Chen Hsin-an (陳信安) knew little about the employee wellness or work-life balance policies at China Motor Corp. (CMC) before accepting a position with the Taiwanese automaker last year. Now the 30-year-old engineer praises the company’s programs for substantially improving his quality of life.
After finishing work at the firm’s manufacturing plant in northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City, he typically heads to one of the numerous on-site exercise facilities, which include a basketball court, gym and swimming pool. He is eagerly looking forward to what the company terms its “mini-summer vacation”—a nine-day break from work that CMC arranges for its employees every August. And he was among the first to sign up for subsidized aerobics and yoga courses when the firm began offering them at its Taoyuan facility last year. “I’d wanted to take such classes for some time, and my company’s made it really convenient to do so,” he notes.
Employee wellness and work-life balance programs have become a feature of the corporate landscape in many Western nations in recent years, but such initiatives are less common in Taiwan. Since the beginning of the country’s rapid transformation from an agricultural to industrialized economy, employees have often been expected to sacrifice their personal lives for their careers. Now this workplace culture is beginning to change. Amid the nation’s low birthrate and the resulting graying of Taiwanese society, a growing number of large firms are introducing work-life balance programs in an effort to boost talent retention. The government, meanwhile, is promoting the adoption of such initiatives.
One aspect of the government’s approach involves highlighting model companies. Last year, the Ministry of Labor (MOL) launched its Work-Life Balance Awards to recognize enterprises that have enacted outstanding programs in the area. A total of 106 organizations registered to take part in the inaugural edition of the awards, which will be staged biennially. The participating institutions were then evaluated in three categories—favorable leave and flexible work arrangements; employee wellness programs; and family-friendly policies. Forty-four of the competing enterprises earned an award in at least one of the three groups, while three won recognition in all three categories, namely CMC, which is a subsidiary of the Yulon Group, Taiwan’s largest automotive conglomerate; the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government-supported applied research organization; and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
Though the honors do not come with any prize money, it is hoped that they will make it easier for companies to attract talent. The MOL also believes the awards will encourage more people to inquire about work-life balance policies when applying for jobs. “With the increasingly fierce competition for skilled workers, local enterprises must offer employees a better balance between their personal and professional lives,” says Sun Bi-shia (孫碧霞), director of the MOL’s Department of Employment Welfare and Retirement, which oversees the awards.
In particular, Sun emphasizes that flexible leave and family-friendly policies are needed to help boost the long-term participation of women in the labor force, a matter that is becoming increasingly important for the nation’s economic prosperity. “In the past, it may not have been an issue if women chose to stay at home to care for their children instead of resuming their careers, but this is no longer the case,” she says. “Now enterprises must provide incentives to entice them to return to the workforce.”
According to Sun, the Work-Life Balance Awards are part of wide-ranging efforts by the MOL to make the nation’s labor environment more flexible and responsive to the personal responsibilities of workers. “The ministry isn’t merely seeking to ensure the implementation of the Labor Standards Act,” she says. “Rather, we hope that by pointing out model companies through our new prize, we can encourage enterprises to enact additional measures to meet the broader needs of their employees.”
TSMC has a long-established reputation for offering its workers benefits above and beyond those required of it by law. For instance, according to MOL regulations, employees on sick leave are entitled to half their salary for 30 days. However, workers at TSMC receive full pay during their first 15 days of sick leave, and half their salary for the remaining 15 days. This policy was specifically cited in the Work-Life Balance Awards as an excellent example of favorable leave and flexible work arrangements.
In the same category, the MOL also drew special attention to CMC’s mini-summer vacation, which the company has arranged for its employees each August since the mid-1970s. This month is traditionally a low season for car sales and manufacturing in Taiwan, so the company created a policy whereby it grants employees two additional paid days off each year in exchange for workers taking three days of their annual leave at a time in August specified by the company. Combined with the weekends before and after, this allows CMC to shut its facilities for nine days. Employees also have the option of going on a subsidized trip arranged by the firm during this period. This nine-day break is particularly popular among workers with children as it occurs during the school summer holidays.
CMC and TSMC were also recognized in the MOL’s awards for providing excellent on-site child care services. Both firms set up child care centers in the 1990s, many years before the government began offering financial assistance to enterprises that operate such facilities. Since 2002, the government has provided grants to companies that either have child care centers on their premises or subsidize the cost of employees sending their children to external facilities.
“Parents of young children at CMC can rest easy because they know their kids are so near to their workplace,” says Queeny Huang, manager of the Employee Relations Department in the company’s General Administration Division. Both CMC and TSMC were also honored by the MOL in the awards’ family-friendly policies category for ensuring that all employees have access to clear information on the benefits and policies they have enacted for pregnant employees and workers with young children.
TSMC, meanwhile, was also recognized in the awards for its comprehensive program to promote workplace wellness. While labor regulations stipulate that employers should pay for employee health checkups every three to five years depending on the age of the worker, the chipmaker offers free annual health checkups that are more extensive than those stipulated by law. It has also created a system that uses employees’ yearly medical checkups to monitor long-term changes in their health status.
According to Brad Peng (彭冠宇), manager of the Employee Relations Department in TSMC’s Human Resources Operations Center, the firm’s wellness policies boost employee loyalty and morale. “We work hard because we know the company is genuinely concerned about our well-being,” he says.
Beyond spotlighting model enterprises, the MOL is working to aid the implementation of work-life balance policies at firms that do not enjoy the deep pockets of large companies like TSMC. Last year, the ministry introduced a scheme to subsidize such programs at local firms, and the majority of the recipients of these grants were small and medium-sized enterprises. Though still relatively small, funding for this subsidization program is growing. The MOL has budgeted NT$7 million (US$225,810) for the scheme this year, up from NT$2 million (US$64,520) in 2014.
Furthermore, the ministry has arranged for interested businesses to visit five enterprises that won prizes in the inaugural Work-Life Balance Awards. It is also staging workshops in northern, central and southern Taiwan during which Huang, Peng and representatives from other model companies offer expert advice on how to create and manage such programs. Firms that are considering introducing work-life balance policies can also apply to the MOL for individual consulting services.
“During the workshops, I try to get across the message that it’s not necessarily costly to show that you care about the well-being of your employees,” Huang says. Peng echoes this point, noting that he emphasizes the principles that should be considered when creating wellness programs rather than discussing specific policies at his company.
Ultimately, the MOL is striving to highlight that it is the corporate culture rather than the level of investment in work-life balance programs that matters most. “When I apply for leave to go to prenatal checkups, my supervisor and colleagues are quite accommodating,” says Ellen Chin (金琬珊), a TSMC employee who was five months pregnant when interviewed in May this year. “But some of my friends at other companies would hesitate to ask for such leave, even though enterprises are legally required to provide it, because their employers would not be so obliging.”
Huang stresses that, in a supportive workplace environment, even small work-life balance programs can help significantly boost employee morale, such as a policy enacted by CMC that offers paid leave to parents who wish to accompany their children on their first day of elementary school. “This scheme costs the company relatively little,” she notes, “but clearly demonstrates to employees that we’re attentive to their needs.”
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw