of that, around $950 went to meals bought from restaurants, hawker centres, food courts, and coffee shops. Close to 7 in every 10 food dollars is spent eating out.

F&B outlets are important spaces for people to gather, build a sense of community and relax outside the home. Everybody goes there: singles, who build social connections; those who are married, who invest time in their relationship; and families as well.

Singaporeans love their food, so F&B places are really where they hang out. You are very important social connectors. You provide places where people can meet, build relationships and where families can thrive. All of this would not be possible without your teams. So I just want to encourage all of you—whether you run restaurants or other places where people come together—to think about how to make them more family-friendly. In my focus group discussions, many families tell me that there are not enough places that are family-friendly and cater to young children, or sometimes also to persons with disabilities and the elderly. If you want the entire family to come out together, then the restaurants or food courts must be family-friendly.

The Marriage and Parenthood Reset

And this connects to a larger national issue.

Singapore’s Total Fertility Rate fell to 0.87 last year. That was our lowest to date. It means we will have far fewer people to support an ageing population, and this will strain our workforce and economy if it does not improve.

The Marriage and Parenthood Reset Workgroup, which I chair, was set up to address this. PM Wong announced several recommendations last Sunday at the National Day Rally. These include more protected time for parents, as well as stronger financial support through a child’s growing years.

Policy alone will not be enough to move the needle. It really does have to be a whole-of-society effort, where every organisation contributes within its means. By “contribute”, I do not mean financially. It could simply be the way you provide, for example, lactation rooms or fertility-friendly policies. For fertility treatments, you are not considered sick, so you cannot take sick leave. But actually, the process is very emotional and stressful, and people do need time off. These are things we can discuss later. But the point is that how we look at our workplaces, and how we do things, makes a big difference over and above just policies. Those of you who are employers have a say in whether your staff can build a family life while working in this trade. And you are an industry where much of that family life takes place.

So tonight, I just want to encourage the industry to focus on three things. First, make rosters more predictable, where you can. Second, support your staff when they need time for family, and put covering arrangements in place. Third, make it easier for families with young children to dine with you. These are small steps, but they can add up to big things.

Closing

So once again, thank you very much. I congratulate all the award recipients and thank you for giving me this opportunity to be here.