In July 2022, global advisory firm Ernst & Young—also known as EY—released a survey highlighting employer and employee attitudes, priorities, and expectations as the world emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic.

For Singapore in particular, the survey, which polled 50 employers and 300 employees, found that 51% of the employees were likely to quit their jobs within the next 12 months.

The reasons cited included a desire for higher pay, better career opportunities, more flexibility, and so on.

Reference:

Ernst & Young Solutions LLP (2022, July 19). Employee influence in Singapore grows: 51% set to quit jobs for better pay, career opportunities and flexibility [Press release]. Retrieved October 29, 2022 from https://www.ey.com/en_sg/news/2022/07/employee-influence-in-singapore-grows-51-percentage-set-to-quit- jobs-for-better-pay-career-opportunities-and-flexibility

Your task:

You are a journalist with The Straits Times, specializing in manpower issues. Noting the phenomenon and trend of post-pandemic buzzwords such as “The Great Resignation,” “The Great Restlessness,” “lay flat,” and “quiet quitting,” your editor has assigned you to write a human interest feature story to probe further the changing expectations and behaviour of the Singaporean workforce as it emerged from the shadow of Covid-19.

Your editor’s brief to you is to humanise this topic through the perspectives and experiences of three Singaporean working professionals. These could be, for example, an executive who is planning to resign from his/her job, a former professional who has decided to take a break from his/her career, or an office worker who is practising “quiet quitting,” etc. In order to incorporate a diversity of views, you should ensure a spread of age groups among the three Singaporean working professionals you interview for this feature story.

You need to demonstrate the ability to effectively use rich media elements to enrich your feature story. Minimally, your feature story needs to be accompanied by at least one appropriate photograph which you have taken of your interviewee/s and hence have the right to use and publish. Please incorporate the photograph into your feature story, with an appropriate caption. If you decide to include a video that you have produced, please upload it to a viewable platform such as YouTube, and provide the address of the website where you have stored the video at the end of your feature article.

Propose a suitable headline for your story, which will be published in the Saturday edition of
The Straits Times.

This ECA provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate the ability to translate the conceptual frameworks of feature writing into a finished story and apply an appropriate style and structure

in developing the feature story. This ECA, together with your TMA, will provide you with writing samples that allow you to construct a beginning portfolio of completed feature stories.

You should write no more than 1,200 words. Markers will not mark any work beyond the word limit. Pictures, captions, headlines, and references, if any, are excluded from the word count.

Title of Feature Story: Singaporean professional workers expecting much more from their employers post covid situation!

Covid-19 has affected working professionals in a significant way, with many of them losing their job, and many of them have higher expectations from their employer. Employees are looking for better pay and career opportunities with higher flexibility to which they are accustomed during the Covid situation.