Most Singapore founders don’t find out their HR is broken until it’s already costing them.
The HR MOT is a fixed-price diagnostic that checks 150+ data points across your documents, your people strategy, and what the world sees about you as an employer — and tells you exactly where you stand before the problems find you.
The things you don’t know about your HR setup are the expensive ones.
The Employment Claims Tribunal handles thousands of cases a year. MOM investigations are triggered by a single complaint. EP renewals are rejected because a salary threshold changed and nobody noticed. CPF is calculated on the wrong base. A contract clause that looked fine in 2022 isn’t enforceable today.
None of these problems announce themselves. They sit quietly inside your documents, your processes, and your assumptions — until someone pushes back, leaves badly, or files something.
The founders who avoid these outcomes aren’t the ones who got lucky. They’re the ones who looked.
One unsigned or outdated employment contract
→Can void your IP assignment, your restraint of trade clause, and your ability to manage a messy exit cleanly.
One EP or S Pass at the wrong salary threshold
→Triggers an MOM investigation and can block your next work pass application entirely.
Zero PDPA process for employee data
→No consent basis, no breach plan, no DPO. A single complaint to PDPC changes that fast.
150+ data points. Eight pillars. One clear verdict.
The HR MOT pulls evidence from four independent sources — your documents, a 90-minute founder interview, your online employer brand, and (optionally) an anonymous employee survey — and checks every finding across eight pillars against a published Red / Amber / Green rubric. Every score is reviewed and signed off by a senior consultant before you see it.
HR Operations & Compliance
- Employment contracts — Signed, current, and compliant with Employment Act on notice, leave, IP assignment, restraint of trade, and termination?
- CPF and payroll — Correct rates by age band? SDL paid? Itemised payslips with all 11 mandatory items?
- Work passes — EP holders at current COMPASS salaries? S Pass within quota? FCF advertising evidenced?
- PDPA for employee data — Data inventory, consent basis, DPO named, breach plan, retention schedule?
- Policy documentation — Handbook, leave, grievance, disciplinary, IT/AUP, code of conduct — current, signed, accessible?
- HRIS and payroll integrity — Single source of truth? Audit trail?
- WSH and workplace safety — Current risk assessment and training records?
- Record-keeping — Employment records retained per EA §95?
Recruitment & Onboarding
- Hiring process — Defined from need to start date? Interview rubric? Clear decision-making authority?
- Employer brand and EVP — What does your careers page say to a candidate? Cross-referenced with the online brand scan.
- Offer and pre-boarding — Do offer letters match contracts? Is there a pre-start checklist?
- Onboarding structure — Structured 30/60/90-day plan, or does every new hire figure it out themselves?
- New-hire experience — Do people land knowing what’s expected, or spend the first month guessing?
- Offboarding — Documented exit process? Knowledge transfer? Exit interviews?
Performance Management
- Review cycle — Is there one? Is it documented? Does it actually happen?
- Goal-setting — Are expectations set clearly at the start, or only reviewed at the end?
- Calibration — Are performance standards applied consistently across teams?
- Underperformance process — Documented? Has it ever been used?
- Documentation — Are performance conversations recorded in a way that protects the business if a dispute arises?
- Outcome linkage — Does performance connect to pay, promotion, and development decisions?
Learning & Development
- Manager capability — Have your managers been trained to manage? Do 1:1s happen? Is feedback a skill or an accident?
- Career frameworks — Can your team see a path forward, or do promotions happen by feel?
- Succession and key-person risk — Which roles have no backup? Which people, if they left tomorrow, would cause the most damage?
- Learning budget — Allocated, used, and tracked?
- Development planning — Do individuals have documented development goals, or is growth entirely self-directed?
Compensation & Benefits
- Pay bands — Do they exist? Market-referenced? Actually used when making offers?
- Pay review process — Annual? Ad hoc? Documented?
- Market benchmarking — Do you know where you sit relative to comparable Singapore roles?
- Equity — If offered, correctly structured and communicated clearly?
- Total rewards — Benefits stack beyond statutory. Does it match what your target hires expect?
- Pay equity — Unexplained gaps between people doing the same work?
Culture & Engagement
- Values clarity — Are the stated values lived, or a slide in the deck?
- Engagement signals — What does attrition look like? Who would you be most worried about losing?
- Recognition — How does it work? Is feedback regular or an annual event?
- Wellbeing and workload — Are people burning out? What are the early warning signs?
- TAFEP and FWA alignment — Language, imagery, and practice consistent with tripartite guidelines?
- Retention risks — Who’s a flight risk? Which roles have no redundancy?
Leadership & Management Capability
- Leadership bench — Beyond the founder, who can actually lead? What happens if a key leader leaves?
- Management quality — Are managers getting the support they need?
- Decision-making norms — How are decisions made and communicated? Does the team know?
- Founder behaviour — Are founders modelling the culture they say they want?
- Feedback upwards — Can people tell leadership when something isn’t working?
- People strategy alignment — Is there a people strategy that connects to the commercial plan?
Organisational Design
- Org structure — Does the current structure reflect how work actually gets done?
- Reporting lines — Clear on paper and in practice? Or do people have two managers, or none?
- Spans of control — Any managers stretched too thin? Any barely managing at all?
- Role clarity — Do people know where their job ends and someone else’s begins?
- Workforce planning — Is the headcount plan tied to the commercial plan and budget?
- Single points of failure — Which roles, if vacant tomorrow, would stop the business functioning?
Every finding is rated Red, Amber, or Green against a published standard.
Every sub-criterion gets a score. Every pillar gets a score. The overall MOT score tells you at a glance where you stand — and every Red and Amber finding is entered into a prioritised risk register.
🟢 Green | In good shape. No action needed in the next 12 months. |
🟡 Amber | Material gap. Fix within 90 days before it becomes a problem. |
🔴 Red | Live exposure. Fix now. This is the one that will cost you. |
Every Red and Amber finding is scored on severity and likelihood. Critical findings are flagged for immediate escalation. Every finding is reviewed and signed off by a senior consultant before you see it.
Three steps. Ten working days. A clear picture of where you stand.
Discovery call (free, 30 min)
We scope the engagement, confirm the right tier, and send you a secure document upload link with a named checklist. You know exactly what to send and why.
The audit (days 1–9)
You upload documents at your convenience. We run the 90-minute founder interview. We scan your online employer brand across six sources. Every finding is reviewed, scored, and annotated by the consultant before anything goes near a report.
Debrief and report (day 10)
You receive the executive PDF by email. We walk through the live dashboard in a structured debrief. Every finding is risk-ranked. Every recommendation tells you what to fix, in what order, and with what support.
A diagnostic that tells you the truth about your people setup — and what to do next.
📊 Interactive client dashboard
Eight sections. Live after the debrief. Filterable by pillar, RAG rating, and evidence source. Click any finding to see the underlying evidence — the document quote, the interview line, the Glassdoor review.
📄 Executive PDF report
Delivered to your inbox at engagement close. The PDF is yours permanently — it doesn’t expire when the dashboard does. Includes the full RAG findings matrix, risk register, action plan, and recommended next steps.
⚠️ Prioritised risk register
Every Amber and Red finding scored by severity × likelihood. Critical items called out explicitly. No burying the lede.
✅ Action plan — Now / Soon / Later
Every action linked to the finding that drove it. Owner suggestion included. Target timelines set. A specific, sequenced plan for your business — not a generic to-do list.
🔗 Recommended next steps
Three to five recommended services mapped to your findings. If you want help fixing what we found, you know exactly where to start.
🎯 Debrief session
Live walkthrough with your consultant. The moment where findings become priorities and priorities become commitments.
Fixed price. No surprises. No hourly billing.
The HR MOT is designed for a specific situation.
✓ Right for you if:
- You have 5–50 employees and have never had a structured HR review
- You’re approaching your first EP or S Pass application and want to know your risks in advance
- You’ve had a near-miss — a complaint, a messy exit, a payroll issue — and want to know what else is lurking
- You’re fundraising and investors are asking about your people and compliance foundations
- You’ve been meaning to sort out the HR stuff for months and keep putting it off
- You want a clear answer, not an open-ended consulting relationship
✕ Probably not for you if:
- You have a full-time HR Director who has done a structured compliance review in the last 12 months
- You’re pre-hire — fewer than 5 employees. Start with the HR Starter Pack instead.
20 years of People leadership. Now pointed at your business.
The HR MOT is designed and delivered by Andrew Swinley, founder of Expert People Solutions. Andrew has spent two decades as a senior HR leader in startups and SMEs across multiple markets, and has been running people audits since before they were called diagnostics.
Every MOT engagement is reviewed and signed off by Andrew personally before anything is released to the client.
The problems are in there.
Let’s find them before they find you.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. No commitment. By the end of the call, you’ll know exactly what the HR MOT covers, whether it’s the right fit, and what happens next.
Book your free discovery call →