If a placement is not working, you have four options: talk and adjust, ask your agency to find you another helper, transfer her to another employer, or end her employment and send her home. Which one is open to you depends on your agency’s terms, and each has steps MOM requires. Start by telling your agency early.
1. Talk first
Most problems in the first weeks are misunderstandings about routines, language or rest days. Before anything formal, sit down, say what is wrong, and agree on what will change. Then tell your agency, even if you are only thinking about a change. MOM expects you to notify the agency within a reasonable time before you cancel, repatriate or transfer her, and some refund rights depend on it.
2. Ask your agency to find you another helper
What the agency does when a placement does not work out is set in your service agreement. Ours is on our packages page: we find you another helper, and her a new employer, up to 3 times within 6 months, with the conditions in the agreement. Other agencies’ terms differ, so read yours.
3. Transfer her to a new employer
A helper can be transferred, either directly to another employer or through an agency. Through an agency, the agency takes over responsibility for her once it cancels her Work Permit for the transfer, and pays for her accommodation, food and medical care until she is placed or goes home. See hiring a transfer helper.
4. End the employment
Notice. Either side can end the contract by giving the notice period it states. If notice cannot be given, the person ending it pays salary in lieu of notice. Both can agree to waive the notice. This is why it helps to have the notice period written into the employment contract from the start.
Before you cancel the Work Permit:
- agree the last working day with her and settle everything owed, including salary;
- check her passport is valid;
- agree in writing on the flight, including any transit and the allowance for it.
Cancel the Work Permit within 1 week of her last working day (or within 1 week of her leaving Singapore, if she has already gone). You, a sponsor or your agent can do it in MOM’s FDW eService. The levy stops the day before cancellation.
Pay for her flight home. Buy a ticket with checked luggage and pay the transport to the international port of entry in her home country, or the nearest to her hometown. She must leave within 2 weeks of the cancellation. MOM gives you a Special Pass to print for her to show at immigration.
She cannot work after cancellation, even while she waits to leave, and the Work Permit card must be cut in half and discarded. Your security bond is usually discharged about a week after she leaves.
Will the agency refund its fee?
MOM requires employment agencies to refund at least 50% of their service fee if a helper’s employment ends within the first six months, within 14 working days after the later of your written request and the cancellation of the Work Permit. This applies to contracts from 1 June 2022. The refund is not automatic. MOM lists cases where it does not apply, among them:
- the agency only did administrative hiring work and no matching;
- you broke employment law or committed an offence against her;
- you did not tell the agency in time, or acted before telling it;
- the agency has already found you up to two other helpers and one of them stayed more than six months, or it has found you a third;
- a caregiver you hired for a family member is no longer needed because that person has died or moved to other care.
The fees covered are those you paid the agency. Government and home-country costs (the Work Permit, Settling-In Programme, medical examinations, one-way travel, serology tests, the Philippine OEC and similar), training you asked a third party for, and her placement loan are not included. An agency may not add its own conditions for you to qualify.
Changing helpers often
If you have changed more than three helpers within 12 months, hiring a fourth means attending MOM’s CONNECT Workshop: one hour, run by the Association of Employment Agencies Singapore, fee $80, with a questionnaire about how you hired and managed previous helpers. MOM will email you about it.
What to remember
- Tell your agency early, and in writing. That keeps your options and your refund open.
- Tell the agency before you cancel the permit. Acting first is one of the cases where the refund does not apply.
- Keep paying salary and housing until she has left.
Source: MOM, cancelling a Work Permit, refund of agency service fees, frequent changes of helpers and contracts. Our own policy is in the after-sales policy; ask us if you are unsure where you stand.
General information as of the date above. MOM's current rules and your own service agreement are what apply.