Singapore's Workplace Fairness Act: What Employers With 25+ Staff Need Ready by End-2027

A new law, with a long runway

Singapore passed the Workplace Fairness Act in January 2025, and Parliament has since passed a second bill covering how disputes are resolved. Together they turn the existing Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices into law. The Act is expected to take effect at the end of 2027. The exact date is set when the Act is brought into force, so treat end-2027 as the working target rather than a fixed deadline.

That gives employers about a year. It sounds like plenty. In practice, most of the work is not legal at all: it is writing down how your company handles complaints, and then actually doing it that way every time.

What the Act is about

The Act prohibits discrimination in employment decisions such as hiring, promotion and dismissal on protected grounds, including age, nationality, sex and marital or family status, race, religion and language, and disability or mental health conditions. It also prohibits retaliating against someone because they raised a concern.

For most small and mid-sized companies, the day-to-day change is not about hiring policy. It is about what happens when an employee says "this was unfair".

The grievance duties, in plain English

Employers with 25 or more employees are expected to have a proper process for workplace grievances. Smaller employers are expected to be brought in later. In practice that means five things:

• A written process. Staff can find out how to raise a grievance and who handles it.
• A proper inquiry. Each grievance is looked into, not just noted.
• A written outcome. The employee is told the result in writing.
• Written records. What was raised, what was done, and when.
• Confidentiality. The person who raised it is protected, and only the people handling it see who they are.

This is our plain-English summary, not legal advice. MOM and the tripartite partners are expected to publish detailed guidance before the Act takes effect, and that guidance is what you should check your process against.

Where most SMEs are today

In a typical 40-person company, a grievance arrives as a WhatsApp message to a manager, a quiet word with HR, or an email that sits in someone's inbox. Nobody is being careless. There has simply never been a reason to formalise it.

The gaps tend to be the same ones:

• The process exists in someone's head, not on paper.
• The person investigating is sometimes the person being complained about, or reports to them.
• The employee hears the outcome verbally, or not at all.
• There is no record of what was done, which becomes a problem the moment the matter goes to mediation or a claim.
• The employee's name travels further than it should.

Five things to do before the Act starts

1. Write a one-page grievance procedure. How to raise a concern, who receives it, what happens next, and roughly how long each step takes.
2. Name a backup. If the grievance is about the usual handler, staff need someone else to go to.
3. Separate investigation from involvement. Decide in advance who investigates, and make sure it is never someone named in the grievance.
4. Use a standard outcome letter. The same structure every time: what was raised, what was looked at, what was decided.
5. Keep one record per case, with limited access. A spreadsheet locked to two people is a start. What matters is that it is complete, dated and private.

Check where you stand in two minutes

We built a free Workplace Fairness Act readiness check: six yes-or-no questions on how your company handles grievances today. You get a score out of six straight away, and if you leave your email, a short report listing each gap and what to put in place. No signup, and your answers are stored in Singapore.

The check is the first part of Jurisly, a grievance-handling tool we are building for Singapore SMEs: a private way for staff to raise concerns in their own language, a checklist for HR, written outcomes and a confidential record of every case. It is in early access, and pricing will be announced at launch.

The short version

The Act is expected at the end of 2027. If you have 25 or more staff, you will need a written grievance process that you actually follow, with inquiries, written outcomes, records and confidentiality. None of it is complicated, but all of it takes time to set up properly, which is why it is worth starting now.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Check MOM's guidance once it is published, and speak to an employment lawyer about your specific situation.