Three out of four employers in Singapore say it is important for their employees to work overtime or on weekends, according to the results of a latest survey released on Monday.

The survey by online jobs portal JobsCentral Group also showed that an employee's relationship with his or her boss can significantly affect work happiness, especially in areas of advancement opportunities and work autonomy.

About 46 percent of the employers also say they would contact their employees who are on leave. 58 percent maintain it is important their employees remain contactable, regardless of whether they are on vacation.

"Expecting employees to work beyond normal work hours has become the norm, possibly from cultural issues like equating extra effort to good performance or economic reasons like trying to improve worker productivity," said Michelle Lim, chief operating officer of JobsCentral Group.

"However, highly stressed workers with an unsatisfactory work- life balance are not sustainable in the long term and you can expect to see problems like employee burnout, inefficiencies, and a high turnover rate," Lim added.

Lim also said that it could boil down to the degree of invasiveness of the employee's personal time partly due to the ease of communication.

There are also other bad habits of the bosses. 23 percent of them would stretch meetings beyond office hours. 20.3 percent would email their employees at wee hours of the morning, while 16. 8 percent frequently shorten project deadlines.

The survey also finds that an employee's relationship with his or her boss could significantly affect work happiness.

Sixty-nine percent of the Singapore workers say they are satisfied working for their bosses, with only 28 percent of this group being unhappy with their jobs. However, for employees who report a lack of satisfaction in working for their bosses, the majority said they are unhappy with their jobs.

Among those who are unhappy about their work relationships with their bosses, 87.5 percent cited lack of advancement as one of the key reasons, 80.6 percent cited lack of autonomy and 71.1 percent cited work demands. While the same three areas are also of concern to those enjoying good work relation with their bosses, their levels of dissatisfaction is much lower.

A total of 256 employers and 3,299 employees from all occupational levels and industries participated in the survey which ran from August to October last year. Endi

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