Singapore's National Day Rally: Employment law updates

On 18 August 2024, Singapore's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong delivered his first National Day Rally speech. Key measures were announced as part of what was described as a "reset" of policies to realise a "refreshed Singapore Dream".

While measures addressing areas such as the economy, families, housing, and education were touched on, new employment policies such as enhancements to paternity leave and shared paternity leave affecting employers and employees were also announced.

These enhanced leave policies for new parents will be implemented with the view of providing parents more time to care for and bond with their babies, as part of the Singapore government's effort to provide stronger caregiving support for parents during their child's infancy stage. These will be addressed below.

The existing framework and proposed updates

Paternity Leave and Shared Parental Leave

The Singapore government has been progressively increasing paternity leave entitlements.

Just as of 1 January 2024, government paid paternity leave was doubled from 2 to 4 weeks for eligible fathers of children born from 1 January 2024 onwards. As such, currently, fathers are entitled to 4 weeks of paternity leave, and mothers have 16 weeks of maternity leave. However, vis-a-vis the paternity leave, out of the 4 weeks mentioned above, employers must provide 2 weeks, and have the option to offer an additional 2 weeks on a voluntary basis, as mutually agreed with the employee.

From 1 April 2025, 4 weeks paternity leave will become an entitlement. This will mean that employers must mandatorily offer 4 weeks paid paternity leave.

Additionally, under the current regime, a husband can share up to 4 weeks of his wife's 16 week maternity leave entitlement. The limitation of this policy is that it reduces the mother's entitlement for maternity leave.

This will be addressed with the new shared parental leave policy arrangement, which will give an additional 10 weeks of government paid shared parental leave, which may be allocated between new parents.

Impact

Paternity Leave: As mentioned, from 1 April 2025, employers will be required to offer fathers 4 weeks of paternity leave. As such, employers must agree to any new fathers' application for parental leave.

Shared Parental Leave: Instead of sharing maternity leave entitlements, as mentioned above, a new arrangement of shared parental leave will be introduced. Under the new shared parental leave arrangements, employers will need to entitle eligible employees to 10 additional weeks of shared leave. This additional leave may be shared between both parents, and will allow either fathers or mothers to make use of the entitlement. This can be split equally between parents or reallocated between them depending on childcare needs.

For the timeline of implementation of shared parental leave, the regime will be progressively implemented to give employers time to adjust and adapt for the implementation of these policies. For the first stage, employers with employees with babies born from 1 April 2025 (or with an estimated date of delivery of 1 April 2025) must entitle such employees to 6 weeks shared parental leave. In the following year, from 1 April 2026, employers must increase this entitlement of shared parental leave to 10 weeks. Employers will need to adapt their policies and manpower allocations.

For employees, the aim of these increases in paid leave entitlements is to allow parents who would like to spend more time with their children to do so, especially when they are infants. Employees will need to utilise the shared parental leave entitlement within the first 12 months of the child's birth. An application to change the leave sharing allocations should be made by an employee within four weeks after the child's birth. Any further changes will need to be mutually agreed between the employer and employee. Employees should also note that they will need to provide early notice of at least 4 weeks before utilising shared parental leave, but are encouraged to notify their employers early.

It should be noted that these entitlements are available to eligible employees only, which will be pursuant to the existing guidelines. Additionally, the government paid shared paternity leave will still be subject to the prevailing cap, currently set at S$2,500 per week (approximately S$10,000 a month).

Conclusion

In conclusion, when the new policies have been fully implemented in 2026, the total paid leave afforded to parents will be approximately 30 weeks, or about 7.5 months, a marked shift from the current approximate of 18 weeks entitlement.

Ultimately, for a successful of the implementation of these policies, support of employers and fellow employees would be critical. These additional entitlements in Singapore will hopefully make headway in providing a balance between working and parenting obligations.

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