Key Changes for Businesses from National Day Rally 2024

During the National Day Rally 2024, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong introduced several pivotal initiatives designed to enhance Singapore's business environment and workforce. These initiatives are crucial for businesses to comprehend and capitalise on, as they aim to foster a more supportive and dynamic economic landscape. The following are the key takeaways for businesses:

“Charting Our New Way Forward Together”

Reduction in Regulatory Burdens

In order to foster better business growth and expansion efforts, the Government will be easing up on regulatory burdens on companies, particularly SMEs. The recent increase in regulations, restrictions, and application processes has resulted in the dampening of business growth especially in smaller companies.

They are aiming to conduct a thorough review of its rules and processes, dialling them back wherever possible.

How will this benefit my company? This will effectively keep the regulatory burden on businesses’ growth to a minimum. Time and effort spent on applications, permits, and other administrative work due to government regulations will be greatly reduced, allowing for a boost to your development. Innovation and digital transformation are key aspects that companies will be able to focus as implementation and development will be easier once fewer constraints are in place.

SkillsFuture Support for Workforce Development

On the topic of boosting growth, the Government continues to ensure that our workforce has a bright future ahead to create opportunities for upskilling and job seeking.

As previously mentioned during the Budget 2024 Statement in February, there was going to be a top-up of $4,000 worth of SkillsFuture credits for mid-career individuals aged 40 and above. Those credits are now already available in the accounts to allow for upskilling!

Additionally, from 2025, the Government is aiming to support any workers taking time off work to study or upskill by providing allowance of up to $3,000 a month.

Even for jobseekers, the new SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support scheme is going to provide temporary financial support of up to $6,000 over up to 6 months for individuals who experience a loss of employment.

How will this benefit my company? With the help of the credits and allowance, your employees will be able to feel greater ease and freedom to pursue upskilling and education, allowing for your company’s capabilities to be enhanced in the process.

Balance for Working Parents

When it comes to the support of working adults, the Government will also aid the work-life balance of working parents. To ensure that fathers are able to better contribute to parenting, especially in the early years of their children’s lives, changes will be made to the existing parental leave structure.

Instead of the mandatory 2 weeks of paternity leave with an optional extra 2 weeks, all 4 weeks will now be mandatory for employers to grant to any new fathers.

On top of that, there will now be an additional 10 weeks of shared parental leave for both parents to use, replacing the existing scheme of fathers being able to share up to 4 weeks of the mothers’ maternity leave.

But fret not – the Government is fully subsidising these additional 10 weeks of paid leaves for the new parents.

However, to ease employers into it, this new Shared Parental Leave will begin as 6 weeks from 1 April 2025, before being increased to the full 10 weeks on 1 April 2026.

How will this benefit my company? With the Government’s push for new fathers to take paid paternity leaves, the full subsidy for the additional weeks of paid leaves will greatly alleviate the financial burden on your company.

These, of course, are just part of the changes and initiatives announced during the Rally that the Government will be undertaking.

However, these will be the main things to note that will affect the workforce the most and can help the growth and development of your company.

For the full National Day Rally speech, you may read more on the Prime Minister’s Office website here.