Talenox blog

The CPF Advisory Panel was set up in September 2014 by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to review and bolster the requirements of Singapore's Central Provident Fund.

Chaired by Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, President of the National University of Singapore (NUS), 13 panel members were selected based on their diverse backgrounds, ranging from union representatives to independent consultants.

On February 4 2015, the panel put forward Part 1 of its proposal to the Government. If the recommendations are accepted, Singapore residents can look forward to greater customisation and flexibility in managing their CPF accounts. We will get to know for sure on Feb 23, when the Budget is released.

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Instead of reading through all the information on the MOM website, here's Part 1 of the proposal consolidated into 10 simple points for your easy reading (applause, please):

1. Take note of critical ages 55 and 65: As you probably already know, every Singaporean and PR is subjected to CPF contribution. Part of this CPF contribution is used for retirement, which will go into a CPF LIFE Scheme, meant to provide monthly income from age 65. To qualify for the scheme, one must reach a minimum sum (MS) by age 55. *The MS was set at $80,000 in 2003 and is being raised gradually until it reaches $120,000 ($161,000 after inflation) in 2015.

2. "Minimum Sum" renamed to "Basic Retirement Sum": What was initially called the "minimum sum" will now be called the "basic retirement sum (BRS)". This only applies to people who own a home. If you set aside a BRS of $80,500, you'll be eligible for $650-700 monthly payouts at age 65.

3. Full Retirement Sum (FRS): Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) x 2 = $161,000. Monthly payouts are between $1,200-1,300. Only for people who do not own a  home, or who do not wish to pledge their homes. *Note that $161,000 is already the current minimum sum required by the CPF.

4. Enhanced Retirement Sum (ERS): Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) x 3 = $241,500. Monthly payouts are between $1,750-1,900. This can be done through a top-up into the CPF LIFE account, either through CPF savings or cash.

5. "Draw Down Age" renamed to "Payout Eligibility Age": This is the age where you are eligible to receive payouts from your CPF LIFE Scheme. It does not mean you start receiving them. It is now set at 64, but will be 65 from 2018.

6. "Payout Start Age" is not "Payout Eligibility Age": This is the age where payouts actually start, and can be deferred up to age 70 in exchange for higher monthly payouts. For every year that the payout start age is deferred, monthly payouts will permanently increase by 6 to 7 per cent.

7. Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) to gradually increase: Taking into account long-term inflation and increased standards of living, the BRS for members turning 55 from 2017 to 2020 will be increased by 3% for each successive cohort.

8. Flexibility to top-up CPF accounts of loved ones: The Panel proposes that each individual should have their own CPF LIFE plan and members should be allowed to transfer their CPF savings to their loved ones, especially non-working spouses or wives with longer life expectancies. This is to reduce the over-reliance on one working spouse for the provision of income upon retirement.

9. Option to withdraw up to 20% of CPF Savings at Payout Eligibility Age: Now you won't be limited to just withdrawing $5,000 at age 55, as the panel proposes for a withdrawal of up to 20% of your CPF savings for your personal use. This will be made available to CPF members who turned 55 from 2013 onwards.

10. Better public education efforts on CPF: The panel realised that many Singapore residents and PRs are still unfamiliar with the intricacies of the CPF system. As such, better provision of specific and timely information, and financial counseling in some cases, would go a long way.

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Part 2 of the panel's proposal will be submitted in mid-2015. Stay tuned.

Talenox is using static IP addresses for our biometric hardware devices, to talk to our Heroku backend. If you require a static IP for Heroku, we wrote this guide to help you to set it up yourself. There are other addons on Heroku like Proximo or QuotaGuard, if you prefer to offload the maintenance to someone else.

We are using NGINX as our Reverse Proxy.

1. Launch an instance with your desired instance type. (Micro, Small, etc)

2. SSH into your instance to install NGINX

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nginx

3. Configure nginx. The proxy_set_header is the most important setting for it to work properly with Heroku, or you will face an error with "Heroku | No Such App"

        upstream backend  {

                server xxx.talenox.com;

        }

        server {

                listen          80;

                server_name     rpb1.talenox.com;

                location / {

                        proxy_pass              http://backend;

                        proxy_redirect          off;

                        proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;

                        proxy_set_header        Host 'xxxxx.herokuapp.com';

                }

        }

4. nginx -s reload

If you’re a business owner, or an aspiring one, you should already be familiar with the changes to the Employment Act enacted early this year in April. With the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) recent focus on compliance, business owners need to ensure that their businesses are operating in line with these new regulations and safeguard themselves against unintended penalties.

Even after several months, many businesses experience drawbacks putting these new changes into practice, particularly in the area of providing itemised payslips. If you fall under any of these categories, you probably understand what I am talking about:

I run a service business (e.g. F&B, retail)

I hire ad-hoc or part-time employees

I have less than 25 employees

My business has been writing and issuing payslips in hardcopy form

What should itemised payslips include?

Typically, an itemised payslip should include these 14 components:

Name of employer

Name of employee

Date(s) of payment

Mode of payment

Start and end dates of each salary period within the month

Basic salary for each salary period

Allowances paid for each salary period

Start and end dates of each overtime payment period within the month

Overtime hours worked

Overtime pay for each overtime payment period

Any other additional payment

Actual deductions made

Net salary paid in the month

Employer’s CPF contribution.

Click here to download a free payslip template, carefully curated and brought to you by Talenox.

Here at Talenox, we strive to make your life easier. We provide automated solutions which enable businesses, particularly those in the services industry, to easily manage their HR processes. As we are a Singapore company, we are able to ensure that new rules and regulations made by the Government are instantly implemented into our solutions.

Learn more about how we can make your life simpler. Try Talenox’s free 30-day trial today.

Payroll software was developed to help cut down the manual processes required to perform calculation for salaries and taxes.  However, what the 1st generation payroll software did was mainly just that.  The current legacy platforms are built on old school technology stack and they are pretty user-unfriendly, which leads to long onboarding and training processes.  This is a key concern to users around the world.

Platforms: Integration, Mobile, Analytics, and Simple User Experience are now Key.

- Josh Bersin.

Talenox is driving the next generation of change for enterprise software, focusing on mainly HR and Operations.  Clients feedback that our platform is simple and easy-to-use, without the need for long training processes.  We always put ourselves in the shoes of the users, pushing our limits for our technology stack and design.

So how easy is it to run payroll by using Talenox Payroll app?  Here's a preview:

To understand more about CPF file upload and bank file upload, click on the following links: CPF upload guide, OCBC Bank File upload guide, DBS Bank File upload guide.

Talenox is constantly evolving and we are shipping features that matters.  Don't be shock if we look different a few months down the road.  A new guide or demo will be available by then for you to explore.

Aside from the Guide to OCBC Payroll Bank File Upload (In 7 Steps), this is an article focusing on DBS Payroll Bank File upload.  From our research, most companies in Singapore are using OCBC as their corporate banking platform and DBS is the next choice.  

With the launch of DBS BusinessClass to help create the ecosystem for SMEs and startups in Singapore, we hope that DBS will revamp the IDEAL corporate banking platform in the future.  Competition to acquire market share of the corporate banking sector is definitely beneficial to businesses in Singapore and the region, as we will see an improvement in the service level and technology implemented.  The change is already ongoing, with a polished onboarding flow for new clients through DBS web platform. 

Back to Payroll bank File.  What is it exactly? 

A Payroll Bank File is a .txt file that maybe named differently for different payroll platforms.  For Talenox, when the Bank File is being output, it will be named like the following: bank_file14092963432.txt.

You maybe thinking why is a Payroll Bank File needed? As quoted from the previous guide:

 Imagine keying in entries for 30 or more employees into the bank portal.  That’s bad, but it gets crazier at 100, 1,000 or more employees.  

In Talenox, we don’t believe in such manual process, that’s why we output Payroll Bank Files for you to easily upload and transfer funds over to your employees on time.  There’s quite a few steps for uploading Payroll Bank File to DBS and here are the steps:

Awesome!  There maybe more steps than the usual corporate banking platforms, but I must applaud DBS commitment to better payment security.  With innovation to the User Experience, I’m sure they can do a better job for IDEAL platform.

In the event where you cannot find find the "File Transfer" section under "Payments" for you to "Upload Profiles", it means that you have not applied for that feature when you set up DBS IDEAL corporate account initially.  To apply for the "File Transfer" feature, please follow the following steps:

Visit DBS Corporate Banking page.

Go to the middle portion of the page and locate Frequently Used Forms section on the right.

Then, click on the IDEAL 3.0 Maintenance Form.

Fill up section 2 on 3rd Page.  Tick "Access this service" for section 2b.  Fill up the Authorisers name, date and sign accordingly.  

Finally, go to a DBS branch and get the form processed by one of the bankers.

We would recommend DBS MBFC or Suntec branch as the queue is much shorter and they are prompt in their processes, based on our experience. 

Following the Guide to CPF File Upload for Singapore Payroll, we would like to share with you guides for Payroll Bank File upload for the various banks in Singapore.  We'll touch on various bank files in the region in the future.  To start off, here's a guide for OCBC Payroll Bank File upload.

A Payroll Bank File is a .txt file that maybe named differently for different payroll platforms.  For Talenox, when the Bank File is being output, it will be named like the following: bank_file14092963432.txt.

You maybe thinking why is a Payroll Bank File needed?  Imagine keying in entries for 30 or more employees into the bank portal.  That's bad, but it gets crazier at 100, 1,000 or more employees.  In Talenox, we don't believe in such manual processes, that's why we output Payroll Bank Files that you can easily upload and transfer funds over to your employees easily and punctually.

Alright, let's go through these 7 steps to upload the Payroll Bank File to OCBC, once you have obtain the Bank File from a payroll platform.

Yup, it is as simple as this.  OCBC platform has been revamped recently and it is currently one of the most well designed bank portal. Kudos to them!  :)

I've had the privilege of taking many business professionals through their payroll process. From entrepreneurs to SME business owners, HR administrators with no prior experience to Finance controllers of MNCs, even outsourcing consultants with a portfolio of clients.

Despite the complexities (headcount, number of pay components, frequency of payment, statutory requirements), good software can simplify the entire process such that you need only decide how many pairs of eyeballs are necessary to be confident of the accuracy of the final amount.

So let's agree on what a good payroll software should have, in the context of Singapore. Before covering 3 key areas of consideration, I first need to explain some acronyms: CPF - Central Provident Fund. Use the Talenox CPF calculator.  SDL - Skill Development Levy.  FWL - Foreign Worker Levy. Check the latest FWL rates.

Donation Funds (for changes in rates on 1 Jan 2015, visit Talenox Blog):  CDAC - Chinese Development Assistance Council Fund ECF - Eurasian Community Fund MBMF - Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund SINDA - Singapore Indian Development Association Fund

(source: Piece_Together)

Calculation Logic

1. Proration of salary for incomplete months of work (typically for new hires or departures). Common practice is to use work days in a month for calculation.

2. Salary payment in arrears - if payment is mutually agreed to be carried over to the following month, any CPF contribution due (including SDL and donation funds) should still be calculated for the 1st month of work.

3. Pay frequency - weekly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, monthly. Monthly pay is by far the most common in Singapore. Weekly or bi-monthly pay are practised by businesses with a significant number of part time employees with a preference for more frequent pay disbursement. Both options are not commonly supported by payroll software due to CPF considerations (contribution amount is determined by a full calendar month's salary). One solution is to apportion 20% of the payment for CPF to be reconciled with the last payment of the month.

4. Rate of pay - hourly/daily rated with varying rates based on the day of the week or rest days and public holidays. Again this isn't a common feature but a good system should allow for any combination of rate of pay.

5. Additional payments & deductions - e.g. reimbursement, allowance, bonus, commission, overtime, leave encashment, loan, unpaid leave. Apart from capturing these pay items, it's crucial to determine if they contribute to CPF (under either ordinary wage or additional wage, each has separate capping) and Tax calculations. Most software typically tag common items accordingly while some utilize an open-ended feature for users to determine the appropriate contribution.

6. Statutory contributions - CPF, SDL, FWL, Donation funds. Aside from the contribution situations highlighted above, treatment of decimal places needs to be applied correctly. Steps to compute CPF contribution:

Compute the total CPF contribution (rounded to the nearest dollar).

An amount of 50 cents should be regarded as an additional dollar.

Compute the employee’s share of CPF contribution (cents should be dropped).

Employer’s share = Total contribution – Employee’s shared.

Employers can pay SDL together with their employees’ CPF contributions.

For SDL, cents should be ignored only when you arrive at the total SDL Payable.

User Functions

1. Mass data upload. Simply put if you have too many entries to key in individually, this feature is a real time saver. The challenge lies in how well the data is sorted within the software. A smart process should require minimal data massaging, with the option for user-defined formatting and naming conventions.

2. Job grades. Again in a sizeable workforce having defined job grades is good for career progression mapping, and allows matching of employees to predefined compensation packages.

3. Reports. Can't live without them. The bare minimum is a summary of all payroll items with sum totals. Building up on this, the variation in style becomes quite extensive. In my opinion, the report view should rely on design (colour, layout, alerts) to faciliate checking without having to switch between reports/views. Unless each report serves a unique validation purpose.

4. Payslip. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) intends to mandate the issuance of itemised payslips by 2016, in hard and/or soft copies. Pretty straightforward. Most software should already support individual access to view the payslip online or forwarding of payslips via email. 

5. Integration. The must haves: CPF, IRAS, Bank - online submission compatible. The good to haves: integrated to accounting, Leave & Attendance tracking, and expense management software. Everybody loves an all-in-one software.

(source: Architecture_Design)

Architecture & Design

1. On the cloud. More users are adopting cloud software over on-premise installation. The advantage is data mobility plus no hassle over version updates. Especially with regular statutory updates affecting calculation logic. With regulated data protection laws, any fuss over data security on cloud database is quickly fading. 

2. Speed. I've come across software where processing speed is affected by the total headcount captured. In one instance it slowed down by 1 second per record! Modern software using newer technology stacks can process thousands of records within seconds. Not a big deal overall, more FYI in case you assume the software is prone to hanging.

3. Simple. A software with comprehensive computation logic coupled with enough user functions should be excellent right? Yes, functionally. But how simple is it to master? Simple enough that you can ignore the user manual and skip the training session? It's really worth considering. Intuitive product design speeds up learning, especially for the inexperienced user.

Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple. - Edward de Bono

Talenox makes payroll for humans, its even better when integrated with Xero.

Here’s how you can start sending payroll entries to Xero:

At Talenox, we use and love Xero, thats why we made it easy for you to connect your Xero account.

For a start, follow the following steps to connect Xero to Talenox After that, you can easily send the Payroll details as account entries in Xero.

To the corporate world,

I know for a fact you are worried about talent attrition. People are leaving. Repeatedly. And sometimes, for no apparent reason. You haven’t heard of any real negative issues. Not that many complaints. Company is doing well.

 So you ask why? And you get advice how to resolve that issue. It usually goes like this:

Look at the prevailing salary market rates and offer more attractive packages, higher salaries, better bonuses

Create a nicer work place with all the accompanying perks one can think of

Do some team-building retreats every 6 months

Offer trainings every once in a while

However it seems that it’s not working. People are still leaving. Why?

Imagine a second. You are a child. Your parents buy you the most expensive gifts, they bring you to the best hotels on vacation and best restaurants to eat. You live in a state of the art mansion with everything a child would dream of. Great right?

However your parents are seldom home. And when they are, “they are not really here”. They do not spend quality time with you. They do not give their full and undivided attention to what you do and who you are. They don’t take the time to understand who you are.

Basically, they act as if they do not care about you. How does that make you feel? You don’t feel valued as an individual.

(source: Emotional_Bond)

Emotionally, you do not feel cared for. The important word here is emotionally. Time, attention and care create an emotional bond. And that bond is the strongest there is.

Unfortunately, in most companies, people don’t feel valued and cared for, emotionally. So they leave because there are no or very little emotional connections to the company. So it makes for an extremely easy choice.

So to answer the question: why? Because you forgot your talents are individuals. And for them to stay, they need to feel valued, they need to be cared for, they need to feel connected to the company, to the people working there. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of who gives the best package.

Here is my solution: treat your talents like individuals who need to be cared for. Get to know your talents, on an individual and emotional level. Create an environment of caring, of sharing, of connecting.  Create a bond. An emotional bond.

To become an effective business partner, HR teams need to develop deeper business acumen, build analytical skills to underwrite their leadership, learn to operate as performance advisors, and develop an understanding of the needs of the 21st-century workforce - Deloitte University Press

(source: Deloitte_University_Press)

As a HR leader, do you contribute to business strategy?

Find (new and creative) ways to acquire talent

Develop employee skills

Groom leaders

Engage employees at all levels

Retain good talent

Or does your job description look more like...

Manage recruitment administration

Coordinate training programs with external consultants

Respond to queries on existing HR policies

Process monthly compensation and benefits

Administrate the employee exit process

With the majority of HR professionals entering the function without formal training in Human Resources or Business, it's no surprise that HR faces difficulty in advancing business growth.

How much does your company invest in developing the HR team in areas of technical HR skills, labour market and workforce knowledge, technology and business analytics? Supposing there is sufficient desire to invest resources, the next questions should be:

1. Can you devote more time to skill and strategy development if you automate administrative services?

2. Will you understand your workforce better if you engage employees and leaders at all levels?

3. Can you better support business decisions by measuring data and knowing how to analyze it?

Talenox is promptly responding to these 3 concerns. We're speeding up routine workflow (kill redundancy, integrate information across key functions) while constantly polishing the design to be as intuitive as possible (eliminate the need for training, sustain long term company-wide user interest).

So we've successfully made HR sexy. Now all that's left is to couple beauty with brains. In the pipeline are intelligent dashboards for data and sentiment analysis. With coaching and feedback taking center stage in talent development, qualitative data needs to be meaningfully analyzed alongside already established quantitative indicators.

Don't be fooled. This isn't a quick 10 step guide for success. In the context of enterprise sales in a highly competitive market, it is for us the metaphorical equivalent of climbing Mount Niesen in the Swiss Alps - all 11,674 steps on the world's longest staircase.

(source: Climbing_Mount_Niesen)

Except our staircase is in Singapore, and instead of starting the race together, some of our competitors have a 30 year lead on us. At this point I'm thankful to acknowledge that the staircase really is a treadmill so it's more a matter of who keeps running.

1. Identify a market need: smart employees don't want to settle for dumb HR software.

2. Understand the problem: the leading solutions in the market went out of style a decade ago. So companies have to settle till something better comes along (that's Talenox btw).

3. Smell the opportunity: more business leaders see the benefit of switching to cheaper simple to use cloud software for functions like operations and finance. HR is next in line.

4. Draw up a plan: muster your forces, gather resources, choose your battles, deliver an inspiring speech. But don't get stuck.

5. Muster your forces: we formed a small balanced team to start - HR & product knowledge, engineering and design capability, enterprise business development experience.

6. Gather resources: be mindful of capital and expenses. We managed to bootstrap with some early revenue to feed us (very lucky) allowing more time to consider the best option for funding.

7. Choose your battles: it was easy to be reckless when starting from scratch but securing early wins was extremely important for momentum. We knew the MVP would appeal to smaller businesses with simpler requirements but selling the innovations in the pipeline (realistically) helped secure interest from bigger brands.

8. Deliver an inspiring speech: not just once, but whenever needed. The vision is equally important to the team, clients, investors, partners. Some creative liberty is advised since not every battle will turn out as expected.

9. Revisit steps 1 to 8: good for you if you make profit after one cycle. Some of us take a few cycles (with plenty of tweaking), and more or less time between steps. We set the first milestone as "profit making, ASAP".

10. Don't fall off the treadmill: which really is another way of saying once you start running, don't stop till you're done.

1. Remember that, first and above anything else, we are human beings and individuals.

2. Remember that before being employees, co-workers, managers, bosses, sales, finance or accounting experts, engineers or designers, we are human beings and individuals.

3. Remember that the individual comes first, the function second. Always.

4.Remember that as individuals and human beings we need and deserve care and attention to understand ourselves, grow and flourish in our uniqueness.

5. Remember that as individuals, we are a holistic eco-system.

6. Remember, as such, that we need to take care of our physical, mental and emotional well-being.

7. Remember that work is part of life, and it cannot be separated. As such stress from certain areas of our life affect other areas.

(source: Fun_Workplace)

8. Remember that a hidden wound is not a healed wound.

9. As such, remember to share what’s on your mind and on your heart.

10. Remember that it’s ok to feel angry, hurt, stress, sad, happy, lazy, joyful.

11.Remember not to keep it to yourself and share with others. Because remember we are human beings. We share each other’s pain to relieve its burden and share each other’s joys. Just because.

12. Lastly, remember it’s ok to be who you are. Remember to be who you are. No matter what.

Because, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, remember:

 “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

A good payroll system in Singapore should allow the export of a CPF PAL file for upload through CPF Employer portal.   This is exactly what Talenox Payroll App can do.  

A CPF PAL file is a .txt file that has a naming starting with the CPF Submission Number (CSN), followed by month and a certain code.  An example will be  201417072CPTE01AUG201459.txt.  

As an employer, once you have the CF PAL file, log in to CPF Employer portal to perform an e-submission.  Do note that you would have to set up this account upon receiving the mail from CPF.  If not, you have to do so through this CPF link.

At login page, you will require SingPass and CSN.  Choose e-submission and you will be shown with the page below.  Follow these few steps below and you'll be done in 3 - 4 minutes.

It is as simple as these few steps without the need to manually set up employees' database in CPF and update every time you would like to submit CPF.  A gentle reminder: the deadline for CPF submission is the 14th of the following month of payroll.  This means that if your company's payroll is on May 2014, your CPF submission must be in by 14th Jun 2014.

If you are unfamiliar with CPF, click on this link to learn more about it.  

The idea of Talenox was conceptualised around Oct 2013 because we understood that users of enterprise apps are tired with old school legacy, complicated platforms that are tough to learn, a sore to the eye and energy-draining.  Edwin and I started off initially, with Sebastian joining us right after.

With our experiences in HR Outsourcing and technology space, we decided to form an experienced and kickass team to disrupt this market and bring life to the employee life cycle with a simple, complete Human Capital Management (HCM) platform to drive change management.

We would like to connect everyone in the workplace, empowering everyone to be passionate about their work.

To achieve the above, we aim to be the product leader in HCM software in SEA through plain simplicity and ease-of-use.

The initial Grind

We started off by building mock-ups and presented the flow to get feedback from our mentors in the HR community and also potential clients.  It was a painful process to totally revamp the flow of the mockups, but we know it is needed before we move into the engineering phase of the development pipeline.  Interestingly, we managed to close our first deal at that time and it was a strong validation that Talenox is a platform that can help companies cut cost through getting rid of inefficiencies and minimal training is required due to our simple, yet complete work flow.

Andy and Anonoz were the pioneer team members who helped us with the development of Talenox.  The product team always focus on shipping what matters most and can be implemented immediately for our first client and future clients.  We have been refining our product design and development pipeline as we prioritise the features to ship.

In the meantime, our dear business development team were selling minimal viable product (MVP) and mockups for future apps.  Haha!  It was a really challenging period for sales, but we are having lots of fun learning.

Heading towards the right direction

As more functional apps are being shipped such as Profiles, Payroll, Scheduler and Time Tracker, we met up with more clients to get feedback and started to onboard some of them.  We learnt a lot along the way and we were really grateful that we had such quality early adopters and visionaries who were at the forefront of driving the change in Talent Management.

We had a great addition to our team, Dan, around May 2014.  He was very interested in the area of personal development and bringing the change to Talent Management.  With the framework that he came out with, clients were starting to realise that the old school Appraisal methods are not working.  This will be an area that we would love to work on once we tackle the core HR processes.

Where we are today

We are constantly looking for Talents to work with.  Everyone is unique and have a different set of talents.  We love to work with people who are smarter than us to solve really tough problems, so as to add value to the society constantly.  

There's lots of exciting development in the next few months, so tune in to get updates from our blog, social media and newsletter.  

The employer CPF contribution rate will be increased by 1 percentage point for Singapore Citizens & PR (All 3 years). Citizens above the age of 50 will see an increase of 1 to 2 percentage points in CPF contribution from employers.

Statutory Donation for Chinese, Indians and Eurasians will also be increased, mainly affecting high income earners.

CDAC Contribution 2015

≥ $2,000                         $0.50 > $2,000 to $3,500         $1.00 > $3,500 to $5,000         $1.50 > $5,000 to $7,500         $2.00 > $7,500                         $3.00

ECF Contribution 2015

≥ $1,000                        $2.00 >$1,000 to $1,500          $4.00 >$1,500 to $2,500          $6.00 > $2,500 to $4,000         $9.00 > $4,000 to $7,000         $12.00 > $7,000 to $10,000       $16.00 > $10,000                       $20.00

SINDA Contribution 2015

≥ $1,000                         $1.00  >$1,000 to $1,500          $3.00  >$1,500 to $2,500          $5.00  > $2,500 to $4,500         $7.00 > $4,500 to $7,500         $9.00  > $7,500 to $10,000       $12.00  > $10,000 to $15,000     $18.00  > $15,000                       $30.00

MBMF Contribution 2015

No Changes.

Use our CPF Calculator to calculate contribution & statutory donation

(source: CPF_Changes)

CPF 2015 official announcement 

At Talenox, we are always trying to find ways to create the healthiest environment and framework for people to have quality relationships with one another.

And we know that communication is the cornerstone of a relationship. So how do I communicate?

As individuals, we are both rational and emotional. So we can communicate either rationally or emotionally. We are all experts at rational communication: sharing thoughts, ideas and beliefs, even fighting over them! But what about emotional communication?

Practical case: someone close to you is having an emotional moment. What do you do? How do you communicate? How do you help? To answer those questions, I will ask another one: whose moment is it? Is it yours or is it their moment? Well it seems to me it is their moment.

(source: Emotional_Communication)

Too often, I see people trying to give advice, proclaiming that things are going to be ok, giving reasons why one shouldn’t feel like this, trying to make one feel better. This sharing, albeit having good intentions, shifts the focus from them to you. To put it bluntly, you are impeding on their moment. You are not letting them experience it.

Let them feel, let them experience the moment. Be there for them in their moment. Listen. Listen, listen, and listen. 

Because it’s not about you. It’s about them. It’s not about you and your experience and advice. It’s about the other and what they are feeling, what they are experiencing at this moment. It’s their moment. Be there for them. Listen to them.

Apart from listening, what you can do is guide them through the emotion. And here is an easy to learn framework to emotional communication: "What happened E.L.F.E.?"

What happened? Make sure it's short and concise

Emotion: What emotion are you feeling?

Le plus difficile (the most difficult): What’s the most difficult for you?

Face it: What helps you the most to face it?

Show Empathy: I am here for you.