The Workplace Fairness Act Singapore 2025 marks the most significant shift in Singapore employment law in a generation. Passed by Parliament in January 2025, with the procedural companion bill approved in November 2025, the Act converts the long-standing Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices — previously aspirational — into binding statutory obligations. Commencement is expected by end of 2027, meaning employers have a defined but shrinking window to prepare.
This guide covers what the Act requires, who is covered, what HR managers and employers must change, and how the new framework intersects with existing MOM compliance obligations including the COMPASS framework for Employment Pass applications.
What the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 Actually Does
Before the Workplace Fairness Act, Singapore’s anti-discrimination regime rested on the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) guidelines — enforceable through moral suasion, Tripartite mediation, and, in serious cases, MOM debarment from hiring foreign workers. These were meaningful levers but not statutory ones.
The Workplace Fairness Act changes that. Per the Workplace Fairness Act 2025 as published on Singapore Statutes Online, the Act:
- Creates a statutory prohibition on discriminatory employment decisions across the full employment lifecycle — hiring, promotion, retrenchment, and termination.
- Defines eleven protected characteristics under which discrimination is prohibited.
- Requires all employers to maintain a written grievance process for workplace discrimination complaints.
- Establishes a new Workplace Fairness Tribunal as the primary dispute resolution forum for employees whose complaints are not resolved internally or through mediation.
The Eleven Protected Characteristics Under the WFA
The WFA employer obligations attach to discrimination based on any of the following eleven characteristics:
- Age
- Nationality
- Sex
- Marital status
- Pregnancy status
- Caregiving responsibilities
- Race
- Religion
- Language ability
- Disability
- Mental health condition
Several of these are new additions compared to the existing TAFEP guidelines. In particular, caregiving responsibilities, mental health condition, and language ability were not previously named characteristics under TAFEP’s framework, though some were covered in practice. Employers whose policies or practices touch any of these characteristics — directly or indirectly — need to review them before commencement.
Employer Obligations Across the Employment Lifecycle
Hiring and Recruitment
Employers must adopt merit-based recruitment. Concretely, this means:
- Job advertisements must not include requirements or preferences based on any protected characteristic, unless a genuine occupational requirement applies and is documented.
- Screening questions must not ask about age, marital status, pregnancy, religion, or nationality except where legally permitted.
- Interview panels must not take protected characteristics into account when assessing candidates.
This is significant for Singapore employers who have historically used informal screening criteria — for example, preferring candidates of certain nationalities for cultural fit, or excluding applicants above a certain age from consideration for senior technical roles. These practices become illegal upon commencement.
Note the interaction with COMPASS: the COMPASS framework for Employment Pass applications includes a nationality diversity criterion, which requires employers to consider whether a candidate’s nationality contributes to a diverse local workforce. This COMPASS criterion does not disappear under the WFA — it operates at the EP application assessment level rather than the hiring decision level — but employers should document their hiring rationale carefully to demonstrate that merit, not nationality exclusion, drove their decisions.
During Employment
All employment decisions — pay reviews, promotions, role assignments, performance improvement plans — must be made on objective, documented criteria applied consistently across the workforce. Policies that produce disparate impacts on protected groups are permissible only where they are objectively justified by a legitimate and proportionate business need.
Practically, this means HR teams should audit existing appraisal frameworks, promotion criteria, and pay band governance for any criteria that could disproportionately affect employees based on a protected characteristic. Criteria that once seemed neutral — for example, availability for travel, working-hour flexibility, or tenure requirements — may need to be reviewed if they structurally disadvantage employees with caregiving responsibilities or disabilities.
Termination and Retrenchment
Redundancy decisions must be based on objective selection criteria such as role criticality, performance, and skill fit. Selection processes that use protected characteristics — even indirectly, such as preferring to retain younger workers by default — are prohibited. Retrenchment packages and notification processes must also be applied consistently.
Internal Grievance Handling (Mandatory from Commencement)
Under Section 27 of the Act, every employer must maintain a written grievance process that:
- Commits the employer to inquire into and review each grievance raised.
- Informs the employee of the outcome in writing.
- Keeps written records of each inquiry for a specified period.
- Protects the identity of the employee raising the grievance from disclosure except where reasonably necessary.
Many medium and large employers already have workplace grievance mechanisms, but the requirement for written documentation of outcomes and identity protection may require policy updates. Small employers — particularly those with under 25 employees — are expected to receive a phased or partial exemption at commencement, though the final scope of that exemption has not yet been gazetted.
The Workplace Fairness Tribunal: Singapore’s New Workplace Discrimination Forum
The second bill, passed in November 2025, establishes the procedural framework for the Workplace Fairness Tribunal. The key design principles are:
- Mediation first. Before a claim proceeds to the Tribunal, both parties must attempt mediation through an approved service. This mirrors the Employment Claims Tribunal model.
- Accessible to individual employees. The process is intended to be navigable without legal representation at the initial stages, reducing the barrier for employees to raise complaints.
- Employer exposure for adverse decisions. Where the Tribunal finds in an employee’s favour, employers may face compensation orders, reinstatement orders, or other remedies.
For HR managers overseeing the employment of foreign workers, this framework interacts directly with MOM obligations. As detailed in the MOM Compliance Calendar 2026: Singapore HR Year Plan, employers already face a range of ongoing MOM obligations; the WFA adds a new layer of employment law compliance that sits alongside — not inside — the MOM framework.
What HR Managers Should Do Before 2027 Commencement
Audit Job Postings and Hiring Materials Now
Review every job advertisement, application form, interview guide, and screening rubric your organisation currently uses. Identify any explicit or implicit reference to protected characteristics. Remove or document justification for any that touch the eleven categories under the WFA.
Update Employment Policies
Your workplace harassment policy, disciplinary procedure, performance management framework, and retrenchment selection criteria should all be reviewed. The TAFEP guidelines that most HR teams already follow provide a good starting point, but the statutory obligations under the WFA are more prescriptive than the guidelines in some areas — particularly around grievance documentation.
Establish or Update Your Written Grievance Process
If your organisation does not have a documented internal discrimination grievance process, one must be in place before commencement. If you have one, review whether it meets the Section 27 requirements: written outcomes, identity protection, and record retention.
Train Hiring Managers and Line Managers
Legal compliance depends on the people making day-to-day hiring, promotion, and performance decisions understanding what is and is not permitted. Formal training on the WFA’s protected characteristics and prohibited conduct — run before commencement — is a sensible precaution and a documented demonstration of good faith.
For organisations employing foreign workers under Employment Pass or S Pass, the interaction between the WFA and MOM’s Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) is worth particular attention. The Complete Singapore Employment Pass Guide 2026 sets out how FCF requirements apply to EP applications and how they differ from the WFA’s broader anti-discrimination obligations.
The Workplace Fairness Act and the COMPASS Nationality Diversity Criterion
One area that has generated questions is whether the WFA’s prohibition on nationality discrimination conflicts with COMPASS’s nationality diversity scoring criterion, which awards points to EP applications from nationalities under-represented in the employer’s workforce.
The two frameworks operate at different levels. COMPASS assesses an employer’s overall workforce composition when evaluating whether to grant an Employment Pass. The WFA prohibits discrimination in individual hiring decisions based on a candidate’s nationality. Employers can legitimately seek candidates of a nationality that would improve their COMPASS diversity score, provided the selection is made on merit from a pool of qualified candidates — they cannot reject a qualified candidate of a particular nationality simply to improve a COMPASS score, as that would constitute nationality discrimination under the WFA.
In practice, the safest approach is to document that hiring decisions are driven by merit, and that COMPASS-related diversity considerations influence which roles are opened and how they are sourced, not which qualified individual is selected.
Conclusion: Use the Window Before 2027 to Build Compliance Into Your Processes
The Singapore workplace discrimination landscape is transforming. Employers who treat the WFA’s 2027 commencement as a soft deadline — and wait until enforcement begins before acting — will face the cost of rushed, reactive policy changes, and potentially, early Tribunal complaints. Those who begin now have time to audit, train, and build fair practices into their standard operating procedures before statutory obligations kick in.
If your organisation needs support navigating MOM compliance alongside the Workplace Fairness Act framework — particularly in the context of employing foreign workers on Employment Pass or S Pass — Singapore Employment Agency (Little Big Employment Agency Pte Ltd, Licence 19C9790) can advise on pass eligibility, fair hiring practices, and employment compliance. For corporate governance and secretarial compliance support, Raffles Corporate Services serves businesses at every stage of the Singapore journey.
— The Editorial Team, Little Big Employment Agency