Singapore tribunal awards woman maximum $30,000 after ‘sudden and unjustified’ probation dismissal

A Singapore employment tribunal has awarded a woman the maximum $30,000 compensation permitted for a wrongful dismissal claim after finding that her employer failed to justify its decision to terminate her at the end of a six-month probation period.

In a judgement released on July 28, Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) magistrate Joel Tan said the woman, an audit manager, should have received three months of her gross salary, or $34,500, for lost income following the dismissal.

The tribunal also found that she would have been entitled to a further two months’ salary for the distress caused by the dismissal. However, the ECT’s statutory compensation cap meant her total award was limited to $30,000.

The woman, who earned $11,500 a month, could otherwise have received $57,500, equivalent to five months’ salary.

The employee joined the company as a regional internal control audit manager in April 2025 and was placed on a six-month probation. Shortly before the probation period ended, she was informed that her performance had fallen short of the standards required for confirmation.

She received two weeks’ notice on Oct 16, with her employment ending on Oct 31. She subsequently filed a wrongful dismissal claim, with hearings held in May and June 2026.

The identities of both the employee and employer were redacted in the judgment. Both parties represented themselves during the proceedings.

The woman challenged her dismissal on three grounds, arguing that the employer had failed to substantiate its claims about her performance, that she had been disadvantaged because she did not speak Korean, and that she had been dismissed in retaliation for raising concerns about proposed changes to the company’s internal audit reporting structure.

The tribunal agreed with her only on the first ground.

The employer had set two benchmarks for employees on probation: an overall performance score of at least 80% and an average competency rating of at least three out of five across 10 functional competencies.

The woman received a performance score of 71% and an average competency rating of 2.4, which was rounded down to two.

However, Magistrate Tan found that the employer had failed to establish that the scores fairly represented her performance.

The reporting supervisor acknowledged that she had not explained at the beginning of the woman’s employment what was required to achieve the various competency ratings. She also did not conduct the periodic documented reviews required under the company’s own probation process.

As a result, the employee was “left to navigate a set of qualitative descriptors without any guidance” on how the ratings would be applied to her work or what she needed to demonstrate to pass probation, the magistrate said.

The tribunal also noted that the employer had not provided written reasons for the low competency ratings. Instead, the supervisor gave explanations during the hearing, suggesting that the employee “might not be that passionate” about certain work, could be more proactive in decision-making and appeared uninterested in the company’s performance.

Magistrate Tan said these observations reflected the supervisor’s impressions rather than a properly established assessment process.

“These impressions, taken together, revealed a supervisor who had formed a view of the (employee), that she lacked passion, initiative, and engagement, but who did not explain the standard against which that view was formed, or demonstrate that the claimant had been measured against it in any principled way,” he said.

He added that the ratings were, in substance, the supervisor’s “impressions dressed up as a suitability review”.

The tribunal also examined the employee’s performance goals, including audit work, financial health checks, ad-hoc assignments and training responsibilities.

While the employer alleged that she had missed deadlines, failed to follow instructions and produced work with formatting problems, the magistrate found that several criticisms were unsupported by evidence or related to standards that had not been clearly communicated.

The tribunal further noted that the supervisor had not criticised the substantive quality of the woman’s audit work, instead focusing largely on peripheral and administrative issues.

Magistrate Tan found a mismatch between the two sides’ expectations. While the supervisor emphasised administrative compliance, the employee prioritised “the rigour and integrity of the audit process itself as an audit professional”.

The tribunal rejected the woman’s separate claim that her dismissal was linked to her inability to speak Korean.

She argued that senior colleagues frequently held important discussions in Korean, excluding her from conversations that influenced expectations around her work.

The magistrate accepted that Korean was sometimes used in the workplace but found insufficient evidence that the woman’s language ability influenced her performance ratings or the decision to terminate her employment.

Her whistle-blowing claim was also dismissed.

The woman had raised concerns about a proposed restructuring of the internal audit reporting structure and questioned whether audit functions should be led by her supervisor, whom she said lacked audit qualifications and experience.

However, the tribunal found no evidence that the managers who decided to dismiss her were aware of those discussions when the termination decision was made. It therefore did not conclude that her dismissal was retaliatory.

In determining compensation, Magistrate Tan said employment claims regulations allow for compensation of up to three months’ salary for loss of income and up to two months’ salary for harm caused by wrongful dismissal, subject to the applicable statutory cap.

“The (employer) brought the (woman’s) employment to an end in a manner that was both sudden and unjustified,” he said, adding that it would be difficult to assume such a dismissal did not cause her considerable distress.

The tribunal also ordered the employer to pay $300 in costs and $60 in disbursements.