The Workplace Fairness Act and what changes for Singapore employers

Singapore has spent two decades handling workplace discrimination through tripartite guidance rather than statute. That is changing, and it has been changing slowly enough that a good deal of what is now written about it is out of date, ahead of itself, or simply invented. The starting point for any employer reading this is unglamorous but decisive: the law exists and the law is not in force. What an employer owes local candidates today is still the tripartite regime described in our guide to hiring Singaporeans and PRs. What follows is what will change, and when it is safe to say it will.

Where the Acts actually stand

There are two of them, and keeping them apart makes the rest of this easier.

The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 (No. 8 of 2025) was passed by Parliament on 8 January 2025, assented to by the President on 3 February 2025, and first published in the Government Gazette on 13 February 2025. It defines what discrimination is, who is protected, what employers must do, and what MOM can do about a breach.

The Workplace Fairness (Dispute Resolution) Act 2025 (No. 22 of 2025) was passed on 4 November 2025 and assented to on 25 November 2025. It is an amending Act, not a third body of law: it inserts new provisions into the first Act and amends the Employment Claims Act 2016, the Industrial Relations Act 1960 and the Retirement and Re-employment Act 1993. What it adds is a private route: an employee can bring their own civil claim.

Neither is in force. Section 1 of each Act says it comes into operation on a date the Minister appoints by notification in the Gazette, and as at 21 August 2026 no such notification has been made. Singapore Statutes Online still files both under “Uncommenced”. MOM has said publicly that it intends the Act to take effect end-2027. That is a target repeated in ministerial speeches and press material, and it is not a date written into either Act, so treat it as a planning assumption and nothing firmer. Once a provision does commence, section 46 gives the Minister a two-year window to make saving and transitional regulations.

What the Act prohibits, and who it protects

Section 8 lists eleven protected characteristics: age, nationality, sex, marital status, pregnancy, caregiving responsibilities, race, religion, language ability, disability and mental health condition. MOM groups those into five categories for its own public communications, and states that the five account for more than 95% of the discrimination complaints received by TAFEP and MOM. Section 10 is explicit that the protected characteristic of sex does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Those grounds sit outside the statute.

Discrimination takes three forms under the Act. Section 17 covers an adverse employment decision, defined across sections 5 to 7 to include hiring, appraisal, promotion, rank or status, training, and dismissal or termination, made on the ground of a protected characteristic, including where it is one of several reasons. Section 18 covers issuing, communicating or publishing a discriminatory direction, instruction or policy in writing. Section 19 covers publishing a discriminatory job advertisement or job description that mentions a protected characteristic, expressly or by implication, as a condition, criterion, requirement, advantage, disadvantage or disqualification.

Two details in there are worth pausing on, because they change how an employer should think about evidence. Section 17(2) provides that it is not necessary to prove the individual was treated or affected differently compared with any other individual: there is no comparator requirement, unlike some other jurisdictions. And section 19 reaches electronically published advertisements originating in or accessible from Singapore, so a job posted from a parent company overseas is not automatically outside it.

Part 5 then sets out five exceptions. Section 20 permits a characteristic that is a genuine requirement of a job, meaning reasonably necessary to perform it, or needed for health and safety, privacy, or compliance with another written law, and section 20(3) adds a pointed clarification: language ability is not reasonably necessary for a job merely because other staff happen to communicate in that language. Section 21 permits an employer to decline to hire someone younger than a prescribed age. Section 22 permits an employer to prefer or require citizen or Permanent Resident status. Section 23 lets religious bodies restrict religious offices and the management of religious institutions to persons professing that religion. Section 24 permits declining to hire someone who does not have a disability, for a role reserved for persons with disabilities.

Section 22 answers the question most Singapore employers ask first. Nationality is protected, and preferring a Singaporean or a Permanent Resident is expressly permitted. The Act’s own purpose clause in section 3 says as much: it exists in part to ensure that citizens and permanent residents are fairly considered for employment opportunities and continue to form the core of the workforce in Singapore, with foreigners as a complement.

Who the Act will cover

Section 4 provides that the Act does not apply to an employer that employs fewer than a prescribed number of individuals, and defines that prescribed number as 25, or any other number the Minister may prescribe in substitution by Gazette notification. So the working figure is 25, and it is a figure that can move. For a company sitting just under it, that is one more reason to think about when a growing employer actually needs an HR function rather than an arrangement held together by one person’s memory.

The exemption is not as clean as most summaries make it. Section 4 carves section 26 out of the exemption, which means the fair-consideration duty tied to certain work pass applications applies whatever the headcount. Section 26 is the piece that takes today’s administrative Fair Consideration Framework and writes it into statute: before applying for a work pass in a prescribed category, an employer must have published a compliant job advertisement, considered all responses in good faith and fairly, and the foreigner applied for must be for the advertised job at a salary within the advertised range. Section 45 amends the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990 so that a work pass may be refused where section 26(1) has not been complied with.

The Government has said it intends to review the small-employer exemption around five years after the Act commences. That is a stated intention from the second reading speech rather than a clock in the statute. No phase-in year for smaller employers exists anywhere in the legislation, and MOM has announced none: anyone quoting you a specific year for when firms below 25 start complying has invented it.

The two duties that need building

Most of the Act describes conduct to avoid. Two sections describe things an employer has to actively construct, and they are the reason this is an HR project rather than a legal memo. Both belong in the same file as the written policies an employer already needs from its first hire.

Section 27 requires a written grievance-handling process. It must commit the employer to inquire into and review each grievance and to inform the employee of the outcome; to keep a written record of every inquiry and review for a stated period; and not to disclose the complainant’s identity or the details of the grievance unless reasonably necessary. Every employee has to be told about the process in writing. Note what the Act does not do: it sets no minimum retention period. The employer’s own written process has to state one, which makes it a decision to take rather than a rule to follow. “Grievance” is itself defined in section 25 and covers complaints of discrimination by the employer and of harassment by the employer or by another employee, cross-referring to the Protection from Harassment Act 2014.

Section 28 prohibits retaliation. An employer must not dismiss, refuse re-employment or an employment assistance payment, deduct salary, breach the contract of service, harass, or otherwise subject an employee to detriment because that employee or another person brought a claim, gave evidence, alleged a contravention, raised a grievance, or is suspected of intending to do any of those things. Section 41 makes void any contractual or collective agreement term that tries to exclude the Act or to stop someone complaining under it, and section 40 protects a complainant who complains in good faith from civil or criminal liability for the complaint.

Enforcement, in three tiers

The Minister will appoint a Commissioner for Workplace Fairness, with authorised officers holding investigative powers under sections 37 and 38, including entry and search of premises, requiring attendance and document production, and requiring an employer to produce employees for investigation. Obstructing an investigation is itself an offence under section 38(3), carrying up to S$5,000 or six months’ imprisonment on a first conviction and up to S$10,000 or twelve months thereafter.

The penalties for the substantive breaches run in three tiers, and collapsing them into a single headline figure is the most common error in circulation.

• Administrative penalties. Section 29 lists nine acts that constitute a civil contravention, from discrimination itself to failing to develop or communicate the grievance process. An authorised officer issues a contravention notice, and regulations under section 44(2)(a) may set the penalty at up to S$5,000 for each occasion and up to S$10,000 for a second or subsequent occasion. Those are the statutory ceilings on regulations that have not been made yet. Section 32 allows reconsideration and an appeal to the General Division of the High Court.
• A fine for ignoring a direction. Under section 33(2), failing without reasonable excuse to comply with an officer’s direction to bring a contravention to an end carries a fine of up to S$5,000 for a body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association, or up to S$2,500 or six months’ imprisonment or both for an individual employer.
• Court-ordered civil penalties. Section 30 defines a serious civil contravention: repeat discrimination, discrimination directed by a discriminatory policy, retaliatory dismissal or refusal of re-employment, or repeat retaliation against the same employee within a year. Under section 34, with the Public Prosecutor’s consent, the Commissioner may bring a court action, and the court may order up to S$50,000 on a first order and S$250,000 in any other case for a body corporate, or S$10,000 and S$50,000 for an individual. Section 35 gives a six-year limitation period and bars the action where a contravention notice has already dealt with the conduct.

Tiers two and three are court matters and will need counsel. Tier one is the tier an HR process either prevents or invites, and preventing it is the part we work on with clients.

Mediation first, then the existing tribunal

The second Act adds the route an employee takes personally. Section 36D requires an employee to submit a request to mediate to the Commissioner before bringing an action for discrimination. Mediation is a precondition, not an option.

The time bars for that mediation request are short and depend on the decision complained of. For a hiring decision, one month from the employer’s notice of the decision, or two months from the decision where no notice was given. For an in-employment decision such as appraisal, promotion or training, six months, extended to twelve where the claimant is a female employee who took maternity leave in that window. For a dismissal or termination decision, one month from the claimant’s last day of employment, with a longer alternative for a pregnant employee given notice between certification of pregnancy and confinement. The Minister can lengthen or shorten these by order, and the Commissioner may accept a late request for reasonable excuse.

If mediation does not resolve it, the claim is heard by the existing Employment Claims Tribunal, a subordinate court constituted under the State Courts Act 1970, with the General Division of the High Court above it. No new tribunal is created by either Act, whatever you may have read. The Act ties the tribunal’s monetary jurisdiction for these claims to the District Court limit rather than stating a figure, and MOM’s own factsheet describes the resulting workplace-fairness ceiling as S$250,000, heard under simplified rules without legal representation. That is a different and much higher limit than the tribunal’s ordinary salary-claim jurisdiction, and the two should not be confused. MOM has also said courts may strike out frivolous claims and make adverse cost orders, and that claimants must show prima facie evidence of discrimination.

The practical point buried in those time bars is about the employer, not the claimant. A grievance that sits unanswered for a month is a grievance whose owner has, by then, already had to decide whether to file. A documented process that answers people promptly is not only a section 27 duty; it is the thing that keeps the question inside the company.

What this does not replace

The Act does not supersede TAFEP. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices remain in place and will continue to cover discrimination on grounds the statute does not list, sexual orientation among them. An employer that treats the eleven protected characteristics as the outer boundary of its obligations will have read the statute correctly and the regime wrongly.

What to have in place before commencement

None of this binds an employer today, and there is no case for rewriting a handbook against a date nobody has gazetted. There is a case for knowing which of these will apply to you and roughly what shape they take, because two of them are documents that take time to write properly and none of them can be produced on the day a complaint arrives.

• A written grievance-handling process, with a retention period the company has actually chosen, and a record that every employee was told about it in writing.
• Job advertisements and job descriptions that state requirements in terms of skills, knowledge and experience, on the same standard TAFEP already applies.
• Hiring, appraisal, promotion and dismissal decisions with a written reason recorded at the time, given that the Act requires no comparator to establish discrimination.
• A settled view of whether the company sits above or below the 25-employee line, remembering that section 26 applies either way.

Those four are the scope of the preparation, not a manual for doing it; the writing, the policy drafting and the record-keeping behind them are the work. We run HR Solutions for Singapore employers who would rather have those documents in place before a commencement date is announced than after, and the same ground is covered from the continuity side in our guide to people operations continuity. If you would rather build them yourself, the section numbers above are the map. End-2027 is the target to plan against, and until the Gazette notification appears it stays a target rather than a deadline.