Workplace Fairness Act and Small Business Singapore: Why Under-25 Firms Still Need a Hiring Trail

If you run a 10-person company in Singapore, the honest answer is that the Workplace Fairness Act will probably not apply to you on day one — small employers below 25 employees are expected to be exempted for an initial period — but the fair employment rules you are already subject to will not change, and you should start keeping a written hiring trail now anyway. That means three things: a dated copy of every job ad as published, short interview notes scored against the same written criteria for every candidate, and one line recording the reason for each hire or rejection. That is an afternoon of work. It is also the only thing that will answer a complaint raised eight months after an interview nobody on your team remembers.

The reason this matters in the next few months rather than in 2030 is sequencing. The Act was passed in January 2025 and commencement has been signalled for 2027, alongside a second piece of legislation covering how workplace fairness claims are resolved. Every HR vendor, MNC procurement team and recruitment platform will spend 2027 rebuilding their processes around it. If your hiring records are informal when that happens, you will be the supplier or the employer that cannot produce a document when asked.

Does the Workplace Fairness Act apply to a company with 10 employees?

Based on the tripartite recommendations the Act is built on, firms with fewer than 25 employees are expected to be exempted from the legislation for an initial period of around five years from commencement. Treat that as relief on the legislation, not relief on the obligation, for three reasons.

• The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices continue to apply to you. They are not optional in practice — MOM and TAFEP can act on a complaint, and the usual consequence for a small employer is curtailment of work pass privileges. For a 10-person firm that depends on one or two Employment Pass or S Pass holders, that is a more serious outcome than a fine.
• The exemption lapses. If you grow past 25 employees, or when the initial period ends, the obligations arrive on a team that has never documented a hiring decision in its life.
• Your customers will ask before the regulator does. The same MNC procurement questionnaires now asking SME vendors for emissions data also ask about fair employment and grievance handling. A one-page answer beats an awkward silence.

The Act covers discrimination on protected characteristics — including age, nationality, sex, marital status, pregnancy, caregiving responsibilities, race, religion, language, disability and mental health condition — across hiring, promotion, appraisal, training and dismissal. Confirm the current commencement date and the final exemption terms with MOM or TAFEP before you write anything into a policy document, because the details are still being finalised.

What needs to come out of your job ads?

Job ads are where small firms create the clearest written evidence against themselves, usually without meaning anything by it. Go through every ad you currently have live and remove preferences that are not genuine job requirements:

• Nationality or residency preferences such as Singaporean or PR only, unless there is a lawful basis you can state.
• Age framing — below 35, young and energetic, fresh graduate preferred, or recent graduate as a shorthand for age.
• Sex or family framing — male preferred for warehouse duties, no family commitments, able to work late without domestic constraints.
• Language preferences stated as culture rather than capability. Asking for a specific language can be legitimate when the job genuinely requires it, but write it as the requirement — must serve Mandarin-speaking customers daily by phone — and keep a note of why.

Then check the channels you forget. The ad on your careers page, the MyCareersFuture listing, the WhatsApp message to your industry group, the Telegram post, and the verbal brief you gave a recruitment agency are all the same ad. Third parties acting for you, including agencies and portals, are within scope of the Act, and an agency brief asking for someone young is your exposure, not theirs.

What does a defensible hiring trail actually look like?

For a team of 10, the whole thing fits in one folder per role. You need six items:

1. The ad as published, saved as a PDF or screenshot with the date and the channel it ran on.
2. A written requirement list, three to six job-related criteria, written down before the first interview. This single step does most of the work, because it forces the standard to exist independently of the candidates.
3. The same core questions for every candidate, on one form, with brief notes. Not a transcript — two lines per criterion is enough.
4. A one-line decision reason tied to a criterion. Not a good fit is a liability. Could not demonstrate experience reconciling supplier invoices, criterion 3 is a defence.
5. Who made the decision, and who else was in the room.
6. A consistent storage location, so the record can be found by someone other than the person who created it.

If you are running a formal interview panel for a 10-person company, you have over-built it. If you have nothing but a CV pile and a memory, you have under-built it. The target is one form and one folder.

Where should applicant records live, and who should see them?

Applicant CVs are personal data, which puts this squarely inside PDPA territory as well. The common small-business failure is storing hiring records in the places work actually happens: a WhatsApp chat between the owner and a manager, a personal Gmail inbox, a laptop desktop folder belonging to someone who may resign in December.

Put hiring records in a single access-controlled folder on your company drive, with access limited to the people who genuinely decide. Name one person who owns that folder — in most 10-person firms this is the same person who should be your PDPA data protection officer. Set a retention rule and write it down: keep records for successful and unsuccessful candidates for at least a year to cover the claim window, then delete unsuccessful applicants' CVs unless they agreed to stay in a talent pool. Retention with no stated end date is the version that becomes a problem during a data incident.

What should you do in the next 90 days?

Five steps, in this order, owner named for each:

1. This week: audit every live job ad and agency brief, strip out non-job-related preferences, and re-save each ad as a dated PDF.
2. This month: write one interview form with your standard criteria and questions. One page.
3. This month: create the access-controlled hiring folder and move existing records into it, out of chat and personal email.
4. Before year end: write a half-page statement of how someone raises a concern about unfair treatment and who hears it. You are likely exempt from the formal grievance requirement, but you will be asked for this by customers, and having it costs you nothing.
5. Q1 2027: re-check MOM and TAFEP for the confirmed commencement date and exemption terms, and diary the date your exemption is expected to end.

None of this is an HR transformation. It is the difference between a decision you can explain and a decision you can only defend by insisting you meant well.

Frequently asked questions

If we are exempt from the Act, can we still be penalised for unfair hiring?

Yes. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices apply to all employers regardless of size, and MOM can curtail an employer's work pass privileges where a complaint is substantiated. For a small firm reliant on one or two pass holders, that is usually the most damaging outcome available.

Do we have to set up a formal grievance handling process with only 10 staff?

The formal grievance-handling requirement under the Act is expected to sit with larger employers first, with small firms exempted for an initial period. A written half-page explaining who to approach and what happens next is still worth having, both because customers ask and because the exemption is temporary.

How long should we keep interview notes and rejected CVs?

Keep hiring records for at least 12 months so you can reconstruct a decision if it is questioned. For rejected applicants, state a retention period, delete at the end of it unless the candidate agreed to be kept on file, and make sure the records sit in a controlled company folder rather than in personal inboxes or chat threads.

If you want a second pair of eyes on where your hiring and applicant data currently lives — and who in your company can reach it — that is the kind of review Digital Perpetual runs with Singapore SMEs ahead of the 2027 dates.