Why are employees in Singapore grappling with mismatches between their roles and expectations at work?

For many workers in Singapore, expectations begin to diverge from reality soon after they start a new job. Roles broaden. Reporting lines blur. Pay stays the same. These shifts are rarely addressed directly. But they shape how employees assess whether a job is delivering what was promised.

Recent workforce research by Jobstreet by SEEK suggests this experience is not anecdotal. Eight in ten employees say their jobs do not fully match what was promised at the point of hiring, with six in ten spotting the mismatch within their first three months. The speed at which this dissonance appears suggests the problem is embedded in how roles are defined and communicated, not merely in long-term dissatisfaction.

When the mismatch starts to surface

Across age groups, employees consistently point to three causes when expectations break down: pay misalignment (24%), unclear roles (22%), and culture mismatch (19%). These are not minor grievances. They reflect a gap between how jobs are positioned during recruitment and how they are experienced in practice.

Mid-career professionals feel this most acutely. Among employees aged 35 to 44, a significant proportion report early misalignment driven by pay not matching responsibility, as workloads expand faster than compensation. Younger workers, meanwhile, are more likely to say that job scopes differ from how roles were advertised, suggesting that ambition and opportunity are often oversold, while constraints are understated.

Pay as the baseline of fairness

Although conversations around work increasingly emphasise flexibility and purpose, compensation remains the clearest benchmark of fairness. Nearly half of employees rank pay as their top priority, yet only 25% say they currently receive competitive pay, and just 18% of employers report offering above-average salaries.

This disparity helps explain why mismatches linger. Employees may tolerate blurred scopes or demanding workloads, but when pay fails to keep pace with responsibility, trust erodes. What employers sometimes frame as necessary compromise is experienced by workers as under-recognition.

Why employees stay silent

Yet dissatisfaction rarely leads to immediate confrontation. Cultural norms play a role. Many employees in Singapore are conditioned to see adaptability as professionalism and questioning as risk. Instead of challenging unclear expectations, workers often recalibrate internally, adjusting their own standards rather than renegotiating the role.

This helps explain a paradox in the data: although pay is the top priority for many, 23% of employees say they would still compromise on it when job hunting. These are not impulsive decisions, but calculated ones – shaped by economic uncertainty, job-security concerns and the fear of leaving a stable role for one that may be worse.

The rise of conditional compromise

What emerges is a pattern the report describes as “conditional compromise”. Employees accept trade-offs, but only when the exchange feels fair and transparent. Nearly half say they would trade company prestige for better culture, 30% would accept lower pay for better work-life balance, and 25% would give up flexibility for clearer career growth.

Crucially, these compromises are not open-ended. Half of employees say they would not accept any pay cut, even in exchange for full flexibility or a four-day work week. This suggests that flexibility has become a baseline expectation instead of a substitute for financial fairness.

When conditional compromises quietly become permanent arrangements, mismatches harden.

When workplaces move slower than the pace of our lives

Adding to the strain is the pace at which employee priorities are shifting. Mental well-being, caregiving responsibilities and personal values increasingly shape how work is evaluated. Employers recognise this, with nine in ten saying employee expectations change over time. But many struggle to adapt quickly enough.

Organisations, constrained by budgets and fixed job structures, often respond more slowly than employees’ lives evolve. The result is lag: expectations shift in real time, while roles and reward systems remain static.

Why the mismatch persists

The persistence of mismatches in Singapore’s workplace is not driven by entitlement or indifference. It stems from misaligned definitions of fairness, cautious labour mobility, and a culture that rewards endurance over early recalibration.

As Yuh Yng Chook, director of Asia sales and APAC service at Jobstreet and Jobsdb by SEEK, observed, employers believe they are being fair, and employees are already adapting. But the two sides do not always share the same understanding of what fairness looks like in practice.

Until roles are described more honestly, pay progression is communicated more clearly, and expectations are revisited earlier and more often, mismatches will remain a feature of working life in Singapore, not because employees expect too much, but because compromise has become the default response to uncertainty.