Workplace Harassment and Grievance Handling in Singapore: Employer Guide

Last reviewed: 12 September 2026

What Counts as Workplace Harassment

TAFEP defines workplace harassment broadly: threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or conduct that a reasonable person would expect to cause distress, carried out in a work context. That covers a wide range — a colleague who repeatedly makes sexually charged comments, a supervisor who singles someone out for degrading treatment in front of the team, unwanted physical contact, or a pattern of online messages sent through work channels after hours. It does not need to involve physical contact to qualify, and it does not need to happen on company premises during office hours to count as work-related if it arises from the working relationship.

This is also where harassment overlaps with, but isn’t identical to, discrimination. Harassment tied to someone’s age, sex, race, disability or another protected characteristic is now separately unlawful under the Workplace Fairness Act. Harassment that has nothing to do with a protected characteristic — a personality clash that escalates into bullying, for instance — still falls squarely within TAFEP’s grievance-handling expectations and, depending on severity, POHA, even though it sits outside WFA’s discrimination framework.

The Legal Framework: POHA, WFA, and Internal Policy

Three separate layers govern workplace harassment in Singapore, and employers who only track one of them are exposed on the other two:

• The Protection from Harassment Act (POHA), in force since 2014, is general criminal and civil law covering harassment anywhere, workplace or not. It criminalises threatening, abusive, insulting or distressing conduct, and gives victims access to Protection Orders and a streamlined Protection from Harassment Court for civil claims.
• The Workplace Fairness Act (WFA) makes harassment tied to one of 11 protected characteristics a form of unlawful workplace discrimination, sitting on top of whatever POHA already covers. See our Workplace Fairness Act employer guide for the full compliance picture.
• TAFEP’s Tripartite Guidelines impose a process obligation regardless of whether particular conduct would succeed as a POHA or WFA claim: every employer is expected to have a documented harassment policy and a functioning grievance procedure, full stop.

A single incident can trigger all three simultaneously: a criminal POHA complaint against the individual harasser, a WFA discrimination complaint against the employer if the conduct tracked a protected characteristic and the employer’s response was inadequate, and a TAFEP-reviewable process failure if there was no proper policy to begin with.

What Employers Are Expected to Do

TAFEP’s Tripartite Guidelines set a consistent standard: employers are expected to take discrimination and harassment complaints seriously, investigate them thoroughly, respond promptly to the people involved, keep records confidential, treat both the complainant and the accused fairly during the process, involve the union where one represents the workforce, and train managers and supervisors on how to actually run this process rather than leaving it to instinct.

Fairness to the accused is not a courtesy — it is part of the standard itself. A process that treats every complaint as proven the moment it’s raised, without a genuine investigation, exposes the employer to a wrongful dismissal or defamation claim from the accused just as readily as an inadequate process exposes it to a harassment complaint from the victim.

Building a Harassment Prevention Policy

TAFEP expects a written policy that goes beyond a single line in the staff handbook. At minimum it should state a clear zero-tolerance position, describe what management commits to in terms of prevention and response, give concrete examples of what harassment looks like in practice so staff don’t have to guess, explain the available reporting channels and what happens after a report is made, and spell out consequences for people found to have harassed a colleague.

Training sits alongside the written policy rather than replacing it. Managers, supervisors and HR need deeper training — recognising risk factors, understanding the standards of conduct expected, conducting investigations, managing conflict, and knowing when and how to refer someone for counselling support. Every other employee needs a lighter-touch version: what harassment looks like, what the standards of behaviour are, and how to raise a concern. A policy that exists only as a PDF nobody has read in a shared drive will not hold up as evidence of a functioning process if a complaint is ever escalated.

The Grievance Handling Process, Step by Step

TAFEP treats grievance handling as the broader category that harassment complaints sit inside, alongside complaints about favouritism, unfair treatment or wage disputes. A documented grievance procedure should cover how an employee raises a concern, who they can go to for guidance, how the investigation will run, what timeline they can expect a response within, and how the matter escalates — up to and including the CEO — if it isn’t resolved at the first level.

This process needs to be communicated, not just written down: through the employee handbook, during onboarding, and in ongoing internal communications, so that by the time someone needs to use it, they already know where to go. For unionised workplaces, the process should also be reflected in the collective agreement, with the union involved as a matter of course rather than brought in only once a dispute has already hardened.

Running a Fair Investigation

Once a harassment complaint is raised, TAFEP’s expectations for the investigation itself are specific: appoint a trained, neutral investigator who has no reporting relationship or personal stake in the outcome; keep the identities of both the complainant and the accused confidential from the wider workforce; evaluate the allegation against the actual evidence rather than office consensus; give both parties a genuine opportunity to respond; and provide progress updates so neither side is left wondering whether anything is happening.

Closure looks different depending on the outcome. Where harassment is substantiated, options range from counselling and closer monitoring through to redeployment, relocation, or dismissal depending on severity. Where the complainant needs ongoing support regardless of the investigation’s outcome, that can include help filing a police report, access to counselling, additional leave, or a temporary flexible work arrangement while things settle — which is where this process can intersect with the FWA request guidelines covered in our separate guide. Every step, and the reasoning behind the final decision, should be documented and retained, since an investigation file is often the only evidence an employer has if the outcome is later challenged.

Criminal Penalties Under POHA

Where harassment crosses into criminal territory, POHA sets out graduated penalties depending on the conduct:

Offence	Maximum penalty (first offence)
Intentional harassment (threatening, abusive or insulting conduct meant to cause distress)	$5,000 fine and/or 6 months’ imprisonment
Conduct likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress	$5,000 fine
Threats of unlawful violence	$5,000 fine and/or 12 months’ imprisonment
Unlawful stalking	$5,000 fine and/or 12 months’ imprisonment

Repeat offenders face double the maximum penalty across every category above, and penalties are similarly enhanced where the victim is a vulnerable person. Beyond the criminal track, victims can also apply for a Protection Order or Enhanced Protection Order through the Protection from Harassment Court, and pursue civil damages through the same streamlined court for claims up to $20,000 — a much faster and cheaper route than the general civil courts. Both individuals and companies can be held liable under POHA, which means an employer’s own conduct toward an employee, not just a colleague-to-colleague dispute, can also fall within its scope.

Real Case: The Ken Lim Conviction

In September 2025, a Singapore court convicted Ken Lim — a former judge on Singapore Idol and executive director of Hype Records — of molesting a 25-year-old woman during what began as a work meeting. According to court records reported by Mothership.SG, the woman attended a series of meetings at Hype Records to explore a potential collaboration; during the second meeting Lim made sexually charged comments and touched her lower back, and at a third meeting he asked her to kiss him, then touched her chest without consent while doing so. The judge found the victim “unusually convincing” and Lim “untruthful.” On 18 November 2025, he was sentenced to 13 months’ imprisonment — 12 months for the molestation itself, plus one month in lieu of caning, since his age placed him outside the range where caning could be imposed. Lim has since filed an appeal against the conviction and sentence.

The case is a useful reminder for employers of where the ceiling actually sits. Workplace harassment that escalates far enough doesn’t stop at an internal grievance outcome or a POHA fine — it can become a straightforward criminal prosecution for a sexual offence, carried out entirely outside the employment framework, with the workplace relationship simply providing the setting in which the offence occurred. A meeting, an interview, or a “professional opportunity” conversation is not a protected space just because it’s framed as business.

External Avenues: TAFEP, CMC, PHC, Police

When an internal process stalls, or an employee doesn’t feel safe using it, several external avenues exist. TAFEP itself provides confidential advice and assistance directly to affected employees, separate from any internal HR channel. The Community Mediation Centre (CMC) handles non-sexual harassment disputes through mediation. The Protection from Harassment Court (PHC) offers a streamlined civil process for Protection Orders and damages claims. Police reports and Magistrate’s Complaints remain available for conduct that amounts to a criminal offence. For disputes that shade into wrongful dismissal following a harassment complaint — for instance, if a complainant is dismissed shortly after raising a concern — the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) is the relevant channel.

Employers should treat the existence of these external avenues as a reason to get the internal process right, not as a backstop that makes internal process optional. An employee who exhausts a weak or nonexistent internal channel and goes straight to TAFEP, the CMC or the police has already concluded the company can’t be trusted to handle it — which is its own reputational and retention cost, independent of whatever the external process eventually finds.

Building Compliance: An Employer Checklist

A functioning harassment and grievance process rests on a handful of concrete building blocks:

• Put a written, zero-tolerance harassment policy in the employee handbook, with concrete examples of prohibited conduct, not just a general statement of principle.
• Offer more than one reporting channel, including an option that doesn’t require going through the alleged harasser’s own reporting line, and make clear that reporting in good faith will not be held against the complainant.
• Train managers and HR specifically on investigation skills and conflict management, not just on the existence of the policy.
• Appoint a neutral investigator for every complaint, keep identities confidential, and document each step and its reasoning.
• Support both the complainant and, if the allegation isn’t substantiated, the accused — fairness to both sides is part of what TAFEP and the courts will look for if the process is ever challenged.
• Know the escalation map before you need it: TAFEP, the Community Mediation Centre, the Protection from Harassment Court, TADM and the police each serve a different type of dispute.

For harassment tied to a protected characteristic and how it interacts with Singapore’s new anti-discrimination law, see our Workplace Fairness Act employer guide. For the safety-focused duties that apply to physical workplace hazards rather than interpersonal conduct, see our WSH Act employer obligations guide.

If this involves an actual termination, WorkRightSG also has a Termination Process Checklist to help organise the questions and documents to work through.