If discretionary effort is disappearing, who is responsible for creating the conditions where it thrived in the first place?
In late April Singapore-based legal recruiter Lee Shulin appeared on CNA’s Deep Dive podcast and made a claim that ricocheted across every social platform in the country. Companies, she said, were letting go of Singaporean workers in favor of foreign hires. The reason had nothing to do with skill, she said, but that foreign workers were “hungrier.”
“That hunger is now irreplaceable,” Lee told the podcast. She extended the observation beyond Gen Z, noting that older workers were also “not prepared to work that hard anymore” after the pandemic. The “social contract” between employers and employees, she argued, had fundamentally changed.
The reaction was fast and furious. TikTok response videos racked up tens of thousands of views, and a Reddit thread pulled in over 300 comments. One camp agreed she was describing an uncomfortable market reality, the other called the remarks tone-deaf, arguing that “hunger” was a polite way of describing a willingness to accept lower pay and longer hours.
The argument was, unhelpfully, stuck on whether “hunger” is a character trait or a euphemism for exploitation. “It is always easier to put the blame on the other party, than to examine our own behavior, regardless which side we are on,” said Evelyn Kwek, Managing Director of Great Place To Work ASEN and ANZ.
“But as a leader, if I am looking at disengaged employees and my first instinct is to question their hunger, I am asking the wrong question. The more uncomfortable question is, what have I built that would make anyone want to give more than the minimum?”
What Does Discretionary Effort Have To Do With It?
Discretionary effort is the gap between what an employee has to do and what they choose to do. It’s voluntary energy invested above the job description, like staying late to help a colleague hit a deadline, flagging a process improvement nobody asked for, bringing full creative attention to a task they could sleepwalk through.
It is, by definition, optional. You cannot mandate it, incentivize it with pizza or ping pong, or extract it through surveillance software.
People give discretionary effort when they believe their work matters, when they trust that someone notices, and when the environment around them makes going above and beyond feel worth the energy.
ALSO READ: How To Build A Culture Of Workplace Trust
A Great Place To Work survey representing the voices of over 102,000 employees in Singapore in 2025 showed that when asked whether “People here are willing to give extra to get the job done,” the results split dramatically depending on where people worked.
At typical Singaporean workplaces, barely half (53%) of employees say their colleagues are willing to give extra. At the Best Workplaces in the same city, the same labour market, 88.2% say they are.
If discretionary effort were a fixed trait that employees either possessed or lacked, you’d expect the numbers to be roughly consistent regardless of where people worked and not the massive 35-point gap.
“I truly believe most leaders care, or want to care, for their people. The real test is between the intent and the day-to-day – what do we do in good times and bad times,” said Kwek. “How we communicate openly and transparently, how we fight for our people when times are difficult. Caring is not a feeling. It shows up in the room when the news is bad.”
The Rise of Quiet Contributing
“Quiet contributing” describes employees who are meeting their KPIs but have stopped volunteering for anything extra. Quiet contributors aren’t totally apathetic, they’ve just drawn a tighter circle around what they’re willing to invest.
Our data show this does not happen in a vacuum. In workplaces where fairness, credibility, respect, pride, and camaraderie all sit in the mid-50s, discretionary effort also sits low, at 53%. By contrast, the Best Workplaces in Singapore score around 90% across those same dimensions, and discretionary effort rises to 88.2%.
| Dimension | Typical Singapore Workplaces | Best Workplaces in Singapore (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Fairness | 54% | 89% |
| Credibility | 55% | 89.9% |
| Respect | 56% | 90.2% |
| Pride | 53% | 90.4% |
| Camaraderie | 54% | 90.9% |
| Discretionary Effort | 53% | 88.2% |
When people do not feel trust, respect, or pride in their workplace, they are less likely to go above and beyond. The response is not laziness, it’s often a rational decision to conserve effort in an environment that has not earned more.
Five Reasons Employees Stop Going The Extra Mile
Evelyn Kwek believes the key to unlocking what Lee describes as hunger is actually buried within the question every employee asks themselves every single day.
“Does what I do here actually matter, and does anyone notice? In most Singapore workplaces only 53% of employees say people are willing to give extra.The leaders who close that gap, who are getting the best out of their people, are not doing something mysterious. They help employees connect the dots to see how what they do matters.”
Thirty years of Great Place To Work’s research has helped identify the five key drivers behind the decline in discretionary effort:
1. Lack of recognition
People stop going above and beyond when nobody seems to notice that they did. Think about the last time you stayed late to finish something that wasn’t your responsibility. Now imagine nobody acknowledged it, not your manager, not your team. How many times would you repeat that experience before you stopped volunteering?
Recognition requires attention, specifically and promptly, in a way that connects the extra effort to an outcome.
2. Unclear expectations
It’s remarkably difficult to give extra when you’re not certain what enough looks like. In Singapore, “Management does a good job of assigning and coordinating people” is one of the bottom five Trust Index statements at 74.4% even among certified workplaces.
When employees can’t see clear priorities or feel resources are poorly allocated, they spend their cognitive energy trying to figure out what they should be doing rather than thinking creatively about how to do it better.
The fix is structural. Does every team understand how their work connects to the company’s objectives? Do managers translate high-level goals into specific, measurable expectations? Is there a regular cadence of communication that keeps those expectations current as priorities shift?
3. Low-trust leadership
Employees can believe their leaders are decent people and still not trust them enough to invest extra energy. What drives discretionary effort is a deeper kind of trust and belief that your manager genuinely cares about your development, that the company will follow through on its promises, that the effort you put in will be met with proportionate investment back in you.
Trust, Kwek said, “is built in the small, repeated daily experiences that either confirm or erode the belief that this workplace is worth giving more to.”
4. Bad team dynamics
Discretionary effort is contagious. The Camaraderie dimension in Singapore scores 90.9% at Best Workplaces and 54% at typical workplaces. The Collaboration dimension, which measures whether people cooperate and whether management encourages teamwork, scores 87.7% at Best Workplaces and just 53% at typical ones.
When team dynamics are strained, you’re doing extra work in an environment where collaboration is difficult, credit is contested, and interpersonal friction makes every interaction more exhausting than it needs to be.
The rational human response is to pull back, focus on your own deliverables, and avoid the exposed position of volunteering for anything beyond your lane.
5. Limited growth opportunities
If extra effort doesn’t lead anywhere, extra effort stops. The Singapore data on meaningful opportunities to develop tells a clear story: 85% of employees at Best Workplaces say they have meaningful opportunities to develop, compared to 80% at Certified workplaces and 70% at typical workplaces.
When employees perceive that advancement is political rather than meritocratic, the psychological contract frays and this is the ground truth beneath the “hunger” debate. Asking them to be more hungry is asking them to invest more in a system they don’t believe is investing back in them.
The social contract Lee described hasn’t changed because workers became entitled. While the “hunger” framing is seductive because it puts the locus of control outside the organization, the data tells a different story.
Discretionary effort isn’t dead in Singapore, it’s conditional just like anywhere else. And those conditions are entirely within our control.
Frequently Asked Questions About Discretionary Effort
What is discretionary effort in the workplace?
Discretionary effort is the voluntary energy an employee invests above and beyond their job description. It includes helping colleagues, flagging improvements, and bringing creative attention to routine tasks. Unlike compliance, discretionary effort can’t be mandated. It’s driven by workplace trust, recognition, clear expectations, and growth opportunities. Great Place To Work measures it through the Trust Index statement “People here are willing to give extra to get the job done.”
Why is discretionary effort low in Singapore?
At typical Singapore workplaces, only 53% of employees say people are willing to give extra, compared to 88.2% at Best Workplaces. The decline is driven by lack of recognition, unclear expectations, low trust in leadership, poor team dynamics, and limited career growth. Only 20% of employees at typical workplaces report a great deal of trust in leadership. These are workplace conditions, not generational traits. When the same employees move to better environments, discretionary effort rises.
How can managers increase discretionary effort?
Managers can increase discretionary effort by recognizing contributions specifically and promptly, setting clear expectations tied to meaningful outcomes, building trust through transparency and follow-through, and having regular growth conversations with team members. Research shows that leaders who inspire (pull) rather than direct (push) see significantly higher discretionary effort.
How does Great Place To Work Certification target discretionary effort?
In Singapore, Certified workplaces score 76.9% on discretionary effort, compared to 53% at typical workplaces and 88.2% at Best Workplaces. Certification involves measuring employee trust through the Trust Index survey, identifying gaps, and acting on insights. The process helps organizations benchmark their culture, understand what drives discretionary effort, and implement evidence-based changes. Sixty-three per cent of employees at typical Singapore workplaces say certification would make them more likely to want to work there.
