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Company fires woman for poor performance, then fails to prove it. She is now awarded ₹19 lakh
The woman claimed that since being dismissed by the company, she has been unable to find a new job.
A woman dismissed for alleged poor performance was awarded S$30,000 (approximately ₹19 lakh) by Singapore’s Employment Claims Tribunal (ECT) when her employer failed to substantiate the claims in court.
What had happened?
The woman was hired by the company in April 2025 and placed on a 6-month probation period. However, towards the end of it, she was informed that her services were no longer needed due to “poor performance," reported CNA.
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The woman felt her dismissal was unfair and took the company to court. Besides rejecting the company’s allegations of poor performance, she claimed that her dismissal was a retaliation against her because of her being a “whistleblower” in a project. She alleged that she was also removed because she couldn’t speak Korean, despite it being an English-speaking workplace.
She claimed that prior to her dismissal, she received no verbal or written warning about her performance. She shared that she was assessed against standards that were never made clear to her.
What did the magistrate say?
According to the outlet, the tribunal magistrate Joel Tan said, “An employer who has not made its performance standards clear cannot then rely on an employee's non-conformity with those standards as evidence of unsuitability.”
Tan added, "Ignorance of a standard and inability to meet it are different things and treating them as equivalent is precisely the error that a structured probation management process is designed to prevent. Unfortunately, the (company) did not implement its probation management process in the way that it was designed."
The magistrate continued, “There will be cases where such articulation is unnecessary – for instance, where an employee's failings are so material that any reasonable employer would regard them as gross incompetence, or where the employee is sufficiently senior that a preexisting understanding of what competent performance entails can reasonably be assumed.”
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"Although the claimant was an experienced audit professional, the matters for which she was criticised were not failures of audit judgment," he said.
Though he said the employee has room for improvement, he ruled that the woman was assessed against standards that weren’t made clear to her. However, he dismissed the woman’s allegations of language discrimination and retaliatory action by the company.
How much was she awarded?
Her three months' gross pay, to which she was entitled, was S$34,500. However, she was awarded S$30,000 in accordance with the prescribed limit.
