S’pore Companies Urged To Be Transparent About Wages to Prevent Misunderstandings

Last Updated on 2023-05-08 , 11:27 am

Salary is something that almost everyone in the workforce is concerned about. That is, unless you’re working for fun and not to make a living.

After all, nobody wants to be paid below the market rate. Worse still, you are paid less than someone with similar qualifications and doing the same job.

These reasons could have been the impetus behind the push for greater wage transparency here.

Instead of relying on Glassdoor and word of mouth to learn how much you ought to be paid to do your job, why not just benchmark it against what your colleagues are earning and how much your competitors in other companies are making?

Here’s what’s going on in Singapore on the new hot topic of wage transparency.

Singapore Companies Are Urged to Be More Transparent in Their Wage Practices

Singapore currently does not have a robust unified framework to ensure wage transparency within the workforce. This means that employers have the discretion to decide whether or not to include salary ranges when posting job offerings and how much to disclose concerning salary increments.

Some companies, however, are commendably more forward-thinking and bucking against the existing trend of wage secrecy.

One example is VFlowTech, a Singapore-based energy storage solutions provider that manufactures low-cost and efficient modular vanadium redox flow batteries.

According to The Straits Times, who spoke with VFlowTech’s senior human resources manager, Ms Puja Shah, the employees within the company know the wage range and increments paid for each position and how the company makes the decision of what salary the employee ultimately draws.

However, the actual salary of each individual is still kept under wraps.

These have been the local firm’s efforts towards wage transparency since it was founded in 2018.

Ms Shah further shares some words of advice for other companies who are contemplating jumping on the wage transparency bandwagon—the companies must set out clear policies and procedures, conduct period market reviews, give employees access to information about how their pay is determined and ensure that managers are trained to communicate pay policies properly. Giving employees the space to provide feedback about the firm’s practices also does not hurt.

This makes sense. After all, you don’t want to go through the long process of screening, interviewing, and making an offer to a candidate only to have them reject your offer because you are not offering a competitive salary.

While the career opportunities listed on VFlowTech’s website do not list the salary range of the open positions, the jobs they are hiring for are also posted on MyCareersFuture. The latter job postings come with a salary range for prospective candidates to review.

Given the increasing concern of local employees about wage transparency, hiring managers and employers should be prepared to field more questions from prospective candidates about the company’s wage transparency efforts. Wage transparency might be how to retain and attract talent during this tumultuous “great resignation” period founded on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Platforms in Singapore That Offer Salary Range Information

If you’re currently searching for a new job opportunity and don’t want to be “lowballed” by your future employer, there are some ways that you can search for salary information.

One is through Glassdoor, a platform offering a range of job-related features, including salary ranges of certain job positions. This information is primarily based on the reviews submitted by others who know of that company or previously worked there.

The downside is that the salaries of certain jobs may not be on the platform. You may also wish to take the information listed on the site with a pinch of salt, as you don’t have the opportunity to do a personal review about the veracity of the reviews posted.

Another platform which may be slightly more credible is MyCareersFuture. This government-backed portal aims to provide Singapore citizens and permanent residents with a “fast and smart job search service” to match job seekers with relevant jobs based on factors such as skills and competencies.

This free service also allows employers to post the salary range for the position they are hiring for. As a job seeker, you can compare the salary ranges from posts of various hiring companies to ascertain the market range salary for your level of expertise and desired industry.

However, note that salary range transparency may not be a silver bullet to pay discrepancies between colleagues. After all, the company can always post an extensive salary range to attract new hires but offer a starting salary in the lower range even though the existing employees in similar positions are drawing a wage on the higher end of the scale.

JobWiz is another site that may be helpful for you if you would like to know more about the salaries of various jobs. It is a Singapore-based job portal with the mission of “making salary ranges and company perks public”.

Similar to MyCareersFuture, the job listings on JobWiz typically come with a salary range for that position so that keen potential hires can gauge the suitability of the job for themselves.

Well, these initiatives sound to us like a good start to improving wage transparency in Singapore. At the very least, you know the minimum salary that you can ask for when you negotiate your next job offer.

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Other Countries That Have Implemented Pay Transparency Initiatives

Given that Singapore is known for its solid laws and push to be the best on a global level, how do its wage transparency initiatives compare with other countries?

It seems that Singapore’s efforts might be lacking behind quite substantially.

In Australia, employers are now banned from forbidding employees to disclose their salaries to others. This took effect in December 2022, when pay secrecy clauses in employment contracts were prohibited by law.

Even the United States, with all its posturing with China and internal woes, has made more progress on the wage transparency front than Singapore. In particular, certain states in the United States mandate employers to disclose the salary range of jobs they are hiring for in the job listings.

Colorado took the lead by implementing wage transparency regulations in 2021.

More recently, California is one of the states with new wage laws. The requirements mandate employers to disclose wage ranges of all advertised jobs came into force at the start of this year, where companies employ at least 15 workers. This new requirement also catches remote jobs performed by employees who are within the state of California. Furthermore, employees can request that employers disclose the salary range of the job they are applying for, and employers are not permitted to deny that request.

New York is another state with up-and-coming regulations on pay transparency. Come September, companies with at least four workers will have to state a wage or wage range when advertising their jobs, promotions or opportunities for staff to transfer to other roles.

The European Union (EU) has not been resting on its laurels either. On 24 April 2023, the EU adopted new rules on pay transparency, which required employers to inform job applicants about the starting salary or pay range of positions advertised. They may do so through the job listing or ahead of the interview.

What is more crucial, perhaps, is that employers are not allowed to sound out their prospective hires about their pay history.

We think this would be met with resounding cheers in Singapore, given that it is not uncommon locally for potential employers to request payslips or information about one’s last drawn salary.

In the EU, employees can also ask their employers for information regarding their peers’ pay levels, which may be broken down by gender. This initiative is to target gender pay inequity, no doubt. Criteria used to ascertain one’s pay and career progression may also become more transparent in the near future as employees are empowered to seek clarification on these topics from their employers.

There are other Western countries, however, that are keen on the idea of wage transparency but are struggling to implement the right measures. In Ontario, for example, there is a Pay Transparency Act which received royal assent in 2018 but has yet to be enacted by the legislature even till today. The Pay Transparency Act aimed to bridge the gap between genders by requiring employers to be transparent about salary ranges on public job postings. Companies that hire more than 100 employees also have to produce “transparency reports” outlining the differences in compensation received by men and women in their company.

Given this new trend, do you think you’ll urge your employer to do more in terms of wage transparency?