With more than a million foreign and local professionals making up a young, dynamic workforce and a rapidly growing economy, Singapore continues to excel in Asia and globally. To maintain and enhance this momentum, it is crucial for organisations to reimagine traditional work structures and adopt forward-thinking strategies to improve efficiency and raise productivity. and enhance this momentum, it is crucial for organisations to reimagine traditional work structures and adopt forward-thinking strategies to improve efficiency and raise productivity.
Currently, there are two key legislative frameworks pivotal in helping Singaporean companies tap into a wider talent pool, retain experienced employees, and foster more inclusive workplaces. These are the Flexible Work Arrangement (FWA) guidelines and the Workplace Fairness Legislation.
With the roll-out of this legislation, Singapore seeks to drive competitiveness through a strong talent pipeline, and by building and maintaining a hiring framework vital for business success.
Talent Pipelines Are Key to Competitiveness
According to CareerBuilder’s 2024 Hiring and Recruiting Trends, 51% of organisations prioritise their talent pipeline as it provides them with a competitive edge. Having a strong pipeline helps to enable organisations to:
- Facilitate Knowledge Transfer: Senior employees can mentor and guide new hires, ensuring that skills and institutional knowledge are retained. However, if some of the employees don’t value fairness in hiring the right people in the beginning, this could lead to potential disruption, biases, and worse discrimination, which can affect future hires.
- Cultivate a Thriving Culture: A steady influx of talent keeps workplace cultures dynamic, collaborative, and innovative. By utilising the two legislations with background screening such as reference checks, education and employment verification, helps with your efforts to have your talent pool filled with competent and trustworthy talent, allowing your business to easily adapt to your employees’ and candidate needs.
- Adapt to Market Changes: With a prepared workforce, workforce prepared for evolving trends and unforeseen crises, businesses that can pivot quickly to seize new opportunities or overcome challenges are the ones to be ahead of the competition, this includes being able to work in the office or prepared enough for a flexible work arrangement.
Increasing Efficiency Through Flexible Work Arrangements
Implemented on December 1st, 2024, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) empowered organisations to adapt Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests (TG-FWAR), to help employers to accommodate the changing expectations of employees and candidates in the way they work. This guideline encourages businesses to provide their employees with flexibility regarding their work location, their preferred hours, and workload.
However, organisations should be able to balance flexibility with security and productivity. Conducting background screening can help protect your brand, data, and security while mitigating risks associated with increased work flexibility.
Benefits for Businesses Embracing FWAs?
- Elevated Employee Experience: Flexibility helps employees balance personal and professional responsibilities, increasing morale and productivity.
- Bigger Talent Pool: By offering flexibility, organisations can attract talent who prioritize work-life balance, including working parents, caregivers, and those who want to work but can’t be due to disability or age.
- Forward-Thinking Workforce: Flexible work policies may help organisations stay resilient in times of disruption, such as economic uncertainties or public health crises.
- Attracting Top Talent: According to the Global Workplace survey from Unispace, Singaporean employees would like to see flexible scheduling options (e.g., compressed workweeks, flex time) in the next five years, with 78% of the respondents satisfied with their current hybrid working arrangement.
These are opportunities that your organisation could leverage with this legislation, enabling you to align your business to what most talent today supports. Background screening can help ensure that you can confidently hire and onboard candidates who are a good fit within this evolving work environment.
Promoting Inclusivity Through Workplace Fairness Legislation
Singapore’s Workplace Fairness bill was just recently passed in Parliament on January 8th, 2025. Introduced to enhance the current model of promoting fair and harmonious workplaces, it’s designed to improve protection against workplace discrimination, and strengthen anti-discrimination laws, ensuring equal opportunities for all employees, regardless of gender, nationality, age, or race. This landmark legislation signals Singapore’s commitment to fostering diverse and inclusive workplaces.
What Can Businesses Gain from this Workplace Fairness Legislation?
- Strengthening Protection: For jobseekers and employees, this legislation can potentially protect them against discrimination while providing them with a fair and inclusive environment.
- Improve Brand Reputation: By embedding fairness into their policies, organisations can reinforce their brand as an ethical and socially responsible workplace. Companies demonstrating a commitment to workplace fairness stand out as preferred employers.
- Elevating Performance: Having a diverse team in the business can bring varied perspectives, knowledge, and experience, enabling better problem-solving and innovation.
Implementing this legislation alongside a comprehensive background screening process can help with creating a fair and unbiased hiring approach that focuses solely on candidates’ skills, experience, and knowledge.
As a Business, Who Should We Work with to Maximize Future Opportunities?
For Singapore companies to remain competitive in 2025 and beyond, leveraging the Flexible Work Arrangement Guidelines and Workplace Fairness Legislation is important. This measure not only aligns businesses with evolving employee expectations and demands but also attracts top-tier talent locally and globally.
Today’s workforce values organisations that are open, agile, and aligned with their personal and professional aspirations. Flexibility and fairness are no longer just compliance measures, they’re competitive advantages.
Onboarding with a background screening company like First Advantage who understands and supports these policies can help your business build a strong talent pipeline for future needs. This also signals to potential hires, investors, and customers that your organisation is not only home to the best and brightest but is also committed to fostering a fair and inclusive workplace.
For more background check tips, ideas, and strategies helping you hire smarter and onboard faster, contact First Advantage today: First Advantage APAC (fadv.com)
