Fair employment practices: Is your organisation ready for Workplace Fairness Act?

The Workplace Fairness Act (WFA) was passed in Parliament on 8 January 2025, reinforcing Singapore’s existing fair and harmonious workplace norms. It is expected to take effect by the end of 2027, giving employers time to prepare for new statutory obligations.

The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TGFEP) will continue to play an important role alongside the WFA. The TGFEP will continue to cover workplace discrimination based on other characteristics and complement the WFA to ensure fair and merit-based workplace practices in Singapore. This means that employers are expected to comply with the WFA requirements and align their practices with the TGFEP.

In light of these developments, this is a timely opportunity for you to take stock and assess whether your organisation’s current practices are aligned with the WFA and TGFEP requirements.

Recruitment decisions should be based on a candidate’s skills, experience, and ability to perform the job. Personal attributes that are irrelevant to the job – such as race, age, gender, religion, marital status, family responsibilities or disability – should not influence the assessment or selection process.

When drafting a job advertisement, do you have these checks in place to ensure it is fair and non-discriminatory?

• Reviewing the selection criteria to ensure that they are related to the job requirements, such as qualifications, knowledge and experience
• Using a recruitment checklist as a step-by-step guide to ensure key hiring processes are carried out consistently and fairly from start to end
• Putting in place training and a review processes (e.g. having another colleague review the job advertisement) to help ensure that employees involved in developing job advertisements, including non-HR staff, are familiar with and follow the WFA and TGFEP
• Ensuring words or phrases that could be perceived as discriminatory are not used, before publishing the job advertisement

Another fundamental aspect to fair recruitment is complying with existing manpower regulations such as the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF), which will also become a statutory requirement under the WFA.

Employers should consider the following questions when reviewing their recruitment practices:

• Are your hiring managers familiar with the FCF requirements and how to apply them in practice?
• Does your recruitment process fairly consider the local workforce for job opportunities by assessing their applications with the advertised selection criteria, and
• Does your shortlisting process apply consistent and objective selection criteria across all of the candidates who applied?

To be WFA-ready, employers should put in place structured processes to ensure that recruitment practices are carried out consistently in a fair and merit-based manner.

To learn more about implementing fair recruitment practices in your organisation, refer to TAFEP’s Fair Recruitment and Selection Handbook.

Putting in place grievance handling process

A key practice required under the WFA is for employers to put in place is a written grievance handling process to handle and resolve grievances. Beyond compliance with the legal requirement, having a clear and documented process helps preserve workplace harmony, strengthen employee trust, and enable concerns to be addressed early before they escalate into more serious disputes.

Here are some questions to help you gauge your organisation’s preparedness in managing employee grievances:

• Do you have a formalised process to hear employees’ concerns, look into them and resolve them in a fair and timely manner?
• How is this process communicated to the employees? For example, is it stated in the employee handbook, code of conduct, or company intranet?
• Do your employees know who to approach should they wish to lodge a grievance report or file a discriminatory complaint?
• How is your organisation ensuring that complaints are handled with confidentiality and sensitivity?
• Are affected employees informed when they can expect to receive the outcome of their complaints?

To learn more about implementing a proper grievance handling process in the workplace, please refer to TAFEP’s Grievance Handling Handbook.

How to prepare your organisation for the WFA

The WFA marks a significant milestone in upholding workplace fairness and entrenching fair employment standards in Singapore. To effectively address workplace discrimination, employers should take proactive steps by implementing formalised policies and processes that enable the organisation to comply with the legislative requirements.

These are some ways to prepare your organisation for the upcoming WFA:

• Take a quick self-assessment of your organisation via the Fair and Progressive Employment Index (FPEIndex) Workplace Fairness Module, to understand whether your practices align with the WFA and TGFEP. Review the insights and recommendations provided to identify and address any gaps and create a truly conducive workplace.
• Take the Workplace Fairness Act E-learning Course to learn about the key requirements under the Workplace Fairness Act to support fair employment decisions and compliance with legislative obligations.
• Refer to the list of practices found in the Tripartite Standards on Recruitment Practices and Grievance Handling and adopt the standards to demonstrate that your organisation is WFA-ready.
• Access our Workplace Fairness one-stop resource page as a guide to review and make necessary improvements to your organisation's employment practices in preparation for the upcoming WFA.

Adopting fair employment practices is essential for cultivating an engaged and motivated workforce that will work towards your organisation’s goals. Take the first step today.