Singapore Employment Law Updates in 2026
Singapore employment law in 2026 has seen a number of significant changes. If you’ve been running your business without dedicated HR support, you’ve probably noticed the employment law landscape keeps shifting. The last 12 months have brought a bunch of new obligations into play around flexible work, parental leave, platform workers, and workplace fairness, and honestly, it catches most founders off guard.
The real risk isn’t that you’re trying to be unfair. It’s that legal exposure builds quietly when nobody’s tracking what’s changed. For startups and SMEs without an HR function, this is exactly where things slip.
Here’s what actually matters right now.
Flexible Work Arrangements
From 1 December 2024, you need a formal process for considering employee requests for Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs). You don’t have to approve every request. But you do have to consider them genuinely, on business grounds, and if you decline, you need to tell the employee why in writing.
Handling FWA requests over WhatsApp with a casual “we’ll think about it” doesn’t cut it anymore. If someone makes a formal request, they get a formal response. That’s the baseline now.
The Workplace Fairness Act
Parliament tabled the Workplace Fairness Bill in November 2024. When it becomes law, it’ll formalise protections against employment discrimination in hiring, promotion, and day-to-day treatment. You’ll need documented grievance handling processes in place.
If you don’t have a grievance procedure written down yet, now’s the time. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to introduce it retroactively without it feeling like a reaction to a problem.
Parental Leave Changes
Government-paid paternity leave went from two weeks to four weeks for eligible fathers of Singaporean children. There’s also shared parental leave now available for parents of children born from 1 April 2025, starting at six weeks and rising to ten weeks from April 2026.
If you’re running a tight team, extended leave absences aren’t small things. The time to plan for them is before someone goes on leave, not when you’re scrambling to cover it.
Platform Workers Act
From 1 January 2025, platform workers (delivery riders, private hire drivers, and similar) are covered under the Platform Workers Act. They’ve got rights to work injury compensation, CPF contributions, and representation. If you engage any platform workers, you need to know what you’re on the hook for.
Getting Dismissal Right
The Tripartite Guidelines on Wrongful Dismissal stay actively enforced. Two things are worth keeping clear in your head:
- Misconduct is the only ground for dismissal without notice. But before you act, you still have to conduct a proper inquiry. The employee needs to know what they’re accused of and get a fair chance to respond before any decision gets made.
- Performance issues can’t result in immediate dismissal. You have to give a genuine opportunity to improve, usually through a structured Performance Improvement Plan with clear expectations, support, and a defined timeline for review.
The shortcut of acting on frustration rather than following the process is the most common route to the Employment Claims Tribunal.
What This Means for You
Employment law compliance isn’t just a big-company concern. Startups and SMEs are just as exposed, often more so because processes tend to be informal and documentation is spotty. The issues we most often see aren’t dramatic policy failures. They’re things like an FWA request handled over WhatsApp with no written follow-up, a performance issue managed through loose conversations rather than documented steps, or parental leave entitlements miscalculated because the rules changed last month.
None of this is particularly hard to get right. It mostly needs the right processes in place, documented, and applied consistently.
Expert People Solutions works with Singapore startups and SMEs to build the compliance foundations that protect your business and treat people fairly. If you want to talk through where the gaps might be, get in touch. We’re happy to help.
