Is Salary Worth the Stress: Unfair Workplaces Drain Both Employees and Profits

This week, a close friend sat across from me with tears in his eyes. He had worked hard, delivered what was asked of him, and yet found himself stripped of his salary because of a supervisor’s unfair judgment. Instead of accountability, he was met with defensiveness. Instead of support, he was left feeling powerless. As an HR consultant, I could guide him through the process, but I could not erase the deeper wound. The deep cuts due to the feeling that in his company, people did not matter.

His question to me has not left my mind: “Is the salary still worth it if you’re treated unfairly?”

HIDDEN TAX OF HARASSMENT

We often treat money as the ultimate motivator. Yet no paycheck is large enough to outweigh the damage of working in an environment where harassment, bias, or hostility festers. Economists call this the hidden tax of toxic workplaces. It drains energy, stifles creativity, and ultimately eats away at profitability. Employees under constant stress eventually disengage. Turnover rises. Recruitment costs balloon.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report puts a staggering price tag on it. Disengagement and toxic cultures cost the global economy more than US$8.8 trillion (S$11.3 trillion) every year. That figure is not abstract. It shows up in weaker quarterly earnings, missed growth targets, and declining valuations.

Image Credits: unsplash.com

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL SHIFTS

Singapore has been moving decisively to confront this challenge. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) defines workplace harassment as behavior that causes alarm, distress, or intimidation, from threatening language to cyberbullying, stalking, and sexual harassment. This is not only an HR problem. It is a matter of compliance, governance, and risk management.

The Protection from Harassment Act (POHA), in place since 2014, already gave victims civil and criminal remedies whether harassment occurred in person or online. The new Workplace Fairness Act (WFA) 2024 goes further by outlawing discrimination and requiring employers to build grievance-handling systems. Unlike earlier guidelines, this law has teeth. It allows enforcement action now and private legal claims in the near future.

For businesses, the message is clear: failure to act fairly is no longer just a reputational stain. It can become a balance sheet liability.

WHY INVESTORS SHOULD PAY ATTENTION

Investors understand risk, and workplace culture is increasingly recognized as a material one. A company that tolerates harassment, drives attrition, or attracts lawsuits is a company that risks underperforming peers. Today’s ESG-conscious funds, which control trillions in assets, specifically screen for social and governance issues. When a company fails its employees, it often fails the very metrics that dictate whether capital flows in or out.

Workplace toxicity does not just harm people. It weakens profitability. It shows up in mounting legal expenses, lower productivity, shrinking margins, and weaker shareholder returns. It can depress valuations, complicate mergers, and even close off access to ESG-linked financing.

McKinsey research makes the financial case unmistakable. Companies that prioritize fairness and inclusion outperform their peers by as much as 25% in profitability. Fairness is not a soft, optional value. It is a measurable driver of enterprise value.

A NEW DEFINITION OF VALUE

When my friend asked if his paycheck was worth the humiliation, what he was really asking about was value. A salary can cover rent, groceries, and bills. But it cannot compensate for lost dignity or the fear of speaking up. For employers, the deeper question is whether they can afford the risks of ignoring fairness. For investors, the real issue is whether they should back companies that allow toxic cultures to persist.

The truth is becoming clearer. The companies that will last are the ones that treat fairness not as charity but as strategy. Workplaces that respect employees protect themselves from legal threats, secure investor confidence, and strengthen long-term valuation. They build resilience, loyalty, and brand equity that money alone cannot buy.

Image Credits: unsplash.com

At the end of the day, the companies worth working for (and worth investing in) are not the ones that simply pay the most. They are the ones that value people the most.

Sources: 1,2,3 & 4

 

 

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What You Need to Know About Starting a Business in Singapore

When it comes to things that many people believe adults must achieve at a certain point in their lives, one of those things happens to be the ability to put up their very own business and earn a good amount of money each month successfully. While not everybody aspires to be an up and coming entrepreneur, it is hard to deny that this profession has its very own set of alluring benefits, such as the prestige that comes with being the owner of your very own company as well as the fact that you could make quite a killing in terms of profits if your business manages to take off. The thing is that businesses are not easy to start up. In fact, they can be downright difficult, if not seem nearly impossible to pull off. But with the right know-how, you should be able to overcome all the odds and start a very successful business. In this article, we will give you a lot of handy tips so that you can make better decisions when it comes to starting your very own company in this very prosperous country.

Deciding What Industry to Break Into

Of course, as with any venture, you will need to consider what type of product or service you will be offering your customers. You cannot offer it all, not unless you were a superhuman businessperson who could flit from one category to another. It would be incredibly tough to try and figure out a marketing strategy for every single type of target market that you wanted to reach and sell to. If you are more creatively inclined, you might want to start an ad agency or a creative studio that provides great visual content to a lot of other businesses by using a business-to-business (otherwise known as B2B) strategy. One of the problems you might have to overcome is the fact that a lot of businesses have started outsourcing to freelancers because they often charge less than a huge ad agency would for a marketing campaign.

You could also just go into the food industry by putting up your very own restaurant and serving the recipes that only you have come up with. However, that would come with its own set of problems, too, such as deciding how much of each ingredient you should buy each week so that you are sure that you are providing your customers fresh components each time you serve them a meal. Having tons of food expire on you before you could even use them could put your bank account in the red much faster than you expected.

You can take into consideration a lot of recent property news from Singapore while you browse for good locations on the super useful sight called Property Singapore. Which industries seem to be booming right now? What are the forecasts by the experts when it comes to the field that you want to try building a career and a name in? What are the things you need to consider for the specific field that you want to build the business in?

Finding the Right Business Space

Whether you need to put up an office or want to build a retail space from scratch, you have to consider a ton of things, including how big the shop should be, as well as where you should put it. If you are just trying to start an office and you do not really need to invite clients over that much, then you can probably get away with starting your office in a location that is not as busy or expensive. However, you will have to contend with the fact that you might have a hard time hiring people if your office is too out of the way for a lot of people who have the skills that you are looking for. On the other hand, if you would like to put up a small store that features all of the products that you would like to offer, then you might want to choose an area that is very close to your target demographic, according to an article by Entrepreneur. Of course, the fact that you are considering Singapore to be your base operations can offer you a ton of benefits, according to the Ministry of Manpower. The country has many free trade agreements that might work to your company’s advantage, and they have laws that can protect your original ideas, too.

Starting a business can be tough, but it does not have to be impossible. As long as you make wise decisions, you should be able to break into whatever type of industry you want, and be successful while you are at it, too. Keep these tips in mind and you will surely make waves across the country with your offerings.

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