Singapore’s Workplace Fairness Act (WFA) was passed by Parliament on 8 January 2025, with a dispute resolution companion bill following on 4 November 2025. The legislation is expected to commence by end-2027, giving employers roughly 18 to 24 months to prepare. But “preparation” in this context means more than reading the statute: it means auditing every stage of the employment lifecycle — from job advertisements through to termination — and building internal systems that can demonstrate compliance when the law takes effect. The Singapore Workplace Fairness Act 2025 is the country’s first statutory anti-discrimination law and it shifts a great deal of the burden of proof onto employers to show that decisions were made on legitimate, non-discriminatory grounds.
For HR managers and business owners who have operated under the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) guidelines for years, the WFA will feel familiar in philosophy but significantly sharper in teeth. What was previously a guidelines-based framework with administrative consequences has become a statutory one with defined penalties, mandatory grievance procedures, and individual employment claims rights. This guide sets out what the WFA requires, what it prohibits, and the specific steps employers should take between now and commencement.
What the Workplace Fairness Act Covers
The WFA prohibits employment decisions that adversely affect a person — at any stage of employment — on the basis of a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics under the Act are:
- Age
- Nationality
- Sex (including gender identity)
- Marital status
- Pregnancy status
- Caregiving responsibilities
- Race
- Religion
- Language ability
- Disability
- Mental health condition
The prohibition applies across all employment stages: job advertisements and screening, interviews and selection, performance management, promotion and remuneration decisions, and dismissal. An employer who excludes a candidate because of their nationality, declines to promote an employee because of their caregiving responsibilities, or dismisses a worker on grounds that are demonstrably linked to a protected characteristic will face liability under the WFA.
Critically, the WFA does not prohibit employers from making employment decisions based on merit, business requirements, or the genuine occupational requirements of a role. What it prohibits is adverse treatment that is caused by a protected characteristic — and it requires employers to be able to demonstrate that their decisions are merit-based when challenged.
Penalties Under the Workplace Fairness Act
The WFA creates two tiers of enforcement:
Administrative penalties (Ministry of Manpower)
MOM may issue administrative penalties for breaches. For corporate employers, the penalty is up to SGD 5,000 for a first breach and up to SGD 10,000 for subsequent breaches. For individual employers, the equivalent figures are SGD 2,500 or six months’ imprisonment, or both. These administrative penalties sit alongside MOM’s existing powers to restrict future Employment Pass and S Pass approvals for non-compliant employers — a consequence that can be far more commercially damaging than the financial penalty itself. Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower Fair Employment Practices page sets out the current fair employment obligations alongside the coming WFA framework.
Civil remedies (Employment Claims Tribunals / High Court)
Under the dispute resolution companion bill, individual employees will have the right to bring civil claims for workplace discrimination through the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) or, for more serious cases, the High Court. Civil remedies may include reinstatement, compensation for lost wages, and damages for non-economic harm. For corporate entities, serious civil orders can reach up to SGD 50,000 for a first order and SGD 250,000 for subsequent orders. For individual respondents, the equivalent figures are SGD 10,000 and SGD 50,000 respectively.
The government has indicated it will adopt an education-first approach in the early years of commencement, working with non-compliant employers to achieve rectification before escalating to penalties. Egregious or repeated cases will not benefit from this latitude.
The Employer Exemption: Small Businesses
Employers with fewer than 25 employees are expected to receive a partial exemption from some WFA obligations at commencement. The precise scope of this exemption has not yet been gazetted; the government has indicated it will be reviewed post-commencement. Small employers should not interpret this as an absence of obligation: the principle that employment decisions must be merit-based and not discriminatory remains in effect, and TAFEP guidelines — which apply to all employers regardless of size — continue to operate. The exemption is expected to relate primarily to formal grievance procedure requirements, not to the underlying prohibition on discriminatory conduct.
Mandatory Grievance Handling Procedures
One of the most operationally significant requirements of the WFA is the mandate for employers to implement internal grievance handling procedures. When an employee raises a discrimination complaint, the employer must have a documented process for receiving, investigating, and responding to that complaint. The process must be fair, confidential, and accessible to all employees — including foreign pass holders.
Critically, the WFA requires mediation before an employee can bring a claim before the Employment Claims Tribunals. This means a well-run internal grievance process serves both a compliance function and a risk management function: it creates an opportunity to resolve complaints before they escalate to the ECT or the courts.
Employers who do not have a written grievance procedure should draft one before commencement. The procedure should specify who receives complaints, the investigation timeline, the decision-making process, how outcomes are communicated, and the right of appeal. It should be distributed to all employees — not merely placed in an HR policy file — and managers should be trained on how to receive and respond to a complaint without prejudicing the outcome of the investigation.
How the WFA Interacts with the Fair Consideration Framework
Employers who are already subject to the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) — broadly, firms with 10 or more employees who submit EP applications — are familiar with MOM’s expectation that job advertisements be posted on MyCareersFuture for at least 28 days and that local candidates receive genuine consideration. The WFA extends and deepens this obligation: the FCF focuses on the advertising and shortlisting stage, while the WFA covers every stage from advertisement to termination and adds individual enforcement rights.
An employer who complies with FCF advertising requirements but applies discriminatory criteria in interviews or promotion decisions will now face statutory liability under the WFA as well as administrative consequences under the FCF. For employers processing Employment Pass applications, non-compliance with fair employment obligations already triggers pass restrictions; the WFA adds a parallel civil enforcement route. Our Singapore HR and MOM compliance calendar maps the key fair employment milestones across the year alongside levy, renewal, and IRAS filing obligations.
Four Steps Every Employer Should Take Before WFA Commencement
Step 1: Audit your job advertisements
Review every active and template job advertisement. Remove any language that could be read as expressing a preference based on a protected characteristic: age ranges (“applicants under 35 preferred”), nationality preferences (“native English speaker required” when linguistic precision is not a genuine occupational requirement), or gender-coded language. Where a genuine occupational requirement does apply — for example, a requirement that a religious teacher hold a particular faith — document the basis for that requirement before the WFA commences.
Step 2: Train hiring managers and interviewers
The WFA’s reach into the interview stage means that the questions your hiring managers ask — and the notes they take — can become evidence in a discrimination claim. Training should cover: what questions are prohibited (age, marital status, religion, pregnancy plans), how to document selection decisions on merit grounds, and what to do if a candidate raises a concern during the interview process. This training should be refreshed annually and documented.
Step 3: Implement a written grievance procedure
As noted above, the WFA mandates a formal internal grievance procedure. Draft and adopt this procedure before commencement. Ensure it is accessible to foreign employees, communicated in the primary working language of your workforce, and genuinely independent — complaints about senior managers should not be handled exclusively by those managers’ direct reports. The procedure should also designate a named point of contact who has been trained in fair investigation principles.
Step 4: Review your performance management and termination documentation
The most common area of WFA liability — after hiring discrimination — is likely to be in performance management and termination. If your company cannot demonstrate that a poor performance rating or a dismissal was based on documented, merit-based criteria rather than a protected characteristic, it will face difficulty defending a claim. Conduct a review of your performance appraisal templates, the documentation supporting recent terminations, and any patterns in promotion decisions that might be challenged as discriminatory.
Employers preparing for the WFA should also ensure that their current Employment Pass and S Pass applications are structured in line with fair employment principles — MOM cross-references EP applications with FCF compliance records. For comprehensive MOM compliance support — including Employment Pass applications, fair employment audits, payroll and CPF compliance, and work pass renewals — Little Big Employment Agency (Licence No. 19C9790) assists Singapore employers across all sectors. Contact the team at Singapore Employment Agency. For corporate governance and company secretarial support aligned with the WFA’s board-level implications, Raffles Corporate Services provides governance advisory services to Singapore-registered entities.
The full text of the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 is available on Singapore Statutes Online. Employers should review the Act in conjunction with the TAFEP guidelines, which remain in force and set the practical benchmark for what “merit-based” hiring and employment decisions look like.
For further context on your MOM obligations as an employer — including the COMPASS framework for EP applications, levy and quota management, and the full employment pass renewal calendar — see our Singapore HR MOM Compliance Calendar 2026 and the Complete Employment Pass Guide 2026.
— The Editorial Team, Little Big Employment Agency