Workplace Fairness Act 2025: employer obligations: Documents required and templates

The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 is Singapore’s first standalone anti-discrimination employment statute, and once it commences, employers, starting with those that have 25 or more employees, will need to avoid discriminatory hiring, appraisal, promotion and dismissal decisions, and to run a written internal grievance process before any dispute can reach mediation or the Employment Claims Tribunals.

Raffles Corporate Services works with a panel of corporate and employment law firms; this article is general information, not legal advice. Little Big Employment Agency (EA Licence 19C9790) is an employment agency, not a law firm, and this guide should not be treated as a substitute for advice from qualified counsel on a specific workforce.

What the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 actually is

The Workplace Fairness Act 2025 (Act No. 8 of 2025) was passed by Parliament on 8 January 2025, with a companion Workplace Fairness (Dispute Resolution) Bill following later in 2025 to set out how claims will actually be heard. The Ministry of Manpower at https://www.mom.gov.sg is the lead agency for the Act and publishes the authoritative implementation timeline and phased employer thresholds, and employers should check there directly before finalising a compliance plan. As at the date of this article, the Act is recorded on Singapore Statutes Online as uncommenced, and full commencement is expected by the end of 2027. This matters because, until the Act commences, Singapore’s existing fair employment framework is built on the non-binding Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices, general provisions of the Employment Act 1968, and existing licence conditions for employment agencies, not on a standalone discrimination statute. The Workplace Fairness Act changes that by creating, for the first time, a specific civil (and in serious cases, penal) framework for workplace discrimination based on defined protected characteristics.

Who it’s for: employer size and the phasing timeline

The Act’s obligations are being phased in by employer size. Employers with 25 or more employees are expected to be the first group covered when the Act commences, with smaller employers (broadly, those with 5 to 24 employees) brought in at a later phase, and very small employers reviewed again within five years of commencement. Employers below the smallest threshold are not expected to be covered in the initial rollout. Because the exact commencement date and the final size cut-offs are set by subsidiary legislation and ministerial announcement closer to the date, employers should treat 25 or more employees as the group that needs to be ready first, and should not assume a small headcount today means permanent exemption, since MOM has signalled the coverage will widen over time.

It is worth being precise about what changes and what does not. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices are not legislation; they are administrative guidance issued jointly by the Ministry of Manpower, the National Trades Union Congress and the Singapore National Employers Federation, and they do not have numbered “sections” in the way an Act does. An employer that ignored them faced reputational and, via employment agency licence conditions, indirect regulatory consequences, but not a direct civil claim for discrimination as such. The Workplace Fairness Act changes that architecture: it takes the substantive expectations that sat inside the Tripartite Guidelines, such as merit-based hiring and non-discriminatory advertisements, and converts a meaningful part of them into binding statutory obligations with defined civil contraventions, administrative penalties, and, for serious cases, higher civil penalties. The Guidelines will continue to exist and to guide day-to-day practice, particularly for matters the Act does not cover in the same level of detail, but once the Act commences, an employer cannot treat compliance with the Guidelines as optional best practice for the specific matters the Act itself now regulates.

Key obligations under the Act

Once in force, the Act prohibits employers from making adverse employment decisions on the basis of a protected characteristic at three stages: hiring, decisions taken during employment (such as performance appraisal, training and promotion), and dismissal, retrenchment or termination. It also prohibits discriminatory job advertisements and discriminatory instructions or policies issued to third parties such as recruiters, which is directly relevant to employment agencies briefing clients on hiring criteria. Separately, the Act requires in-scope employers to maintain a written grievance process and prohibits retaliation against an employee who raises a grievance or takes part in one raised by someone else.

Protected characteristics and prohibited decisions

The Act defines a specific list of protected characteristics, including age, nationality, sex, marital status, pregnancy, caregiving responsibilities, race, religion, language, disability and mental health condition. Several of these terms are given their own defined meaning in the Act rather than left to ordinary usage, which is why employers should not assume the Act simply restates the existing Tripartite Guidelines; it narrows and formalises what counts as a protected characteristic, and provides specific exceptions, including a genuine job requirement exception, an age exception, and an exception for hiring decisions that favour citizens and Permanent Residents, all of which are narrower in practice than many employers expect.

The Act’s related amendments to the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990 also mean foreign employees, whose passes and immigration status are administered through the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority at https://www.ica.gov.sg, are within the Act’s protection on the same basis as Singaporeans and Permanent Residents once the relevant provisions commence. The Act’s prohibition on discriminatory advertisements and on discriminatory instructions issued to a third party is directly relevant to employment agencies. An employer that tells an agency, even informally, to avoid candidates above a certain age or of a particular nationality is asking the agency to participate in a decision the Act is designed to catch once the relevant provisions commence. Under existing licence conditions, employment agencies are already required to brief clients on the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices and to decline instructions that amount to discriminatory hiring; the Workplace Fairness Act will sit alongside, and in places replace, that guideline-based duty with a statutory one. Agencies and in-house recruiters should treat the Act as a reason to document, in writing, that a client brief has been screened for discriminatory criteria before a search begins, since that record is the easiest way to show good faith compliance if a complaint is later raised.

Cost and timeline: numbers employers should know

Employers should budget for three categories of cost. First, policy and process cost: drafting or updating a written grievance procedure, training line managers and HR on the new protected characteristics, and updating recruitment templates and job advertisements, which for a typical SME runs from a few hundred to a few thousand Singapore dollars in professional fees depending on whether external counsel is engaged. Second, dispute cost: under the companion dispute resolution framework, the Employment Claims Tribunals are expected to be able to hear workplace discrimination claims for sums of up to S$250,000, a substantially higher ceiling than the existing S$20,000 (or S$30,000 with union involvement) limit for ordinary wrongful dismissal claims, which raises the financial exposure of getting this wrong. Third, timeline: full commencement is expected by end-2027 for the first tranche of employers, giving organisations roughly one to two years from the date of this article to put a compliant grievance process in place before it becomes a legal requirement rather than good practice.

• Claim ceiling today: S$20,000 (S$30,000 with union assistance) for a standard wrongful dismissal claim at the Employment Claims Tribunals.
• Claim ceiling once the dispute resolution framework is in force: reported at up to S$250,000 for a workplace discrimination claim, a substantially larger figure than today’s cap.
• First employer tranche: 25 or more employees.
• Later employer tranche: broadly 5 to 24 employees, timing to be confirmed.
• Expected full commencement: by the end of 2027.
• Status as at 15 September 2026: uncommenced, per Singapore Statutes Online.

Step-by-step: preparing your organisation now

1. Map your current headcount against the 25-employee threshold to gauge which phase applies to your organisation.

2. Audit existing recruitment, appraisal, promotion and dismissal templates for language that touches on age, nationality, marital or caregiving status, or other protected characteristics.

3. Draft (or formalise, if one already exists informally) a written grievance process covering how a complaint is logged, investigated, decided and communicated back to the employee in writing.

4. Build a record-keeping process for grievances, since the Act requires written records of each inquiry and review to be maintained.

5. Train managers on the difference between a lawful business reason for a decision and a decision that is, in substance, based on a protected characteristic.

6. Update your employment agency briefs and job advertisement templates so they do not, even inadvertently, specify a preferred age, nationality or gender.

7. Revisit the plan annually until commencement, since the Act’s schedules and thresholds can still be adjusted by subsidiary legislation before it takes effect.

Employers should also note that the Act’s Part 10 makes related amendments to the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990, and Part 11 sets out saving and transitional provisions, both of which are typically the parts of a new statute that determine exactly how existing contracts, policies and pending cases are treated at the moment of commencement. Because these transitional details are not yet finalised in practice, employers should revisit this planning close to the actual commencement date rather than finalising every document today and filing it away.

Common mistakes and gotchas

The most common mistake is treating the Workplace Fairness Act as if it were already in force; as at 15 September 2026 it remains uncommenced, so current enforcement still runs through the Tripartite Guidelines, employment agency licence conditions, and ordinary Employment Act 1968 remedies, not through the new Act’s specific discrimination provisions. A second mistake is assuming the Act only affects large multinationals; the first tranche captures any employer with 25 or more employees, which includes a large share of Singapore SMEs. A third mistake is confusing the grievance process required by the Act with a company’s existing HR complaints inbox; the Act specifies particular elements (inquiry, written outcome, confidentiality and record-keeping), so an informal process that skips any of these will not satisfy the requirement once it applies. A fourth mistake, common among smaller firms, is assuming a headcount just under the threshold is a permanent shield; the Act’s own scheme contemplates extending coverage to smaller employers, so this is a timing gap, not a lasting exemption.

Related guides

For the fuller employer’s guide to the Act’s anti-discrimination provisions, see Workplace Fairness Act in Singapore (2026): An Employer’s Guide to the New Anti-Discrimination Law. Directors and company secretaries with governance responsibilities should also read Workplace Fairness Act 2025: What Singapore Employers, Directors and Company Secretaries Need to Know, which covers the corporate governance angle this article does not. For a practical eligibility and requirements checklist tailored to employer obligations under the Act, see Workplace Fairness Act 2025, employer obligations, Eligibility and requirements checklist.

FAQs

Is the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 already in force? No. As at 15 September 2026, Singapore Statutes Online lists the Act as uncommenced, with full commencement expected by the end of 2027, phased in by employer size.

Which employers are covered first? Employers with 25 or more employees are expected to be covered first, with smaller employers (broadly 5 to 24 employees) following in a later phase.

Are the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices the same thing as the Workplace Fairness Act? No. The Tripartite Guidelines are non-binding guidance issued by TAFEP; the Workplace Fairness Act is a statute passed by Parliament that, once in force, gives specific parts of that fairness agenda binding legal effect, including a formal grievance-handling duty under Section 27 and an anti-retaliation duty under Section 28.

What is the maximum claim an employee could bring once the Act is in force? Reports on the companion dispute resolution framework indicate the Employment Claims Tribunals will be able to hear workplace discrimination claims up to S$250,000, well above the existing S$20,000 to S$30,000 limit for ordinary wrongful dismissal claims.

Should employers wait until commencement to act? No. Building the grievance process, auditing templates and training managers takes time, and MOM and TAFEP both expect employers to move ahead of the legal deadline rather than at the last minute.

Does the Act apply to foreign employees on work passes as well as Singaporeans? Yes. The Act is not limited to citizens or Permanent Residents; it protects employees on the basis of the listed characteristics regardless of nationality, and the Act also makes related amendments to the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act 1990 to align the two regimes.

This article covers employer-facing obligations under the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 as currently drafted and reported. It does not cover the full text of every exception, and it does not constitute legal advice on how the Act applies to a specific workforce, job design or existing dispute. Employers with an active grievance, a pending Employment Claims Tribunals matter, or a workforce restructuring in progress should take specific advice from qualified employment counsel rather than relying on a general guide of this kind.

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.