SINGAPORE — In a move to give its employees a break, or simply to catch up with other projects, the FairPrice Group has announced that there will be no meetings on Friday afternoons from Aug 14 onwards — barring exceptional cases.

In a brief Facebook post on Friday, the group’s chief executive officer Seah Kian Peng said the group was advocating this in part to “help address fatigue and manage stress” among its workers.

“After all, it is TGIF (thank God it’s Friday),” he wrote.

The idea emerged during a townhall for the group — which comprises the supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice, and food court operators NTUC Foodfare and Kopitiam — that was held last week, Mr Seah told TODAY shortly after the post went up.

A spokesperson for the group said the initiative is expected to benefit some 13,000 employees.

“All of us are trying it out from this week onwards… (though) it will take time for it to cascade downwards,” said Mr Seah, who is also a Member of Parliament for the Marine Parade Group Representation Constituency.

Mr Seah said that since the start of the year, he had noted that many employees within the group had been working “very hard, for very long hours”.

This is not helped by the fact that more people are working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with many back-to-back meetings throughout the week, he added.

“I'm sure it applies to many other organisations as well,” he said. “Really, this whole work from home (situation) has lengthened the working hours for many people.”

Mr Seah cited an example of how he went for a house visit recently, and a resident told him she could not speak to him as she was still in the midst of a meeting, even though night had already fallen.

“I know a lot of us work right through (the day), and the boundaries between work and personal spaces are a bit blurred,” he said. “Sometimes, there is no time to even eat.”

With this latest initiative, Mr Seah said he hopes it gives employees more time to clear their work or even take the latter half of the day off if they need to.

And if meetings have to be called on a Friday afternoon, he said it will be the “exception, and not the norm”.

“If your bosses call for a meeting, it is very hard (to say no), so you have to lead from the top,” said Mr Seah.