Singapore's workplace fairness legislation
Singapore's Workplace Fairness Act 2025 (WFA) marks a significant step towards ensuring fair employment practices and strengthening protections against workplace discrimination. While the WFA is designed to safeguard all employees at the workplace, its impact on women is particularly profound.
The WFA helps to create a more equitable professional environment, ensuring that women are not unfairly disadvantaged in key employment decisions including hiring, promotions, or termination, by prohibiting discrimination based on protected characteristics such as gender, caregiving responsibilities, and pregnancy.
Understanding the Workplace Fairness Act and its objectives
Singapore has historically lacked a comprehensive legal framework to address workplace discrimination. Existing laws such as the Protection from Harassment Act (POHA) did not cover discrimination and were not specifically tailored for workplace issues. The Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TGFEP), while useful, lacked robustness and enforceability. Employees were therefore compelled to shoehorn their claims into less than ideal avenues of recourse.
The WFA, passed in 2025 and set to take effect in 2026/2027, seeks to fill these gaps. It prohibits employers from making adverse employment decisions based on protected characteristics across 5 broad categories:
- Age
- Nationality
- Sex, marital status, pregnancy, caregiving responsibilities
- Race, religion, language
- Disability and mental health conditions
The WFA has 3 broad objectives:
- Strengthen protections for jobseekers and employees against discrimination at the workplace, while retaining flexibility for businesses.
- Require employers to implement grievance handling processes, and prohibit retaliation, and protect confidentiality of whistleblowers.
- Introduce calibrated levers of consequences for errant employers, ranging from corrective orders to administrative penalties.
How does the WFA protect women in the workplace?
Although the WFA protects all employees, its provisions are particularly beneficial for women, who face unique challenges with discrimination in the workplace.
A critical and welcome development is the prohibition of discrimination based on pregnancy, marital status, and caregiving responsibilities. The WFA now explicitly makes it illegal for employers to deny employees promotions, training opportunities, or fair appraisals based on these factors, and to prohibit redundancy / termination on the basis of these characteristics.
This has a profound impact on women for several reasons.
Firstly, pregnancy-related discrimination has been a persistent issue in the workplace, with some expectant employees experiencing unexplained poor performance reviews after announcing a pregnancy or being sidelined from promotion prospects upon returning from maternity leave. While employers are entitled to assess pregnant employees on their merits, the WFA ensures that women are not penalised purely because of their pregnancy status. This will be of comfort to women who are planning to conceive.
Additionally, caregiving responsibilities, which often fall disproportionately on women, have now been legally recognized. Employers must ensure that employees with caregiving responsibilities, including breastfeeding mothers, working mothers, and women caring for elderly / disabled family members, are not unfairly discriminated against.
Notably, the introduction of the WFA compliments the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangements Requests ("TGFWAR") which came into effect in December 2024. The TGFWAR encourages employers to fairly consider requests for flexible work arrangements, with a view towards retaining skilled professionals with caregiving responsibilities in the workforce.
Viewed holistically, the WFA and TGFWAR are paving the way for a more progressive and inclusive workforce which gives adequate support to female employees looking to juggle personal and professional responsibilities.
Grievance procedures and whistleblower protection
Women are disproportionately affected by workplace misconduct—whether on account of facing gender discrimination, sexual harassment, or bullying. They have thus far had limited recourse to protection from such misconduct.
The WFA requires employers to put in place grievance handling procedures, mandates confidentiality in grievance processes, and expressly prohibits retaliation against whistleblowers. This creates official channels for employees to report such misconduct and significantly improves the protections afforded to employees who whistleblow, creating a safer environment for employees to come forward with their complaints without fear of reprisal.
Tangible impact of the WFA
Having advised numerous senior executives and employees who have suffered workplace discrimination, we are particularly hopeful that the WFA will be a leap forward in terms of the protections offered to employees. In fact, had the WFA been enacted earlier, many of our past clients may have been beneficiaries of it. We set out below examples.
One of our clients, an employee of a tech giant, took long-term carers' leave to care for her husband who had a neuro-degenerative disease. Upon returning to work, she faced trumped-up charges that she had underperformed and was subsequently informed that she would be placed on a performance improvement plan. This seems to be a textbook example of discrimination on the basis of caregiving responsibilities, which is now a protected characteristic under the WFA.
In another matter, we acted for an employee of another tech giant. The client was diagnosed with depression and disclosed this to her employer in good faith, expecting reasonable accommodations. Instead, her manager violated confidentiality and shared her mental health status with other colleagues, leading to her being ostracised and denied work opportunities. The client was subsequently terminated on the grounds of trivial charges, when it was clear that the team no longer wished to work with her. The WFA now explicitly prohibits discrimination based on mental health conditions.
What should you do if you experience workplace discrimination?
If you believe you have been discriminated against in your workplace, the first step is to raise the issue through your employer's internal grievance handling process. The WFA requires employers to conduct a fair inquiry into the complaint, document the process, and to communicate the outcome of the inquiry. The overarching requirement is that the confidentiality of the whistleblower be protected in this process.
The employee can also go directly to the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Policies (TAFEP) to seek advice and an assessment of the case.
If internal resolution fails or if the employer is uncooperative, employees could try to resolve the matter through mediation at the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM), which is a confidential process before a neutral third party who will attempt to facilitate resolution. If mediation fails, a formal legal claim can be pursued, which may result in monetary compensation awarded to the employee. Note that the Ministry of Manpower may also commence investigation into suspected serious breaches and may take enforcement action against the company / individual responsible for the discriminatory decision ranging from corrective orders to financial penalties. Employers who engage in repeat offences or commit serious contraventions, such as retaliation against whistleblowers or discriminatory dismissal, may face fines of up to S$250,000.
Note that smaller firms with fewer than 25 workers, and religious organisations, are not subject to the WFA. This will be revised at the 5-year mark, but smaller firms are encouraged to become compliant with the WFA in advance, and would remain subject to the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices in the meantime.
The WFA is a milestone development in Singapore's employment law landscape, sending a strong message that workplace discrimination will not be tolerated. That said, it is a new and yet untested legislation, and its practical application has yet to be tested. We look forward to the second tranche of the Act being passed into law.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
