Workplace Fairness Act 2025 — employer obligations — Complete 2026 guide

The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 is Singapore’s first dedicated anti-discrimination statute for the workplace. Passed by Parliament on 8 January 2025 and expected to take effect by 2027, it prohibits adverse employment decisions based on protected characteristics and obliges employers with 25 or more employees to put proper grievance-handling processes in place.

Little Big Employment Agency works with a panel of corporate and employment law firms; this article is general information, not legal advice.

What the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 is

For two decades, fair employment in Singapore was governed by the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TGFEP), an administrative framework enforced through the Ministry of Manpower’s work pass levers rather than through the courts. The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 changes that. It converts the core of the guidelines into binding legislation, with civil penalties, corrective orders and a structured claims process for affected employees and job applicants.

The legislative framework was delivered in two parts. The principal Act, passed on 8 January 2025, sets out the prohibited conduct, the protected characteristics and the employer obligations. A companion dispute-resolution Bill, passed later in 2025, channels workplace fairness claims through mandatory mediation at the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) before they can proceed to the Employment Claims Tribunals — the same tribunals established by the Employment Claims Act 2016 for salary and wrongful dismissal disputes.

The Act does not replace the TGFEP entirely. The guidelines continue to apply to smaller employers that fall outside the Act’s initial coverage, and to characteristics and situations the Act does not cover. Employers should treat the two regimes as a layered system: the Act as the statutory floor, and the guidelines as the broader standard that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) still expects every employer in Singapore to observe.

Who the Act applies to

The Act applies to employers in Singapore with 25 or more employees. Firms with fewer than 25 employees are exempted at commencement, with the exemption to be reviewed about five years after the Act takes effect. Even exempt small firms remain fully subject to the TGFEP and to MOM’s administrative enforcement, so headcount is not a free pass.

Coverage extends across the employment lifecycle. The Act protects job applicants in recruitment, employees in appraisal, promotion, training, posting and dismissal decisions, and it applies to local and foreign employees alike — including Employment Pass, S Pass and Work Permit holders. If your firm hires foreign professionals, the Act sits alongside the Fair Consideration Framework job-advertising rules and the requirement under Section 5(1) of the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990 that no person may employ a foreign employee otherwise than in accordance with a valid work pass.

Protected characteristics and prohibited conduct

The Act prohibits adverse employment decisions made because of a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics are:

• Age
• Nationality
• Sex, marital status, pregnancy status and caregiving responsibilities
• Race, religion and language
• Disability and mental health conditions

Together, MOM estimates these characteristics account for the overwhelming majority of discrimination complaints it receives. An “adverse employment decision” includes refusing to hire, dismissing, demoting, denying promotion or training, and varying terms of employment to a person’s detriment, where a protected characteristic was a reason for the decision.

There are calibrated exceptions. An employer may take a protected characteristic into account where it is a genuine and reasonable job requirement — for example, a requirement for physical fitness for specific operational roles — and religious organisations may make employment decisions based on religion for roles connected with their religious purpose. Employers may also continue to favour Singaporeans in line with national manpower policy; the Act expressly does not prevent programmes that support local employment.

Core employer obligations under the Act

For employers, the compliance burden falls into four practical areas:

• No discriminatory employment decisions. Recruitment, appraisal, promotion, posting and dismissal decisions must be made on merit, and the documented reasons for each decision must be capable of standing up to scrutiny.
• No discriminatory job advertisements or interview questions. Advertisements must not state preferences for protected characteristics unless a genuine job requirement applies and is stated. The same discipline applies to application forms and interviews.
• Grievance-handling processes. Covered employers must put in place a proper process to inquire into and respond to workplace fairness grievances, communicate it to staff, and keep records of grievances and how they were resolved.
• No retaliation. The Act protects employees who report discrimination or harassment, or who assist in an inquiry, from victimisation — including dismissal, demotion or harassment in response to a report.

These obligations interlock with existing law. Section 14 of the Employment Act 1968 already requires due inquiry before an employee is dismissed for misconduct, and Section 4 of the Retirement and Re-employment Act 1993 prohibits dismissing an employee below the prescribed retirement age on the ground of age. The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 adds a horizontal anti-discrimination layer across all of these decision points.

Designing a grievance-handling process that passes muster

Of all the obligations under the Workplace Fairness Act 2025, the grievance-handling duty is the one most likely to be tested in practice, because it converts every internal complaint into a record that may later be examined by MOM, TADM mediators or the Employment Claims Tribunals. A defensible process has five elements.

First, a clear intake channel. Employees must know who receives fairness grievances — usually a named HR officer plus an alternative route where the complaint concerns that officer’s own line. Second, defined timelines: acknowledge within 3 working days, complete the inquiry within 2–4 weeks, and tell the complainant the outcome in writing. Third, genuine inquiry: interview the complainant, the decision-maker and material witnesses, and examine the documents behind the disputed decision rather than simply asking the manager whether they discriminated. Fourth, confidentiality: information should be shared strictly on a need-to-know basis, and both complainant and respondent should be told this expressly. Fifth, record-keeping: retain the complaint, the inquiry notes and the outcome for a sensible retention period — at least the duration of any limitation period for claims.

Employers with unionised workforces should also align the process with their collective agreements, and multinationals should check that global whistleblowing hotlines feed Singapore complaints into the local process rather than bypassing it. A grievance process that exists only in the handbook, with no trained officers and no records, is treated by regulators as no process at all.

Penalties, costs and timeline

The enforcement model is graduated, but the numbers at the top end are significant:

• Commencement: the Act is expected to take effect by 2027, giving employers a runway of roughly 12–18 months from 2026 to prepare.
• Coverage threshold: 25 or more employees; the small-firm exemption is to be reviewed about five years after commencement.
• Administrative penalties: for less serious breaches, such as failing to maintain a grievance-handling process, MOM can issue corrective orders and administrative financial penalties in the region of S$5,000 per breach.
• Civil penalties: for serious or repeated contraventions, MOM may seek civil penalties through the courts — up to S$50,000 for culpable individuals and up to S$250,000 for firms in the most egregious cases.
• Work pass consequences: discriminatory employers can also face suspension of work pass privileges, typically for 12 to 24 months, which for foreign-talent-dependent firms is often the costliest sanction of all.
• Compliance budget: for a typical SME, a first-pass compliance project — policy refresh, grievance procedure, manager training and documentation templates — usually costs between S$3,000 and S$15,000 if external advisers are used, and takes 4–8 weeks.

Step-by-step compliance roadmap for 2026

1. Confirm coverage. Count your Singapore headcount (all employees, local and foreign). At 25 or more, plan for full statutory coverage from commencement.
2. Audit your hiring funnel. Review job advertisements, application forms and interview scripts for references to age, nationality, sex, marital or pregnancy status, caregiving, race, religion, language, disability or mental health. Remove or justify each one.
3. Rewrite the employee handbook. Insert a workplace fairness policy naming the protected characteristics, the standard of conduct expected, and the consequences of breach.
4. Build the grievance process. Designate trained grievance officers, set response timelines (acknowledgement within 3 working days and inquiry outcome within 2–4 weeks is a sensible benchmark), guarantee confidentiality, and document every step.
5. Train decision-makers. Hiring managers and appraisers need to understand what an adverse employment decision is and how to record legitimate, merit-based reasons.
6. Fix your documentation. Appraisal records, promotion matrices and dismissal files are your primary defence in any TADM mediation or Employment Claims Tribunals proceeding.
7. Re-check work pass practices. If you hire foreign professionals, align your Fair Consideration Framework advertising, your end-2027 WFA preparation plan, and your Employment Pass renewals so that nationality-based decisions are documented on merit.

How the Act compares with the Tripartite Guidelines

Employers often ask what actually changes when the Act commences, given that the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices have prohibited much of the same conduct since 2006. The differences are structural rather than cosmetic. The guidelines apply to every employer with no headcount threshold, but are enforced administratively — through TAFEP engagement, watchlisting and work pass sanctions. The Act applies, initially, only to employers with 25 or more employees, but carries statutory consequences: corrective orders, administrative financial penalties and court-imposed civil penalties, together with a formal claims pathway for individuals through TADM mediation and the Employment Claims Tribunals.

The protected characteristics also differ in precision. The guidelines speak broadly of merit-based employment; the Act enumerates a closed list of characteristics — age, nationality, sex, marital status, pregnancy status, caregiving responsibilities, race, religion, language, disability and mental health conditions. Conduct tied to a characteristic outside the statutory list (for example, dismissal connected to an employee’s housing status or criminal record history) remains governed by the guidelines and general employment law rather than the Act.

Practically, the safest course for 2026 is to build one compliance framework that satisfies both regimes: merit-based, documented decisions across the lifecycle, clean advertisements, a working grievance process and zero tolerance for retaliation. An employer who meets the Act’s standard will almost always satisfy the guidelines; the reverse is not guaranteed.

Common mistakes employers make

• Assuming the Act only matters from 2027. Complaints lodged with TAFEP and MOM today are already assessed against the TGFEP, and pre-commencement conduct shapes enforcement posture.
• Treating the small-firm exemption as immunity. Firms below 25 employees remain subject to the guidelines and to work pass sanctions.
• Keeping no written reasons for decisions. The single most common weakness in discrimination disputes is an empty paper trail.
• Retaliating informally. Sidelining a complainant from projects or excluding them from meetings is victimisation even if no formal sanction is imposed.
• Copy-pasting foreign policies. US or EU anti-discrimination templates use different protected categories and miss Singapore-specific carve-outs such as the local-employment programmes.

How the Act interacts with foreign-talent hiring

Singapore’s work pass system and its fairness framework are deliberately linked. Nationality is a protected characteristic, so a decision to hire, renew or dismiss that is driven by nationality rather than merit can engage both the Act and MOM’s Fair Consideration Framework watchlist. Employers building Singapore teams from scratch — for example, foreign founders who have just incorporated — should bake fair-hiring documentation into their setup; our partner guide to Singapore Pte Ltd company registration for foreigners covers the corporate side of that journey.

At the senior end of the market, high-net-worth principals relocating under the ONE Pass or Global Investor Programme face the same obligations once they employ 25 or more staff in their Singapore operations; see the Raffles Corporate Services guide to the Family Office Principal track under ONE Pass and GIP. Investors weighing Singapore against other hubs will also find that a credible fairness regime is part of what the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) markets to global firms: regulated, but predictable.

FAQs

When does the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 take effect?
The Act was passed on 8 January 2025 and is expected to commence by 2027. MOM has signalled a lead time so employers can adjust policies and processes before enforcement begins.

Does the Act apply to job applicants or only to existing employees?
Both. Discriminatory refusals to hire, discriminatory advertisements and discriminatory interview practices are all covered, alongside decisions affecting existing employees.

My company has 18 employees. Are we exempt?
You fall outside the Act’s initial 25-employee threshold, but the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices still apply in full, and MOM can still curtail your work pass privileges for discriminatory conduct. The exemption will also be reviewed about five years after commencement.

Can employees sue directly under the Act?
Claims must first go through mediation at TADM. Unresolved claims can then proceed to the Employment Claims Tribunals under the dispute-resolution framework, which keeps costs and formality low for both sides.

Does the Act cover foreign employees on work passes?
Yes. Employment Pass, S Pass and Work Permit holders are protected in the same way as local employees, and immigration formalities for dependants are handled separately by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

Related guides

For adjacent reading, see our employer guide to the retirement age rising to 64 and re-employment age to 69 from 1 July 2026, the Raffles Corporate Services guide to the Family Office Principal track, and the Singapore Secretary Services guide to company registration for foreigners.

Need help with this? Call, SMS or WhatsApp +65 8501 7133, or email [email protected]. Little Big Employment Agency (EA Licence 19C9790) works with a panel of corporate and employment law firms; this article is general information, not legal advice.