Workplace Fairness Act: What Small Singapore Employers Must Write Down Before It Starts

The Workplace Fairness Act will make it unlawful for any Singapore employer, including a five-person company, to base a hiring, promotion, training, transfer or dismissal decision on five groups of protected characteristics: age; nationality; sex, marital status, pregnancy status and caregiving responsibilities; race, religion and language; and disability and mental health condition. The Act was passed in January 2025 and is expected to commence in 2027, with the Ministry of Manpower to confirm the exact start date. For a firm without an HR department the real obligation is narrow but specific: clean job adverts, a recorded reason behind every people decision, and a way for a staff member to raise a complaint without it landing on the desk of the person they are complaining about. None of that needs software. All of it needs to exist in writing before the first dispute, because the written record is the only thing that will defend you.

What does the Workplace Fairness Act actually require from a small employer?

Three things, in plain terms.

Stop making decisions on protected characteristics. This covers the whole employment life cycle, not just hiring: shortlisting, pay, promotion, who gets sent for training, who gets transferred, performance appraisal and termination. The trap for small teams is the informal decision. Nobody writes down that the role went to the younger candidate because the team is young, but a candidate can still allege it, and your defence is whatever you recorded at the time.

Clean up your job adverts. Adverts must not state or imply a preference based on a protected characteristic. Phrases that appear every week on Singapore job boards become a problem: young and dynamic team, Mandarin speaker preferred where the job does not require it, suitable for a single candidate who can travel, Singaporean only. Check the live listings you have out there now, plus the saved templates your recruiter reuses, plus the WhatsApp message your staff forward to their friends.

Be able to show how a complaint was handled. The Act requires employers to have a grievance handling process: tell employees how to raise a report, look into it, keep a record of the report and the outcome, protect confidentiality, and prohibit retaliation against the person who reported.

Does a company with fewer than 25 staff get an exemption?

Partly, and the part that is exempted is the part most owners assume is the whole Act. Employers with fewer than 25 employees are set to be exempted from the grievance handling requirement for the first five years after commencement. The discrimination prohibitions themselves are not exempted. A six-person company can still face a claim for a discriminatory dismissal from day one.

Treat the concession as breathing room on paperwork, not as permission to have no process. If a complaint arrives at a 12-person firm and there is no route for it, it goes straight outside: to the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices, to the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management for mediation, and potentially to the Employment Claims Tribunals. A one-page internal process is cheaper than a mediation session, and it also tells you about problems while they are still fixable.

One more point on headcount: if you are near the threshold, know which side you are on and when you crossed. Growth from 23 to 27 staff during 2027 changes your obligations mid-year, and nobody will send you a reminder.

Which common hiring habits have to stop?

Run through this list honestly. Most SMEs will recognise at least two.

• Asking about marital status, children or plans to have children at interview, including as small talk.
• Filtering a CV pile by age, by the year someone graduated, or by nationality where the role has no genuine requirement for it.
• Asking for a language on the advert because the boss prefers it, rather than because customers need it. A genuine job requirement is defensible. A preference is not.
• Quietly passing over a pregnant staff member for a promotion because she will be on leave.
• Letting someone go shortly after they disclosed a mental health condition or a caregiving problem at home.
• Requiring a medical declaration that has nothing to do with the job.

The Act does allow narrow exceptions, including genuine job requirements, religious organisations preferring people of the same religion, and preferential treatment aimed at hiring people with disabilities and older workers. Exceptions are things you can argue if you documented the reason. They are not things you can invent afterwards.

What has to be written down, and where should it live?

Keep it to four short documents. Anything longer will not be read.

1. A one-page fair employment statement. What the firm does not discriminate on, and who to speak to. Give it to every new hire with the employment contract.
2. A grievance route. Two named people, one of whom is not the direct supervisor, so a complaint about a manager has somewhere else to go. Add the timeline you commit to: acknowledge within a few working days, decide within a few weeks.
3. A hiring decision note. Two or three lines per role: who was shortlisted, the job-related reason the successful candidate was chosen. This is the single highest-value habit in this article, and it takes four minutes per hire.
4. A complaint log. Date received, what was alleged, what was looked into, outcome, date closed. Access restricted to the named handlers.

Store these where you already store employment records, under the same access control, with the same retention period. Do not put a complaint log in a shared drive folder the whole team can open. That breaches the confidentiality obligation and poisons the process immediately, because the next person will not report anything.

What should an owner do before 31 December?

You have a quiet fortnight at the end of the year. This fits inside an afternoon of it.

• Pull every live job advert and every advert template. Delete the preference wording.
• Delete the protected-characteristic questions from your application form and your standard interview sheet.
• Write the one-page statement and the grievance route. Name the two handlers.
• Brief whoever actually interviews. In a 10-person firm that may be three different people, including a technical lead who has never been told any of this.
• Start the hiring decision note with your January intake. The habit is worth more than the policy.

Nothing here is a change of principle. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices have asked for most of this for years. What changes with the Act is that it becomes law with real redress attached, and informal practice stops being a defence. Confirm the commencement date and the final small-employer treatment with MOM before you finalise your policy, since implementation details are still being set out.

Frequently asked questions

When does the Workplace Fairness Act take effect?

The Act was passed in January 2025 and commencement is expected in 2027. MOM has indicated that subsidiary legislation and guidance will follow before the start date, so check the current MOM position before you rely on a specific date for planning.

Can I still prefer a Singaporean candidate?

Nationality is a protected characteristic, so a blanket preference stated in an advert or applied in shortlisting is a problem. Separately, work pass rules such as fair consideration advertising and COMPASS still apply to foreign hires. Those are two different sets of obligations and meeting one does not satisfy the other.

What happens if a staff member complains about me?

Mediation comes first, through the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management, and unresolved claims can go to the Employment Claims Tribunals. MOM can also take administrative action against the employer. Retaliating against the person who complained is prohibited and makes the position considerably worse, so handle the complaint and never the complainant.