As Singapore’s workforce and employers navigate the fluid, shifting realities of the contemporary job market, shaped by changes across technology, culture, and geopolitics, does France’s short workweek offer insights for Singapore?
In the late 1990s, with the Aubry reforms, France legislated a 35-hour workweek to solve its unemployment. It was framed as a new social compact. Its promise? Shorter hours, better work-life balance, and more jobs. More than 20 years later, this policy remains among the most debated labour experiments in developed economies.
Also, it’s a policy Singapore can learn from as its workforce confronts burnout, demographic ageing, and changing work expectations amid technological dislocations, although Singapore is unlikely to import the French model as-is.
“A shorter workweek could improve welfare for some groups of workers,” said Associate Professor Terence Ho Wai Luen, an economist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
“But as France’s experience suggests, there is a need for flexibility to avoid adverse effects on firms (particularly SMEs) and competitiveness,” he adds, in an exclusive interview with The Independent SG.
France’s lesson: Flexibility over hours
France’s experience? Cutting hours on paper doesn’t automatically reduce work in practice. While the 35-hour rule became the legal norm, many firms mitigated its impact through negotiated flexibility.
“In France, productivity losses were smaller where firms could annualise hours, negotiate overtime banks, or reorganise shifts,” Ho said.
This flexibility, often negotiated at the firm or sectoral level, helped companies smooth workloads across peak and slack periods. Where absent, the reforms were more disruptive, especially for smaller firms.
Singapore, Ho argued, should take note. He elaborates: “For Singapore, any reduction in working hours should be sector-specific and flexible. For example, compressed weeks, staggered shifts, or annualised hours.”
“Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Singapore could leverage the strong tripartite partnership to negotiate how this is implemented at the sectoral or firm level. Offsetting productivity gains could come from adopting technology, reorganising workflows, or multi-skilling,” he adds.
Productivity and work culture: a structural divide
Beyond policy design, the contrast between France and Singapore has a deeply cultural element. France’s approach to work emphasises legally protected leisure time, plus clear boundaries between work and personal lives. Singapore’s work culture, by contrast, prioritises responsiveness, long hours, and rapid execution in a highly competitive, open economy.
Notably, this applies only to blue-collar workers. White-collar workers? They tend to work longer hours than their blue-collar counterparts, although they are compensated with negotiated extra days off.
That difference has direct implications for productivity. France attempted to preserve output by regulating hours downward. Singapore? It’s historically focused on extracting productivity through intensity, flexibility, and labour responsiveness.
Ho cautions: “Shorter hours without commensurate productivity gains may raise business costs.” In Singapore’s context, this means work-hour reductions cannot come before changes in how work is organised, measured, and enabled by technology.
Fundamentally? Any adaptation of the French experience to the Singapore context requires a number of changes. It’s not just regulatory, but a recalibration of workplace norms to centre on efficiency, autonomy, and outcomes, versus time spent at work.
A very different labour market
One reason France could experiment with shorter hours was persistent unemployment at the time, but Singapore faces the opposite problem at the moment, according to Ho.
“The 35-hour workweek in France was not very effective in generating a sustained increase in employment, partly because rigid labour laws discouraged hiring. While Singapore’s labour laws are more flexible, the Singapore economy is at near full employment, and there is little surplus labour to absorb”, he notes.
While Singapore’s labour laws are more flexible than France’s, the economy is near full employment as at end-2025, with little surplus labour to absorb, but Ho notes: “On the other hand, cutting working hours may worsen manpower constraints for firms, particularly SMEs”.
This risk is particularly acute in sectors already under manpower strain. “It could also pose operational challenges in sectors such as healthcare where there is already a manpower crunch,” Ho adds.
Productivity before policy
At the heart of the debate? Productivity. France’s reforms worked best when firms changed how work was organised, rather than just how long people worked.
Its workers have been consistently ranked amongst the most productive when compared to developed economies and European jurisdictions. As far back as 2013, research by the London School of Economics (LSE) found French workers to be more productive than German workers while working fewer hours, bucking a national stereotype of laziness associated with France.
However, Ho cautions that shorter hours without commensurate productivity gains can heighten business costs. This is coupled with a risk of informal overtime or administrative burden, which France has experienced.
The policy sequence matters for Singapore, as any reduction in hours needs to be paired with investments in technology and skills, as well as building versatile skill sets amongst employees and reorganising workflows.
This is particularly pertinent for the professional services sector, where outputs are harder to standardise. Ho observes: “Reduced working hours may be less applicable, or less easily implemented, to professional services compared with production or shift work”.
Government as enabler, not enforcer
France’s reforms relied heavily on regulation. Singapore’s approach? If it decides to try this approach, it’ll be more likely to rely on incentives to nudge businesses towards a 35-hour model, similar to the subsidies Paris provided when implementing the Aubry reforms.
“As with other policies that increase cost for businesses, the government could provide transition support — for example, wage offsets or grants,” Ho said.
Ho explains that any move towards shorter hours must be aligned with a broader manpower policy. For instance, could a phased sector-specific rollout of a 35-hour workweek mitigate risks like labour shortages in Singapore’s ageing workforce?
“The policy should also dovetail with foreign manpower policy so as not to exacerbate manpower shortages in Singapore, while ensuring that local workers have fair opportunities,” Ho opines.
Learning without copying
If France’s 35-hour experiment offers Singapore a lesson, it’s not that shorter hours are impossible, but they only work when firms, workers, and the state are in alignment and can move together. Moreover, the different cultural, social and economic contexts need to be factored in.
There needs to be “an approach that is differentiated or customised for different sectors and occupations,” Ho shares. This must be melded with “sufficient flexibility and concomitant productivity improvements,” with tech adoption and work design part of the equation.
For Singapore, the future of work isn’t going to be defined by a single number. Instead, it’ll hinge on whether the economy can adapt its work culture. It’s about preserving competitiveness, while also responding to changing social expectations in a tighter, older, and more knowledge-driven labour market.
