The default and most common employment arrangement in Singapore is an open-ended (permanent/indefinite) contract with no fixed end date. Employees under a contract of service are covered by the Employment Act (Singapore's principal labour law), with certain provisions — such as hours of work, overtime, and rest days under Part IV — applying only to 'workmen' earning up to specified salary thresholds and other non-workmen employees up to a separate threshold. Indefinite contracts are terminable by either party with statutory or contractual notice (or payment in lieu), provided the dismissal is not itself wrongful.
Fixed-term contracts for a defined period or project are legal and commonly used in Singapore. There is no statutory cap on the length of a fixed-term contract or on the number of renewals. Under MOM/Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices (TAFEP) guidelines, employees on contracts of 3 months or less may be excluded from certain continuous-service-based entitlements (e.g., paid annual and sick leave) unless the contract is likely to be extended beyond 3 months in total; employers are encouraged to provide fixed-term staff with benefits comparable to permanent employees on a pro-rated basis. Repeated back-to-back renewals functioning as continuous employment can also trigger continuous-service-based entitlements.
Under Part IV of the Employment Act (applicable to covered workmen and lower-wage employees), ordinary hours of work may not exceed 8 hours a day or 44 hours a week under a standard 5.5-day (or 5-day, up to 9 hours/day) work week. Where daily hours are unequal, total weekly hours may not exceed 48, and total hours may not exceed 88 in any continuous 2-week period. Overtime is capped at 72 hours per month and must be paid at a minimum of 1.5x the employee's hourly basic rate of pay. Employees outside Part IV coverage (e.g., managers/executives above the relevant salary threshold) are instead governed by their employment contract.
The Employment Act does not prescribe a statutory minimum or maximum probation period — the length is entirely a matter of contract. In practice, 3 months is common for junior/general roles, extending to 6 months for more senior, specialized, or managerial roles. Notice during probation, unless separately specified in the contract, defaults to the standard statutory notice table based on length of service (as short as 1 day for under 26 weeks of service), so most employers explicitly set a short probation-specific notice period (commonly 1 day to 2 weeks) in the contract.
Singapore's Employment Act does not require a 13th or 14th month salary. However, payment of an Annual Wage Supplement (AWS) — commonly called a 'thirteenth month' bonus — is a widespread market practice, often recommended by the National Wages Council and written into employment contracts or collective agreements. Where an AWS is promised contractually, it becomes a legally enforceable contractual (not statutory) entitlement. Typical market practice is one month's basic salary, sometimes pro-rated by service period and/or linked to individual or company performance.
Singapore does not generally regulate or restrict job titles for local hires. For foreign employees, however, the job title stated on an Employment Pass (EP), S Pass, or Work Permit application must accurately reflect the employee's actual role, seniority, and duties, since MOM reviews job titles and descriptions as part of work-pass eligibility, salary-benchmarking (Complementarity Assessment Framework for EPs), and Fair Consideration Framework assessments. Misrepresenting a job title on a work-pass application can result in rejection or revocation.
For foreign employees (Employment Pass, S Pass, and Work Permit holders — RemoFirst's primary EOR use case), employers are NOT required to make CPF contributions at all. Mandatory employer costs are limited to: (1) the Skills Development Levy (SDL) at 0.25% of monthly wages (minimum SGD 2, maximum SGD 11.25 per employee per month), and (2) Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA) insurance, compulsory for all employees regardless of nationality, typically estimated at around 1-1.25% of payroll depending on insurer and industry risk classification — together approximately 1.5% of gross wages. For Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents, employers must separately pay CPF contributions of up to 17% of wages (aged 55 and below), tapering to 7.5% for employees above age 70, bringing their effective total employer contribution to roughly 17.25%-18.5% of wages on top of SDL and WICA.
Foreign employees on a work pass (Employment Pass, S Pass, Work Permit) make NO mandatory social-security-style contributions in Singapore — there is no CPF, unemployment insurance, or other statutory payroll deduction of this kind for non-citizens/non-PRs (aside from standard progressive income tax withheld/filed by the employee, which is a tax rather than a social contribution). Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents, by contrast, must contribute up to 20% of wages to CPF (aged 55 and below), tapering to 5% for those above age 70; PRs in their first two years of residency contribute at reduced graduated rates (approx. 5% in Year 1, 15% in Year 2 of wages) unless they elect to contribute at full rates from the start.
In addition to statutory leave, employees are entitled to the following statutory benefits:
Singapore's social security scheme is the Central Provident Fund (CPF), which is mandatory only for Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents (PRs). Foreign employees on an Employment Pass, S Pass, or Work Permit are not enrolled in CPF and make no CPF contributions at all.
All employees regardless of nationality are also subject to the Skills Development Levy (SDL), paid entirely by the employer at 0.25% of monthly wages (minimum SGD 2, maximum SGD 11.25 per employee per month).
Work injury protection is governed by the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA), which is mandatory for all manual labourers (regardless of salary) and non-manual employees earning up to SGD 2,600 per month, including foreign employees. Employers must maintain WICA insurance through an approved insurer; premiums are not a fixed statutory percentage but are commonly estimated at around 1-1.25% of payroll, varying by insurer and industry risk classification.
Singapore has no statutory severance or retrenchment benefit requirement under the Employment Act. Retrenchment benefit is instead governed by the individual employment contract, any applicable collective agreement, or — in their absence — prevailing industry norms set out in the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower.
A 13th-month payment (commonly called the Annual Wage Supplement, or AWS) is not a statutory requirement under Singapore's Employment Act.
P.S. our team speaks multiple languages and we'd love to chat in your preferred language if requested.
Your employee's hours, time off, holidays, bonuses, and commissions are automatically calculated into payroll. RemoFirst will invoice you in either US Dollars (USD), Euros (EUR), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Australian Dollars (AUD), or Singapore Dollars (SGD) around the 15th of each month to make sure your employees are paid on time. To make it even easier, you can summarize your entire global team's salaries to aggregate them into one payment (instead of many individual payments).
Unlike full-time employees, contractors work on projects with multiple companies at a given time and are technically self-employed. Full-time employees are solely focused on their employer and usually receive benefits (such as health insurance, equity or stock options, and time off) as an additional form of compensation. While it can be cheaper to work with international contractors instead of paying benefits to a full-time employee, you run the risk of misclassification. It's recommended to work with an EOR for contractor onboarding and payments, so you can know that your international contractors are paid compliantly and on time.
Whenever the employee or employer has a question about, or anything else related to international employment, they can speak with our customer support team to get answers from our team of experts.
