Self-care is often framed as a personal responsibility. Employees are encouraged to manage stress, set boundaries, and look after their mental health outside of working hours. While these practices are important, this framing can unintentionally overlook a critical reality: self-care at work is shaped by the work environment itself.
When workplace expectations, culture, and systems make it difficult for employees to rest, recover, or ask for help, individual self-care efforts can only go so far.
The Limits of Individual Self-Care
In Singapore’s fast-paced work culture, many employees already try to manage stress through exercise, mindfulness, or personal routines. Yet, studies and surveys continue to show high levels of stress and burnout among working adults.
This disconnect highlights an important point: self-care cannot compensate for chronic workload pressure, unclear expectations, or unsupportive management. When employees feel they must constantly stay “on” to keep up, self-care becomes another task to squeeze into an already full schedule.
How Work Design Affects Self-Care
Whether self-care is possible during the workday depends largely on organisational norms. For example:
- Are employees able to take breaks without feeling guilty?
- Is disconnecting after work hours respected?
- Can staff request flexibility when they are overwhelmed?
- Do managers role-model healthy boundaries?
When the answer to these questions is “no,” self-care becomes performative rather than restorative.
Shifting from Awareness to Enablement
Supporting self-care at work requires more than reminders or campaigns. It involves enabling conditions that allow employees to apply what they already know.
This can include:
- Encouraging realistic workloads and prioritisation
- Normalising short recovery breaks during the day
- Providing clarity on when flexibility is acceptable
- Training managers to recognise signs of overload early
Small, consistent signals from leadership often matter more than formal policies.
The Role of Peer Support and Shared Responsibility
Workplace well-being improves when responsibility is shared. Peer support initiatives and Communities of Practice help employees feel less isolated and more supported in managing daily stressors.
Foundational skills drawn from Psychological First Aid can also help colleagues respond appropriately when someone is struggling — listening, acknowledging, and guiding them towards support, rather than leaving individuals to cope alone.
Reframing Self-Care at Work
Self-care is not about asking employees to do more for themselves in their personal time. It is about creating workplaces where people have the capacity to care for themselves during work, without fear or penalty.
When organisations view self-care as a collective responsibility, they move closer to sustainable performance and healthier work cultures.
