Foreign Worker Levy in Singapore: Changes to the Levy From July 2015

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Singapore Foreign Worker LevyThe Ministry of Manpower in Singapore has implemented a quota on the total number of foreign employees that you can hire. If your company exceeds the quota, you will have to reorganize your workforce in order to meet the requirements. You can find out what is your company’s quota on foreign employees here.

In addition to the quota, the foreign worker’s levy applies to any company that employs foreigners with Work Permits. The quota depends on the industry. From July 2016 the rates for the levy will change. Here is the complete schedule of foreign worker levy changes. The levy needs to be paid via GIRO on the 17th of the next month. In case your company is still in the process of applying for GIRO, you may pay by other methods by the 14th of the next month. Here are the details for paying the levy.

This is the schedule for the services sector:

S Pass
Tier Sector Dependency Ratio (DR) Current Levy Rates ($) New Levy Rates ($) From July 1 2016
Basic Tier <10% 315 330
Tier 2 (Services) 10-15% 550 650
Tier 2 (Other Sectors) 10-20%
Work Permit
Tier Sector Dependency Ratio (DR) Current Levy Rates ($) (R1/R2) New Levy Rates ($) (R1/R2) From July 1 2016
Basic Tier <10% 300/420 300/420
Tier 2 (Services) 10-25% 400/550 400/550
Tier 2 (Other Sectors) 25-40% 600/700 600/700

The Skilled Workers’ Levy rates are lower than regular foreign workers’ levy. It applies for workers who have years of experience and meet the academic qualifications specified by the Ministry of Manpower. The forms and requirements for applying for the skilled workers’ levy are posted here.

Do note that there are certain work permit requirements that the MoM has posted. In addition to the regular requirements, foreign workers in the retail and F&B sector need to obtain level 4 of the Workplace Literacy listening and speaking assessments conducted by the Workforce Development Agency (WDA). You can register for the assessments through the CES online booking portal.

Customer Happiness Tools – Being Ridiculously Client Focused

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Customer happiness is essential to everything we do at PayrollHero. One of our favourite catchphrases is “ridiculously client focused”, which means that we want to devote our resources towards making our clients happy. Everything else is secondary. And we aren’t the only ones with that perspective.

Over the last week, the PayrollHero team has been traveling all over the world. While spending an unnatural amount of your time in airports, you can’t help but notice the little things that pique your interest. The pictures that you see are from the London and Dublin airports, where customer feedback stations have been installed. Whether the feedback is about security, bathroom cleanliness (as in the case of Singapore’s Changi airport) or customer service, the idea behind these tools is to ensure that the customer experiences the best that we have to offer.

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Dublin Airport Security Feedback

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London Airport Security Feedback

The customer feedback tool can be extended to any service. Restaurants, retail stores, bathrooms, anything that involves customer interaction. With data analytics, you can do more than just find out how your outlet is performing. You can reward those who make it happen.

In that vein, PayrollHero created the TeamClock customer feedback tool. Imagine this: the sports apparel retail store you own is visited by a customer five minutes before it is time to shut down. While any other employee would request the customer to return the next day, this employee – let’s name him Bob – decided to let the customer in. Over the next 30 minutes, the customer went through your store and made the biggest purchase of the week, while Bob patiently helped him. While walking out, the customer spent a few seconds on the iPad sitting on your counter, typing out comments about the best customer service he has ever received.

Using the Xray Insights app, you noticed that a particular outlet received excellent customer feedback. With a closer look, you realized that the same employee – Bob – has been consistent with winning awesome feedback from customers. Not only do you have information about how well that outlet is doing, you also know who has contributed towards that outlet’s success.

This makes for an easy and efficient way to reward reliable employees. With data to back you up on how capable your employees are, you can make decisions on whom to promote, to manage other staff or simply reward at the end of the week. This approach allows your employees to be ridiculously client focused as well.

So this is what we have been working on at PayrollHero. The customer feedback tool is currently in beta stage. We will keep you posted with updates and changes that we introduce to the app. Till then, we hope the feedback you are receiving helps you identify the Bobs that make your outlet ridiculously client focused.

Want to get the PayrollHero Customer Feedback tool for your business? Reach out to us today and we would be pleased to speak further about how we can get your establishment setup to gather real time data.

Apple Announces the Release of iOS 9 for September 2015!

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The World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) last week saw a host of announcements by Apple, including the introduction of Apple Pay in UK, a new trackpad feature for the iPad and (what is now becoming) the customary announcement on iOS upgrades. iOS 9 is scheduled to roll out in September, with the public beta starting out in July.

What does this mean for PayrollHero?Singapore Payroll

There are currently 3 PayrollHero iOS apps: TeamClock, #MyClock and Xray Insights. The launch of iOS 9 means that we will stop supporting iOS 7. PayrollHero supports the most recent version of Apple’s iOS and the one prior. (which is the same support Apple provides for their iOS)

The new versions of the iOS PayrollHero apps will have:

  • Full compatibility with iOS 9.
  • Performance tweaks – faster and smoother operation.
  • Improvements on the face detection system.
  • Enhanced security and data privacy.
  • Multiple code optimizations and bug fixes.

The announced list of compatible devices with iOS 9 is:

  • iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad Air 2
  • iPad mini, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3
  • iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
  • iPod touch (fifth generation)
  • Newer devices than these above should be supported, please contact us at support first to confirm.

If you are using a 5th generation iPod, an iPad 2 or iPhone 4s or any newer models and you haven’t already upgraded to at least iOS 8, make sure you get on that as soon as possible. As of September, we will not be able to fix any bugs that surface on the iOS 7.1.2 or lower.

 

Get Your New Employee Off To A Good Start

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In our recent blog posts on millennials, we’ve talked about how to get the right young star talents into your company and how to stop them from leaving once you’ve got them working for you.

PayrollHero Team is expanding, and as we speak a new batch of interns are flying in to come work with us here at our Singapore office. And it just had me thinking-  it is so important to have these young rock stars feel welcome into our working culture. Why? I can understand first hand how daunting it can be for a 20 something year old to travel thousands of miles be apart of something you don’t have a first clue about and figuring all of that out in a new country.

What most employers think when onboarding new employees, they typically check tasks off a to-do list which may include- a quick introduction, an office tour, getting to learn the company vision and other tasks. But what is most often left to last, (and usually ignored) is having a plan that is focused on making new employees feel welcome, appreciated and feel part of the company culture as soon as possible.

And these efforts will have it rewards– high employee retention and loyalty to the company will reflect favorably to the bottomline. Paying close attention to the company culture and adding to it is really important. I would like to quote Jonathan Mildenhall, CMO with Airbnb, where he says “the culture becomes an incubator for creativity
and innovation, and ultimately for business performance.”

Here’s a few things companies can do to welcome a new hire:

Have A Welcome Strategy Put In Place
Before the hiring process starts, have a meeting where everybody (from the management down) who will be involved in the new hire to brainstorm and come up with a detailed plan for bringing a new person to the team. It is important for the company to create a good first impression as well. One of the most important things a new hire at Airbnb goes through is a full week of cultural immersion, so the person will come out of that week feeling like he can be a true ambassador for the company and brand.

Have A Mentor/ Buddy System
It’s good to assign somebody or even better, the whole team to spend some time with the new employee to take him out for lunch or happy hour after work, show how stuff works and provide support when needed. Helping the new guy feel part of the team quickly would be good to help him get rolling on the job and assimilate easier.

Express Genuine Interest in the New Employee As A Person.
Getting to know your new hire as an individual is great for building rapport with the person. Knowing more information about him would come in handy, like for instance if you know he’s visual or auditory will tell you how he prefers to be appreciated. For an auditory person, being complimented verbally is better than receiving it in an email and the opposite is true for a visual person.

It is always good to keep in mind these little information which creates a more personalized welcome and heightens his experience with the company.

Stay tuned to find out who are our new interns and how they are doing with PayrollHero.

The PayrollHero Team is fast expanding and we’re on the look out for rock star talents to join us. Drop us an email and tell us more about you.

 

Domain Driven Design Workshop by Mr. Kiro Harada

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[Update] Here is the full recap from the event.

Next week is an eventful one for PayrollHero. All of our team is flying in from Whistler and Manila to learn more about Domain Driven Design (DDD). The workshop will be conducted by Agile expert Mr Kiro Harada.

What is DDD, you say? Well, let me have a go at it. DDD is an approach to software development where domain experts collaborate in order to place their primary focus on the core domain. Often, keeping up a unified, single model becomes progressively harder, leading to subtle differences between different groups of people. In simple terms: we’re trying to get everyone on the team to speak the same language.

If that sounds cryptic, that’s because I haven’t been to the workshop yet! (not for lack of trying to scour through Wikipedia pages to figure this out, I promise)

The workshop will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday (16th and 17th June). Mr. Harada will be flying in from Japan. After helping us Improving Scrum with Kaizen back in April, we decided to go a step further and do a 2 day workshop on DDD.

Stay tuned with our blog because we will be giving you a post-event breakdown soon!

Certified Profile: Clare Matchett, ServiceSeeking Manila

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As part of a new series on this blog we will be profiling certified PayrollHero users to learn more about them, their business, where they go to learn and best practices. 

First up is Clare Matchett, General Manager for ServiceSeeking Manila.
Clare Matchett, SeekingService Manila, General Manager

1. How would you describe your business? 
ServiceSeeking Manila is the Manila arm of ServiceSeeking.com.au, Australia’s best way to get free quotes from local businesses. Our team handles customer service, sales, data analysis, web development, SEO and a whole lot more.


2. What tools do you use to recruit?
We use traditional recruiting tools like job websites, forums and events. One of the most successful recruitment channels is actually referrals from existing team members. Some of our best staff were encouraged to apply by friends and family who worked with us and loved the company culture and office atmosphere.

3. What is your hiring philosophy? 
We look closely at applicants’ personality and general aptitude and tend to place more emphasis on this than skills, education and past experience in our industry. If someone is the right fit, they’ll have the curiosity, bubbliness and problem solving ability that helps them thrive in a company that moves quickly and believes in collaboration, openness and fun.

4. What blogs / newsletters do you read to stay up to date in your industry?
My favourite newsletter is from Sandler Training, a sales training company with a no nonsense approach to prospecting and winning and keeping clients.

5. How do you build company culture at ServiceSeeking? 
We emphasise our company values and make these a core part of recruitment, training and annual reviews. Weekly wrap ups with the entire office also let everyone know what others are working on, celebrate the small “wins” and help team members see the importance of their own role in our big picture success.

6. I saw on Linkedin you were “Streamlining HR policies and the recruitment process” can you explain more about that?  
We’ve learned over the years that being different to the average big BPO company is a key factor in our success in Manila. We’ve worked hard to cut out policies and processes that are not in line with our values and can hold our team back from delivering great quality service.

7. Is speaking Tagalog an advantage to you in running the business? 
My tagalog has a long way to go, but I do think employees appreciate when a foreigner takes the time to learn! It has certainly helped me understand more about Philippine culture, and it always gets a smile when I drop a word into the conversation, even with the wrong pronunciation.

8. Regarding the PayrollHero Certifications, what did you think of the certification courses? 
I was very impressed with the certification courses PayrollHero and its training partners provide. We were helped along every step of the way and the support made the transition from outsourced payroll provider to running this in-house much more smooth.

9. Was the certifications helpful in getting the most out of PayrollHero?

Much of the software is intuitive and just “makes sense”, but payroll in the Philippines is notoriously complicated. We’ve been able to transition to using PayrollHero without adding any new team members and this is mostly because of the great communication with the PayrollHero staff. Discrepancy checks were particularly helpful in letting us know where we’re at with the transition and how to set up loans, advances, bonuses, allowances and government contributions correctly.

PayrollHero has a deliberate onboarding process that is designed to understand every customer’s unique needs so that we can quickly and effectively transition your business onto PayrollHero. Reach out today for a free, 30 min. one on one conversation about how PayrollHero can work within your organization.

The Complete Guide to Selecting Your Internet Provider in Singapore

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As a restaurant owner or retail owner, you have a number of things to consider; one of them is making sure your internet connection is reliable and fast so that your operations run smoothly. While we have talked about the need for you to upgrade your technology, this post is some practical advice on what internet plans are available to you.

We picked out fibre broadband plans, catered towards multiple stores across the island. Aside from bandwidth, contract terms and installation costs, we have also put together information on discounts for multiple store locations, how their customer service team performed and waiting time for installation. Do note, all options available have the symmetric download and upload speeds. Based on where you are in the island, speeds are different.

We looked at the top 3 internet service providers in Singapore: Singtel, Starhub an M1. We tried contacting other service providers in order to give you a broad set of options, but their customer service lines were facing high volume. So here we are:

Fibre Broadband Bandwidth: Winner – Singtel

Singtel: 100-500 Mbps

Starhub: Upto 250Mbps

M1: 10-200 Mbps

Singtel wins hands down in the bandwidth that they provide. Their BizWifi Enterprise package is catered towards businesses (they mentioned cafes) that want to provide internet services to their customers while also using it for operations.

Price Plans: Winner – Tie between Starhub and M1

Singtel: $250 – 552/month

Starhub: $209/month

M1: $200/month

Starhub and M1 rank equally in terms of competitive pricing.

Installation costs: Winner – Starhub

Singtel: $535 for the 2 year contract, free for 3 year contract

Starhub: Free

M1: $300 for a 2 year contract, but the fee is waived if they install for multiple stores

Starhub clearly wins. Singtel installation costs are pretty heavy if you take the 2 year contract.

Contract Limit: Winner – It’s a tie

Singtel: 2 or 3 year contract

Starhub: 2 year contract

M1: 2 year contract

Waiting Time: Winner – It’s a tie

Singtel: 4-8 weeks based on survey of the establishment

Starhub: 6-8 weeks

M1: 6-8 weeks

This is pretty standard. All three companies survey your establishment to figure out how the connection should be installed.

Customer Service: Winner – M1

Singtel: Good. Very high volume on their corporate line. But they were helpful and polite when they finally received the call.

Starhub: Very good!

M1: Awesome. They suggested emailing a proposal immediately.

MyReupublic: Well, we tried calling them but we were on hold for around 20 minutes

Discount for multiple stores: Winner – M1

Singtel: No

Starhub: No

M1: Yes!

Phone Numbers:

Singtel: 1688

Starhub: 1606

M1: 1622

While the competition is close, it depends on what you are looking for. In terms of bandwidth, Singtel wins. But for everything else, especially pricing, M1 stands out as a winner. For your reference, here are the websites for Singtel, Starhub and M1

We will update this list as we hear from other operators. Like we said, we tried to contact MyRepublic but they were unavailable. Do let us know if you have suggestions!

Rankings on Ease of Doing Business in Southeast Asia

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Ease of Doing Business in SE AsiaSoutheast Asia is a hot market for business. There is untapped potential, both in terms of consumer demand and labour markets. With all eyes on Asia, it is important to focus your capital and team where you generate the greatest return on your investment. Which means getting into the details of every country’s laws: ease of setting up a business, access to credit, construction permits, registering property, taxation laws. This can be daunting, not to mention time consuming. Which is why we have come up with a few metrics that will give you a head-start on some high level knowledge on a few chosen countries in SEA.

The countries we have chosen are: Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The metrics we have chosen are from the ease of doing business rankings published by the World Bank Group. They are: overall ease of doing business, starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, paying taxes, enforcing contracts, USD equivalent of a worker in retail/restaurants. For a thorough understanding on how the World Bank Group creates these rankings, you can read the explanation here.The data for rankings and number of procedures has been taken from World Bank Group’s Doing Business publication.

Ease of doing business
Singapore 1
Malaysia 18
Thailand 26
Vietnam 78
The Philippines 95
Indonesia 114

Singapore ranks first on the ease of doing business. This is not surprising. Since its independence, Singapore has positioned itself as a leader in doing business in SEA. By reducing bureaucratic procedures and taking the entire process online, Singapore has lived up to its top position for many years now.

Starting a Business
Singapore 6
Malaysia 13
Thailand 75
Vietnam 125
Indonesia 155
The Philippines 161

This metric is considered by measuring the number of days it takes to start a business. According to the World Bank Group, it takes 3 days to start a business in Singapore while in the Philippines, it takes 34, which gives you a good idea as to why the rankings look like the above. In the Philippines, much of the time is wasted moving from one department to another. It takes 16 independent procedures to start a business.

Dealing with Construction Permits
Singapore 2
Thailand 6
Vietnam 22
Malaysia 28
The Philippines 124
Indonesia 153

Indonesia ranks the lowest. It takes 17 procedures to obtain a construction permit in Indonesia while Singapore requires you to complete 10 procedures.

Getting Electricity
Singapore 11
Thailand 12
The Philippines 16
Malaysia 27
Indonesia 78
Vietnam 135

Vietnam has an average of 10 procedures taking 34 days while Singapore has 4 taking 31 days.

Registering Property
Singapore 24
Thailand 28
Vietnam 33
Malaysia 75
The Philippines 108
Indonesia 117

On average, Indonesia has 5 procedures, taking 25 days, while Singapore has 4 procedures, taking 4.5 days.

Getting Credit
Singapore 17
Thailand 89
Vietnam 36
Malaysia 23
The Philippines 104
Indonesia 71
Paying Taxes
Singapore 5
Malaysia 32
Thailand 62
The Philippines 127
Indonesia 160
Vietnam 173

This statistic is by far the most extreme. The total number of tax payments in Singapore is 5 per year which takes about 82 hours in the year whereas Vietnam has 32 payments per year which takes about 872 hours.

To understand more about taxation laws on some countries in the APAC region, you can read about it here for Singapore and for the Philippines.

Enforcing Contracts
Singapore 1
Thailand 25
Malaysia 29
Vietnam 47
The Philippines 124
Indonesia 172

In Singapore there are 21 procedures for enforcing contracts which takes about 150 days whereas Indonesia has 40 procedures, taking about 451 days.

Corruption Perception Index
Singapore 84
Malaysia 52
Thailand 38
The Philippines 38
Indonesia 34
Vietnam 31

The corruption perception index is a measure of how people within the country view the public sector. The index is relative to every other country on the list. It ranges from 0 (weakest perception) to 100 (cleanest perception).

Considering the countries we have chosen, it is pretty obvious why Singapore stands out. It is one of the most mature markets in SEA. The other countries are still in a developing stage. Singapore stands more as a reference point on these lists. Many of the SEA nations are held back by the large number of bureaucratic procedures and rampant corruption.

In addition to these factors, we should also consider the cost of doing business, in terms of labour, land and capital costs. There is a trade-off between cost and efficiency which we have avoided considering in order to bring out the basic metric of ease of doing business in SEA.

Hope this was helpful and relevant for your business! Watch out for more posts on rankings in SEA.

If you are in need of a payroll solution for your business, check out our Southeast Asia offerings here – PayrollHero.Asia

– – Related Posts – –

Doing Business in the Philippines

Payroll in APAC: Singapore

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Employer contributions in Singapore are collected by the Central Provident Fund (CPF). The deductions and levies contribute towards savings for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PRs) for retirement, insurance and building their homes. There are also certain levies that go towards different ethnic funds. We will go through all these deductions and levies.

CPF

CPF contributions are done by the employee and employer. The contributions arsingapore cpfe restricted to Singaporeans and PRs only. There are 4 major accounts that CPF contributions go into: Ordinary Account (for retirement, housing finance, investment, education), Special Account (for old age and special contingencies), Medisave Account (for hospital bills) and Retirement Account (this account is opened once the employee turns 55). Check out these links to find out contributions rates and deadlines.

Foreign Workers Levy

The levy is imposed on employers who employ foreign workers with Work Permits or S Passes. Levies do not need to be paid for employees with Employment Passes. The levy is calculated based on the ratio of Singaporeans to foreign employees that your business employs. Here is a link on how the foreign levy is calculated. The levy is paid on the first of every month. More details on the FWL here.

Skills Development Levy

The SDL goes to the Skills Development Fund, which provides grants for training programmes and workforce upgrading programmes. The levy must be paid for Singpaorean, PR and foreign workers. The rates are linked here.

Ethnic Fund

There are 4 Self Help Group (SGH) Funds that collect levies based on the ethnicity of your employees. The four funds are:

  1. Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) Fund, administered byCDAC
  2. Eurasian Community Fund (ECF), administered by the Eurasian Association(EA)
  3. Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund (MBMF), administered by Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS)
  4. Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) Fund, administered by SINDA

The levy is paid out of employees’ salaries. Employees may choose to opt out of the levy by signing the relevant forms. The levy must be paid every month. Here are the rates.

If you are looking for a Singapore cloud based payroll platform – look no further. PayrollHero’s end to end solution includes time, attendance, scheduling, HRIS and Singapore payroll. Plus, amazing business intelligence. Let us know if you want a one on one demo.

For more information on CPF contributions, make sure to read this link. If you want to know more about employer contribution in the Philippine, check out Payroll in APAC: the Philippines.. Hope this helps!

Disclaimer: As always, consult your lawyer or accountant for advice! We are here to help, but your specific situation should be reviewed by a professional with complete knowledge of your situation.