Minister Tan Chuan-Jin and Mr Seah Kian Peng

NTUC FairPrice is a pro-family organisation that actively promotes the strengthening of families within their staff, customers and the community at large.

Their hypermarket chain—NTUC FairPrice Xtra—was intentionally planned to be family-friendly, through initiatives such as trolleys fitted with baby seats, family-sized bulk prices for greater savings, rest areas and priority queues for Pioneer Generation shoppers. Many store features make the shopping experience easier for all customers, especially for the elderly and those with young children. In 2011, they became the first supermarket chain to be certified with the Business for Families Mark, a nationally recognised status.

Beyond the commercial sector, NTUC FairPrice also champions families in the community through efforts such as the annual FairPrice Walks, an event designed to engage family members across three generations to spend quality time together. This event attracts approximately 8,000 participants yearly.

Besides advocating for lower income families with their Share-a-Textbook initiative, which has seen over 4.3 million textbooks donated to needy students, the organization has helped the less fortunate through their FairPrice food vouchers scheme and also hosts community donation efforts with Walk for Rice @ South East.

NTUC FairPrice recognises the importance of strong families for their staff, and are industry leaders in providing pro-family strategies, helping their staff achieve healthy work-life harmony. They recognise that it can be difficult to juggle the demands of a career and the needs of family-life. To this end, they introduced an additional week of paternity leave before it was legislated and implemented flexi-hours for staff, catering to the needs of parents. They also created additional types of leave—like parent care, child care and even family leave—to let staff celebrate important family occasions with their loved ones. Staff have access to seminars and workshops designed to enhance their skills in managing family relationships, and also provide grants to employees and their children too.

In a move to continually value their staff needs, NTUC FairPrice holds meetings for their staff to voice feedback over concerns and also offer suggestions for better workplace practices. These policies may seem difficult or costly to implement, but FairPrice has seen how pro-family efforts help to encourage a happier and more productive workforce; this translates to a better outcome for all parties.

NTUC FairPrice believes that by creating a positive and supportive culture for all families, from their employees, to the customers and the greater community, they will create a holistic plan for strengthening families in Singapore.

Minister Tan Chuan-Jin and Ms Ariel Loh

U Family, an initiative from the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), is a pro-family advocate and voice for working families in Singapore. They focus on building strong, happy families through their many areas of community involvement, with the end goal of assisting families to foster a good work and home life balance.

The organisation endeavours to protect workers’ rights and champion a work culture that has the flexibility parents of young children need.

One of their key areas of involvement is Project Liquid Gold, a lactation support program at workplaces. U Family recognises the challenges that mothers of newborns have in continuing to nurse their child after resuming work. This project not only works to raise awareness of the importance of breastfeeding, it also assists women to fulfil their roles, both in the workplace and the home.

Another area of participation is Shared Parenting, which provides support for shared parental responsibilities. U Family strongly supports both parents to share the caregiving duties, thereby allowing mothers to resume their work in the marketplace. Shared Parenting works tirelessly to engage employers and employees to recognise the importance of shared caregiving.

U Family provides various resources to working mothers, fathers and their employers, such as the Workplace Breastfeeding Mentor Programme, Employer’s Guide to Breastfeeding at the Workplace, The New Dad’s Survival Kit, and many more. They seek to encourage employers to take the lead in creating a healthy work culture, including supporting them with the WorkPro Work-Life Grant and providing them with access to a network of resources.

They also hold events and online polls to bring the community together and shine a light on what hinders working parents of young children, giving them a place to connect and share with other families who are in a similar stage of life. U Family is active on social media, using every available platform to engage families in the community.

U Family strives to assist working people of all ages, nationalities and walks of life to achieve gainful employment through better jobs, and to make a better living through higher wages to see them and their families thrive and grow.