The upcoming Workplace Fairness Act (WFA) in Singapore, slated to take effect around 2026 or 2027, strengthens protections against discrimination based on protected characteristics such as age, nationality, race, religion, sex, and disability. It requires organisations to implement merit-based practices in recruitment, training, and appraisals, while also mandating professional grievance handling.
Beyond streamlining administrative workflows and providing real-time data visibility, HRiQ integrates industry-leading HR best practices to ensure all organizational processes are accurately tracked and strictly by merit-based. The system ensures accuracy in managing complex benefit computations suited to fit upcoming new law on workplace fairness act by Singapore starting in year 2026 or 2027. While providing the foundational infrastructure needed to inculcate workplace fairness, HRiQ is designed to align with any legal and internal compliance tracking. Maintaining transparent records of employment progress and ensures that growth opportunities are distributed regardless of any human characteristics. As a comprehensive, integrated suite of core modules to talent modules, HRiQ provides management and stakeholders with a unified data flow and bird’s-eye visibility, transforming complex human capital processes into automated, hurdle-free workflows that foster a truly inclusive and equitable culture.
HRiQ Human Capital Management (HCM) suite is designed to serve as the foundational infrastructure for these requirements through its local support modular architecture. Here is how each individual module in HRiQ may help to ensure compliance with the new workplace fairness laws:
HRiQ Recruitment
• Mitigating Unconscious Bias: It ensures meritocracy from the point of inception by formalizing headcount requests through an online requisition workflow, which enforces strategic discipline and ensures all hiring actions align with the organization’s manpower budget and documented job requirements.
• Structured Selection: The module further supports workplace fairness by providing standardized candidate evaluation forms and assessment rubrics, ensuring that all interviewers use objective, job-related criteria that reduce the influence of subjective factors like personal background.
• Transparency and Documentation: It facilitates the documentation of inputs from multiple stakeholders through candidate assessment surveys, preventing any single individual from exercising undue influence over the selection process. Crucially, the system generates fitment information with explainable reasoning and maintains a comprehensive audit trail of hiring decisions, providing the objective justifications required to prove merit-based selection under Singapore’s Workplace Fairness Act.
HRiQ Onboarding and Workflow
• Seamless Data Integrity: The module ensures a smooth transition from recruitment to the core database, maintaining the “psychological contract” by ensuring a professional and efficient entry process being properly recorded and documented.
• Early Compliance Adoption: It automates compliance sign-offs, requiring new hires to sign essential declarations such as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and conflict-of-interest (COI) forms digitally on day one.
• Automated Guidance: Internal task reminders ensure that HR and supervisors complete all necessary steps fairly, reducing “onboarding anxiety” for new joiners.
HRiQ Training and Development
• Equal Access to Growth: The system uses a competency-based framework and learning needs analysis to identify skill gaps objectively, allowing employees to self-apply for training or be nominated based on performance metrics in early employment or during evaluations.
• Regulatory Compliance: It automates the tracking of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Continuing Education and Training (CET) hours, ensuring that the organization maintains audit-ready reports for regulatory bodies to ensure that all information are recorded and objectively access if required for any dispute.
• Merit-Based Advancement: By identifying leadership potential through skills framework assessments, it prevents the “gatekeeping” of development opportunities which allow for fair and transparent communication and upskilling.
HRiQ Performance Assessment
• Multi-Dimensional Feedback: To move away from the biases of top-down reviews, it facilitates 360-degree feedback loops, where subordinates, peers, and supervisors all contribute to an employee’s evaluation with full audit trial tracking.
• Qualitative Record-Keeping: The journaling function allows appraisers to document qualitative comments and achievements throughout the year, preventing recency bias and providing a transparent audit trail for review in any dispute.
• Score Calibration: The system allows up to four levels of score moderation to ensure organizational consistency, correcting for “tough” or “easy” graders and maintaining a level playing field for all teams to ensure a workplace fairness.
HRiQ Performance Improvement Plan (PIP)
• Structured Remediation: When performance falls below expectations, the module facilitates the creation of a collaborative roadmap with measurable, mutually agreed declaration and compliance of improvement and remediation work.
• Documentation for Risk Management: It assists HR in managing risks by ensuring that all remedial actions, counseling sessions, and warnings are thoroughly documented in need for improvement plan and not bias driven activity to ensure fairness in job expectations required.
• Protecting Against Wrongful Dismissal: This structured audit trail provides proof that the organization acted fairly and provided every opportunity for success before considering termination.
HRiQ Compliance Management
• Automated Form Handling: It automates the distribution and tracking of internal compliance assessments and signed declarations, ensuring that company policies are consistently followed and complied.
• Structured Process: Management can review and structure processes across whole organizations to ensure no slips-up in communication and any essential declaration and compliance management process ensuring adherence to the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TGFEP).
• Conflict Prevention: It evaluates employee inputs to determine which specific compliance forms are required for their role, preventing potential conflicts of interest from the start.
HRiQ Human Resource (Enterprise HR)
• Centralized Source of Truth: As the heart of the suite, it provides a Bird’s-eye view of the entire organization’s data, including year-on-year progression and performance history.
• Transparency through Self-Service: The employee self-service portal empowers workers to access company handbooks, policies, and their own records, fostering a culture of trust and autonomy which ensure documentation are available and no foul or discrepancy play involved.
• Strategic Analytics: HR teams can use the module to generate attrition reports and manpower aging reports, allowing them to pinpoint disparities or potential biases in turnover or promotion rates across different demographics. Training progress and performance review insights are directly available to line managers and senior management without unnecessary layers or third-party delays in an event of fairness dispute.
