HRSINGAPORE^® Community Reports

May 2007

Should companies in Singapore allow their Muslim employees to pray during office hours?

Many HR practitioners in the HRSINGAPORE^® Community say that they will allow the practise as long as it does not affect productivity. They generally agreed that in a multi-racial and multi-religious country like Singapore, companies should exercise tolerance towards the different religious needs of employees and such practices should improve loyalty and promote goodwill.

There was one HR person, though, who shared that her company had many Muslim employees but no one informed her of the need to have daily prayers.

HRSINGAPORE^® Consultant's Comments

"From inter-religious harmony, good employer-employee relationship and workplace productivity perspectives, it is beneficial to allow their Muslim employees to pray during office hours. Also, as far as possible allocate a place for their Muslim employees to pray. If the company is constrained by space availability, it would greatly help by allowing the prayer to take place in a clean area where there is much lesser human traffic." says Ms Jenny Au, "However, the frequency of the praying by the Muslim employees should be flexible so long as it does not affect the workflow, urgent work requirement or causing inconvenience to others." adds Ms Au. Jenny conducts Effective HR Policies, Developing An Employee Handbook, Payroll Administration and Certified Human Resources Administrator (CHRA) programmes.

Some of the other issues discussed in May were:

To join the free forum, send a blank email to: HRSINGAPORE-SUBSCRIBE@YAHOOGROUPS.COM

For more about the first online community in Singapore for HR professionals, please visit: http://hrsingapore.net/community/

If you have any doubts please call Anthony Peck at (65) 63378016 or (65) 82689316