Seven in ten Singapore residents are engaged in the workforce. On average, workers in Singapore spend nine hours a day at work. This makes the workplace an important setting to have in place programmes and initiatives that support safety and health, so as to benefit a large segment of the population.

The Tripartite Oversight Committee (TOC) on Workplace Health was set up in 2014 to help workers achieve wellbeing by adopting a holistic approach to manage their safety and health. In its first term (2014 – 2017), the TOC raised the awareness of safety and health holistically, impacted the overall health of hard-to-reach mature workers, and increased the adoption of healthier behaviours among workers in business clusters. In its second term (2017 – 2020), the TOC on Workplace Safety and Health expanded upon the work done in the previous term to incorporate workplace safety and hence was renamed the Tripartite Oversight Committee on Safety and Health.

The third-term Tripartite Oversight Committee on Workplace Safety and Health (2021-2024) convened in June 2021. Led by co-chairs Dr. Janil Puthucheary, Senior Minister of State (Health) and Mr Zaqy Mohamad, Senior Minister of State (Manpower), the Tripartite Oversight Committee comprises representatives from the public and privates sectors to drive and implement workplace health and safety initiatives at the national level. It consists of senior representatives from the Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Health Promotion Board (HPB), Workplace Safety and Health Council (WSHC), partners and relevant stakeholders.

Its three sub-committees drive progress in three key areas, as depicted below:

In its three-year term the committee had continued advancing workplace safety and health. From Oct 2017 to Oct 2020, more than 853,000 workers have accessed workplace safety and health programmes, with more than 224,000 workers having participated in these programmes. These efforts achieved the following: 

Throughout the course of the programmes in the TOC terms, we increased our impact on workers’ biometric and behavioural health outcomes, to achieve the following outcomes:

Key learnings culled from the programmes implemented during the term of the TOC are:

The TOC recommends continuing this close and effective collaboration among unions, employers and government to bring about more impactful workplace safety and health programmes to workers. The TOC will focus on:

For the full Tripartite Oversight Committee Report, please click here.