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Best sourcing practices

If your company buys services, best sourcing helps you get better service quality and value. Outsourced workers also benefit through better employment terms and conditions. You can get resources and funding to adopt best sourcing practices.

What is best sourcing

If your company buys outsourced services, such as cleaning, security and landscaping, we encourage you to adopt best sourcing.

Service buyers who practise best sourcing, rather than cheap sourcing, award service contracts based on performance and quality, instead of solely based on price. In doing so, they get more reliable services and better value for money.

At the same time, outsourced workers benefit because the service providers focus on delivering quality services instead of offering the lowest price. They provide better employment terms and conditions so that their workers are more motivated to perform well.

Best sourcing principles

You are encouraged to consider these 6 best sourcing principles when buying services:

  1. Safeguard the basic employment rights of your workers. Consider following the Government as a role model when buying services.
  2. Ensure progressive remunerations and benefits for your workers.
  3. Implement outcome-based contract by specifying service-level requirements rather than by headcount.
  4. Recognise factors that contribute to service quality.
  5. Provide a conducive work environment for your workers.
  6. Build long-term collaborative and fair contracting partnership with your service providers.

Guides for best sourcing

You can download these guides, released by MOM and its tripartite partners, to understand best sourcing practices and how to implement them:

Tripartite Advisory on Best Sourcing Practices

This advisory helps you adopt best practices in responsible outsourcing. It provides greater clarity on how workers, service buyers and service providers can benefit from best sourcing, based on feedback gathered from industry stakeholders, unions, workers and the public.

Also available in:

Step-by-Step Guidebook on Best Sourcing for Service Buyers

NEA’s guide on specifications for outcome-based and performance-based cleaning contract

MHA’s guide on outcome-based security contracts

SPF’s outcome-based contracting portal

These guidebooks illustrates the business case for best sourcing and gives detailed and practical guidance on adopting best sourcing. They are particularly useful if you outsource cleaning, security and landscape services.

They include:

  • Examples of clauses that can be inserted into tender requirements.
  • Scoring templates for evaluating proposals from potential service providers.
  • Examples of key performance indicators for managing a service provider.

Check on service providers

You can also take into account a service provider’s track record in complying with employment laws before awarding a service contract.

To check on their track record, refer to the following lists: