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Small Business HR and Employment #3: ‘Is it necessary to have an Employment Equity plan?’

by Claire Stewart on 09/10/07 at 11:16 am
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People Wise has had a lot of phone calls recently from companies scrambling to get their Employment Equity Reports in by the 1st October. The penalties for not submitting the report or having an Employment Equity Plan in place are pretty ferocious – R500 000 for a first offence ranging up to R900 000 for a third offence within three years. So how do you know if you need to have an Employment Equity Plan in place? The Act stipulates you need to create a plan if you have more than 50 employees, OR if your gross annual turnover is greater than the following:

And what exactly does an Employment Equity Plan entail? Well, unfortunately you can’t just unilaterally create a Plan for your Company. You first have to get all stakeholders involved. the easiest way of doing this is getting the workforce to elect a committee that represents all levels of the company, including race and sex. You have to train this Committee and thereafter together create the Employment Equity Plan.

If you’ve just found out that your Company needs to create an Employment Equity Plan and Report then don’t panic. As long as the Department of Labour sees that you are in the process of putting these in place they’ll give you breathing space. If you’re feeling a bit stumped then get in contact with me*. People-Wise has created an Employment Equity Pack that takes you through the whole process from training to submission of your report.

Claire Stewart is the founder of PeopleWise, an HR and Employment consulting service. Like Neo in the Matrix, Claire sees through the convoluted mess of SA employment law and makes sense of it for you, loyal Ideate reader. View more articles by Claire Stewart.

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