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These would include enhancing support for flexible work arrangements, and requirements for employers looking to hire Employment Pass holders.
Following the delivery of Singapore's 2023 Budget statement, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has announced several initiatives to empower Singaporeans to take on good jobs in the Committee of Supply (COS) speech.
As delivered by Minister of Manpower Dr. Tan See Leng, the priorities centre around three main themes: seizing opportunities with you, strengthening support for you, and securing better workplaces with you.
Seizing opportunities
Empowering the broad middle to take on good jobs
Firstly, MOM announced the launch of a new CareersFinder feature on the MyCareersFuture portal in Q3 2023 to provide personalised jobs and skills insights to improve job matching for Singaporeans.
CareersFinder is a jobs and skills recommender. It uses data on skills adjacencies and job transitions in the labour market to help jobseekers identify potential career opportunities, personalised based on their individual profiles, and recommend suitable training programmes to help them achieve their career goals.
The new CareersFinder feature will be launched in a beta version. MOM will continue to enhance it over time, to make it even more responsive to jobseekers’ needs.
Building up complementarity of foreign workforce
To ensure that foreigners coming in on work passes are "of the right calibre", MOM has benchmarked the cost of hiring an EP and S Pass holder to the wages of the top one-third of local professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) and local associate professionals and technicians (APTs) respectively. With these definitive benchmarks, employers can expect regular and predictable adjustments to the EP and S Pass qualifying salaries and levies.
This year, there will be no change to the EP qualifying salary. However, MOM will proceed with the second step of the increase to the S Pass qualifying salary and the Tier 1 levy in September 2023.
The S Pass minimum qualifying salary will be raised from S$3,000 to S$3,150. The qualifying salary for older S Pass holders will be higher, given that local APT wages rise with age. The S Pass Tier 1 levy will also increase from the current S$450 to S$550 in September 2023.
COMPASS, a new holistic assessment framework for EP applicants, will be applied to new EP applications from September this year.
Under the COMPASS framework, applicants can score points under criterion two on “qualifications”. Today, employers are already responsible for ensuring the authenticity of their candidate’s qualifications before hiring. To safeguard against gaming by submitting fraudulent educational qualifications, employers who wish to score points under criterion two on “qualifications” will be required to submit verification proof for qualifications declared on the EP application.
Having consulted tripartite partners and industry associations, MOM will implement this new process in September 2023 together with COMPASS. More details will be shared in due course.
MOM will be releasing further details on the two bonus criteria, the skills bonus (criterion C5) and the strategic economic priorities bonus (criterion C6), later this month. Applicants meeting the respective criteria will earn bonus points towards their total COMPASS score.
The skills bonus is accorded to EP applicants in occupations on the shortage occupation list (SOL). The SOL identifies occupations requiring niche and highly specialised skills in short supply within our workforce, and which are critical to sustaining investments in both key growth or strategic priority areas.
The SOL will include specialised roles spanning areas such as tech, healthcare, and sustainability, where there are global shortages of skilled professionals. The SOL will be reviewed regularly, with a major refresh every three years – this ensures that the SOL is responsive to industry developments, while preserving enough certainty and runway for businesses.
Next, the strategic economic priorities (SEP) bonus was designed together with MTI, participating economic agencies and the labour movement NTUC. This is a highly selective bonus which supports firms that are contributing to Singapore’s strategic economic priorities through ambitious investment, innovation, internationalisation, or company and workforce transformation activities.
As shared by Minister Tan, firms receiving the SEP bonus would be expected to maintain healthy workforce profiles on nationality diversity and local PMET employment, as a condition for renewal.
MOM aims to publish details of COMPASS SOL and SEP bonus by end-March 2023, to provide businesses with greater clarity and certainty for manpower planning.
MOM will further be implementing the non-traditional source (NTS) occupation list on 1 September 2023. This is to allow employers in the services and manufacturing sectors to hire Work Permit Holders from NTS countries for seven occupational types. This NTS Occupation List is intended to help firms adjust to the S Pass qualifying salary and levy increases.
Employers who wish to hire NTS Work Permit Holders will be subject to a sub-quota of 8% and a fixed monthly salary criterion of at least S$2,000. The sub-quota guards against over-reliance on NTS workers and ensures that employers diversify their workforce. The salary criterion safeguards against "cheap sourcing" and incentivises employers to hire higher-skilled or more experienced workers from these source countries.
Updates on Forward Singapore exercise
As part of the Forward Singapore exercise, MOM is engaging Singaporeans on their career aspirations and how they can be empowered to take charge of their career health. For example, MOM is working with the Institute of Policy Studies to convene a Citizens’ Panel on employment resilience.
Strengthening support
Retirement adequacy
As announced by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Lawrence Wong, to help middle-income Singaporeans save more for retirement, the CPF monthly salary ceiling will be raised from S$6,000 to S$8,000 in 2026 to keep pace with rising salaries. This will be done in phases, starting with S$300 this year, to allow employers and employees to adjust to the changes. There will be no change to the annual salary ceiling of S$102,000.
Enhancing support for senior workers
MOM will implement the next step of the planned increase of CPF contribution rates for senior workers in 2024.
MOM will also provide a one-year CPF Transition Offset to absorb 50% of the 2024 increase in employer CPF contribution rates for senior workers.
It was also announced that MOM will extend the Senior Employment Credit and Part-time Re-employment Grant until 2025 to support employers in hiring and retaining senior workers. Under the Senior Employment Credit and Part-time Re-employment Grant extension, a company that employs 10 senior workers earning S$3,000 a month, will be eligible to receive up to S$104,200.
Uplifting lower-wage workers
As part of efforts to uplift lower-wage workers, all recommendations by the Tripartite Workgroup on Lower-Wage Workers will be implemented by July 2023. This follows the implementation of various progressive wage models, the Local Qualifying Salary requirement, and Progressive Wage Mark – last September, and in March this year.
There will also be an increase to the Government's Progressive Wage Credit Scheme co-funding share for wage increases given in 2023, from 50% to 75% for wages up to $2,500 and from 30% to 45% for wages above $2,500 up to $3,000.
As Senior Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad announced, MOM will also lower the eligibility age for Workfare Skills Support Scheme (WSS) from 35 to 30 years old to allow more lower-wage workers to benefit and upskill earlier in their careers. From July 2023, 70,000 more lower-wage workers will be eligible for the Workfare Skills Support Scheme.
Additionally, workers earning up to S$2,500 a month will now be able to qualify for WSS, up from the current qualifying income cap of S$2,300.
The WSS is one of the key pillars of the Government’s support upskilling for lower-wage workers to improve their employability and earnings. Under this scheme, employers who send lower-wage workers for training receive an absentee payroll subsidy of 95% of their workers’ basic hourly wage.
Lastly, it was also announced that the Training Commitment Award for Full Qualifications will be raised from S$500 to S$800 to encourage lower-wage workers to undertake deeper and more sustained training.
By 2023, progressive wage moves will benefit up to nine in 10 full-time lower-wage workers.
Strengthening protection for platform workers
An Advisory Committee on Platform Workers' recommendations will be implemented from the second half of 2024.
The Government will further implement mandatory CPF contributions phased in over five years, for platform companies and Platform Workers aged below 30 in 2024, while all other Platform Workers can opt-in.
Transition support for lower-income platform workers will be provided to offset part of the increase in their CPF Ordinary Account and Special Account contribution rates during the phase-in period.
MOM will permanently increase Workfare payments for eligible Platform Workers whose CPF contribution rates are aligned to employees' from 2028, with a higher proportion to be given in cash (40% compared to 10% today).
Lastly, MOM will adapt:
- The existing work injury compensation system for employees, for platform workers to reap its benefits while taking into consideration unique features of platform work
- The existing representation model for employees to uphold the spirit of tripartism and enable fair win-win outcomes for all parties
Securing better workplaces
Introducing workplace fairness legislation
This would include an interim report issued by Tripartite Committee on Workplace Fairness.
There will also be stronger protections in law for common and familiar forms of workplace discrimination, including
- age
- nationality
- sex, marital status, pregnancy status, caregiving responsibilities,
- race, religion, language
- disability and mental health conditions
Efforts under this sphere also include Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices to continue to protect against all forms of discrimination and new protections against retaliation for reporting discrimination and harassment at work.
There will also be a broader range of enforcement levers that can be calibrated to the severity of the breach. The Government will continue to preserve harmonious and non-litigious workplace culture.
Enhancing support for flexible work arrangements
MOM will continue to promote and support flexible work arrangements. Efforts include the introduction of Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangements by 2024, to better support the needs of businesses and employees. The guidelines will require employers to consider requests for FWAs fairly and properly.
More support will be provided for HR practitioners to implement flexible work arrangements.
Enhancing employment support for persons with disabilities
Enabling Employment Credit will be enhanced to provide employers who hire local persons with disabilities who have not been working for the past six months with an additional wage offset of up to 20% for nine months, up from 10% for six months. The Enabling Employment Credit is expected to benefit about 10,000 persons with disabilities annually.
Enhancing employment support for ex-offenders
MOM will introduce the Uplifting Employment Credit, a new hiring incentive to support employers in hiring ex-offenders. The Uplifting Employment Credit is expected to benefit about 3,000 ex-offenders annually.
There will also be wage offsets of 20% for the first nine months for employers who hire through Yellow Ribbon Singapore and Singapore Prison Service’s employment programmes.
Lastly, payouts will be made automatically to employers of ex-offenders placed by Yellow Ribbon Singapore, Industrial and Services Co-Operative Society or halfway houses engaged by the Singapore Prison Service. Other employers who hired ex-offenders can apply for the UEC.
Lead image / Ministry of Manpower Facebook
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