Is Your Business Actually Compliant With Singapore's Employment Act — Or Do You Just Hope It Is?

The gap between “we’re fine” and “we’re compliant”

Most employers don’t find out they have a gap until MOM tells them. A missing clause in a Key Employment Term. An itemised payslip that’s missing one of the 12 required fields. A payroll date that’s drifted from what the contract says. None of these feel urgent on a Tuesday. They feel urgent the day a WorkRight inspection letter lands, or a departing employee files a claim.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud: a first Employment Act offence can cost your company up to S$5,000. A repeat offence, up to S$10,000 — with the possibility of jail time for the individuals responsible. If a pay dispute escalates, the Employment Claims Tribunal caps claims at S$20,000, rising to S$30,000 if it’s gone through TADM mediation first. If it turns adversarial, contested legal fees alone typically run S$15,000–40,000. None of that includes the time your team loses managing it, or what it does to how your own people talk about working for you.

You don’t need to overhaul your HR function to close this gap. You need someone to look at exactly where it is, tell you plainly, and fix it.

Who this is for

This is for Singapore employers who’ve never had an independent, structured look at their employment paperwork — SMEs growing past the point where “we’ve always done it this way” holds up, F&B and retail operators navigating Progressive Wage Model changes, and any HR or ops lead who’s inherited contracts and payroll processes they didn’t build and can’t fully vouch for. If you’ve been meaning to get someone to check this “at some point,” this is that point.

What a compliance review actually covers

A proper review isn’t a checklist glance. It’s a structured audit across the areas MOM actually inspects under WorkRight:

• Key Employment Terms (KET) — an 18-point review of your written terms against what the Employment Act requires: hours, leave, salary basis, notice periods, and more.
• Itemised Pay Slips (IPS) — a 12-point review confirming every payslip carries the fields MOM mandates, correctly and consistently.
• Payroll timeline — checking that pay dates, CPF contributions, and deductions actually match what’s contracted and what’s filed.
• Employment contracts — flagging clauses that are outdated, ambiguous, or missing entirely, with plain-language fixes.

You get a written findings report: what’s compliant, what isn’t, and exactly what to fix first.

How it works

It starts with The Kinna Review — a focused, 2-hour diagnostic (US$800–1,500) that, scoped for compliance, becomes the KET/IPS/payroll audit above. You get direct findings, not a generic template. No multi-week engagement, no retainer required to get an honest answer to “how exposed are we?”

If the review turns up real gaps — or you’d rather not manage this alone going forward — The Kinna Retainer keeps someone accountable for staying compliant as your team, contracts, and pay structures change, instead of finding out the gap reopened at the next inspection.

Proof: what this looks like when it works

Mary Grace International came to us before an inspection became a problem. We ran the full review: 18-point KET check, 12-point IPS check, payroll-timeline check. The result was a perfect score — zero gaps, full MOM WorkRight compliance, confirmed. Read the Mary Grace International WorkRight compliance case study for exactly what was checked and what was found.

This matters beyond one client. The Progressive Wage Model has now uplifted over 150,000 frontline workers across retail, food services, cleaning, and security — and if you run a food services business, the PWM base salary rose to S$2,220 from 1 July 2026. Compliance requirements are moving; a one-time contract template from a few years ago isn’t tracking them. If you’re weighing whether to build this in-house or bring in outside help, see the true cost of HR teams.

With Kinna holds EA Licence No. 26C3338 and also advises on employment contracts directly, if drafting or renegotiation is what you need alongside the audit.