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Time to submit your Employment Equity Report, or is it?

by Claire Stewart on 25/08/08 at 7:00 am
2 comments

SARS is sending out reminders to designated employers to submit their Employment Equity Report.

It’s worth taking this reminder seriously. The fines for non-compliance with the Employment Equity Act start at R500 000.

Obviously, this could cause a serious cash flow crunch!

So how do you know if your organisation is a designated employer?

You’re a designated employer if:

1. You employ more than 50 employees (this includes part time employees and temps if they’re with the organisation for more than 3 month but excludes genuine independent contractors).

2. Your annual turnover is greater than the amount stipulated in the thresholds below:

• Agriculture R2 million
• Mining and Quarrying R7.5 million
• Manufacturing R10 million
• Electricity, Gas and Water R10 million
• Construction R5 million
• Retail and Motor Trade and Repair Services R15 million
• Wholesale Trade, Commercial Agents and Allied Services R25 million
• Catering, Accommodation and other Trade R5 million
• Transport, Storage and Communications R10 million
• Finance and Business Services R10 million
• Community, Social and Personal Services R5 million

It appears that I’m a designated employer (gulp!), what do I do now…?

Well, first of all you have a create an Employment Equity Plan for your organisation. In terms of the Employment Equity Act you can’t just unilaterally create a plan for your company. You have to get all stakeholders involved and the easiest way of doing this is getting the workforce to elect a Committee that represents all levels of the Company as well as race and sex.

Thereafter you have to:

• train the Committee
• audit your organisation for any direct or indirect discrimination or barriers to transformation
• calculate your current workplace profile and compare it to demographic figures
• set affirmative action targets and strategies
• create the Employment Equity Plan
• communicate the Plan to all stakeholder.

Once you have this in place its pretty easy to compile and submit your Employment Equity Report. You can either do this online at  www.labour.gov.za: select “Online Services” (on the top right of the screen) and thereafter select “Employment Equity Online Reporting” or just download the forms from the same website and then post or fax them to the Department of Labour.

If you’re stuck or need some help, give me a shout.

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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