SINGAPORE – More resident job seekers and employees experienced discrimination in 2022 due to their mental health condition compared with the year before. 

But there was an overall decline in the proportion of both groups who said they faced discrimination due to any personal attributes.

This comes as employers better followed fair employment guidelines and introduced formal procedures to manage workplace discrimination, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in its latest fair employment practices report released on Monday.

More of the discriminated resident employees sought help – 35.3 per cent did so in 2022, compared with 20 per cent in 2021, according to the report.

The report drew on results from a poll of 3,600 Singaporeans and permanent residents aged 15 and above in the labour force, excluding full-time national servicemen. The two previous reports were for 2021 and 2018.

The three most common forms of discrimination experienced during both the job search and in the workplace were over age, race and mental health. 

Among job seekers, 5 per cent said they faced discrimination in 2022 due to their mental health condition, a marked uptick from 2.9 per cent the year before.

“This could be partly attributed to greater expectations for employers to care for their staff’s mental needs, as well as an increase in the proportion of residents in the labour force with mental health conditions,” said MOM.

But age discrimination remained the most common form of discrimination in the job search process, with 16.6 per cent of job seekers saying they faced this in 2022, down from 18.9 per cent the year before.

The second-most common form of discrimination was racial discrimination, which was experienced by 7.1 per cent of job seekers in 2022, up from 6.3 per cent in 2021.

Mental health was in third place.

Overall, the proportion of job seekers who said they faced discrimination during their job search fell to 23.8 per cent in 2022, from 25.8 per cent in 2021. That is almost half of the 42.7 per cent recorded in 2018.

The MOM report also found that job advertisements that stated a preference for specific demographic characteristics without justification remained the most common source of discrimination experienced by job seekers.

But the proportion of job seekers who indicated this form of discrimination fell to 33.9 per cent in 2022, from 43.3 per cent in 2021, as more employers adhered to the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices, ensuring that job advertisements state criteria related to the qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience of candidates, MOM said.

Requests by employers for personal information not relevant to the job were reported by 23 per cent of job seekers who felt discriminated against.

Meanwhile, among employees, the prevalence of mental health discrimination in the workplace grew to 4.7 per cent in 2022, from 3.2 per cent the year before. It overtook ageism as the top form of discrimination experienced at work in 2022.

Workplace discrimination declined overall to 8.2 per cent in 2022, from 8.5 per cent in 2021, and was only about a third of the 24.1 per cent posted in 2018.

Employees who felt discrimination more commonly reported unfair treatment related to remuneration, workload distribution and career progression, MOM noted.

Employers appear to be getting more serious about dealing with cases of workplace discrimination.

Nearly 60 per cent of employees polled in 2022 said their companies had put in place formal procedures to manage workplace discrimination, up from 54 per cent who said so in 2021.

The ministry also found that over three in four employees who sought help with discrimination could do so via the formal help provided by their company or their union.

Among those who chose not to seek help, the most common reasons were fear of being marginalised at work or affecting work relations negatively (23.1 per cent) and fear of repercussions on their career (21.5 per cent).

“These findings signal the importance of having a formal, confidential and impartial process to handle workplace grievances, so as to create a safe environment for employees to report discrimination,” said MOM.

The ministry also studied how being in a company with formal procedures to manage workplace discrimination reduces the predicted probability of being discriminated against based on age, race, sex, maternity and marital status.

It found that the predicted probability of experiencing ageism is reduced by 2.7 percentage points for employees of a company with such procedures.

“Similarly, the presence of formal procedures in a firm also reduces the predicted probability of race discrimination by 2.5 percentage points, and to a smaller extent, sex discrimination, maternal discrimination, and marital status discrimination,” it said.

“This gives evidence to the importance of implementing formal procedures to manage workplace discrimination.”

Ms Jaya Dass, managing director of recruitment at Randstad Malaysia and Singapore, said the Covid-19 recovery between 2021 and 2022 could explain both the decline in ageism and racial discrimination, and the increase in mental health discrimination, as perceived by workers.

“Ageism and racial discrimination might not have appeared as much because employers needed to fill more jobs and did not have as much choice,” she said.

Meanwhile, companies may have expected employees to increase their productivity up to, or even beyond, pre-pandemic levels as the disease outbreak subsided, even as employees grappled with adjusting their family life and work routines back to pre-pandemic norms.

“Employees are thawing out at their own pace, which may not necessarily match commercial expectations,” said Ms Dass.