May 2014
2014-05-15March 2015
2015-03-15The festive season is upon us and those companies that close for an annual shutdown are looking forward to a long 31 day holiday. This has been a particularly difficult year with strikes which have had a profound effect on the mining and engineering sectors as well as the industries that support them. Many companies have had to carry out retrenchments and generally it has been tough. We really hope that next year will have less conflict and that we will see a turnaround in our economy. We can only be optimistic.
LEGISLATIVE CHANGES
The Employment Equity Act was finally promulgated on the 1st August 2014 together with regulations governing the format for Employment Equity Plans. All Companies must ensure that their Employment Equity Plan conforms to the new requirements and the Act has a significant fine for designated companies who do not comply. It starts at R1,5 Million and can be as much as 10% of Turnover. Remember that Employment Equity Reports must be submitted before 15 January 2015. Employment Equity Plans (a different document) are not submitted, but must be available should the Department of Labour require a copy.
The Amendment to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act was promulgated on the 1st September 2014. The amendments were largely administrative in terms of the powers of the Department of Labour to inspect and impose fines and prison sentences for non-compliance. No actual conditions of employment were changed. The amendment:
- Prohibits employers from requiring employees to make payments to secure employment
- Prohibits employers from requiring employees to purchase goods, services or products;
- Prohibits anyone from requiring or permitting a child under the age of 15 years to work;
- Makes it an offence for anyone to require or permit a child to perform any work or provide any services that place at risk the child’s well-being;
- To provide for the Minister to publish a sectoral determination for employees and employers who are not covered by any other sectoral determination;
- To provide for the Director-General to apply to the Labour Court for an employer to comply with a written undertaking by the employer; to provide for a compliance order, to delete certain obsolete provisions; to provide the labour court with exclusive jurisdiction in respect of certain matters;
- To provide for certain offences and penalties and to increase the penalties for certain offences
Previously it was an offence to employ a child under the age of 15, now it is an offence to give them work.
At present the Department of Labour is considering Sectoral or Bargaining Council for the Construction Industry and is investigating the possibility of introducing a minimum wage.
The Amendment to the Labour Relations Act was assented to on the 17th August 2014, but has not yet been promulgated. It was expected that this Act would be promulgated before the end of November 2014.
The following acts are still in the process of being assented to and promulgated:
- The Employment Services Bill
- Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act
- The Protection of Personal Information Act
- The Unemployment Insurance Amendment Act
The Department of Trade and Industry indicates that the New BB-BEE Codes will be effective from 1st May 2015; however they are still considering how to bring the Sector BBBEE Codes in line with the Generic Codes. Draft codes for Qualifying Small Enterprises, i.e. those Companies whose turnovers are more than R10 Million, but are less than R50 Million, were published for public comment on the 10th October 2014. The targets are very similar to the Generic Codes, but QSE’s must comply with four of the six measurement criteria. Scoring is as follows:
Measurement Criteria | Maximum Points | Targets |
---|---|---|
Management control | 25 points | 50% |
Employment equity | 25 points | Executive Management : 60% |
Senior Management : 60% | ||
Middle Management : 75% | ||
Junior Management : 88% | ||
Disabled : 2% | ||
Skills development | 30 points | 6% of payroll |
Preferential procurement | 25 points | 80% of total procurement |
Supplier Development | 30 points | 2% of NPAT |
Enterprise Development | 1% of NPAT | |
Socio-Economic Development | 15 points | 1% of NPAT |
Comment for this closed on the 14th November 2014
The earnings threshold was increased on the 1st July 2014 and is now R205 433.30 (two hundred and five thousand, four hundred and thirty three rand, thirty cents) per annum. This figure is becoming more and more important as the Employment Equity Act and the proposed Labour Relations Amendment Act propose giving more protection to employees who earn below the threshold and exempting employees who earn above this from certain parts of the new legislation.
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
We will be starting the process of finalising skills reports and collecting information for Skills Plans next month as the submission date for next year will be 30th April 2015. The new spreadsheets will be sent to you in the first week of January 2015 and approval of the reports by Training and Employment Equity Committees should be finalised by the end February 2015.
EMPLOYMENT EQUITY
The Employment Equity regulations have given us a format for Employment Equity Plans which the Department of Labour requires us to comply with. All the current Employment Equity Committees that we work with are in the process of aligning the Employment Equity Plans with the new requirements. If you would like more information in this regard, please contact Tessa at our offices.
DEFINING HIGH PERFORMANCE
Many of our clients would agree that having implemented a sound performance evaluation system provides the individual, team and Management with a set of tools to help meet or exceed performance standards.
This process involves:
- Establishing behavioral expectations and core responsibilities
- Ongoing coaching and monitoring progress
- Measuring results via metric
- Creating a personal growth plan for performance enhancement and future growth
Performance evaluation is becoming increasingly important when dealing with Employment Equity matters such as Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value, as outlined in the Amended Employment Equity Act of 2013. High performing employees are striving to be recognised and rewarded for their individual efforts and talents that contribute towards achieving profitability. Imbedding a process such as this, would enable your organisation to fairly measure, reward and retain those who earn it.
In alliance with Select Strategy Inc., an online evaluation system will provide you with:
- Access – a transparent process where both management and employees have online access to their performance assessments. Access to graphic tools for diagnosing employee performance.
- Consistency – Establish a consistent approach for managing and evaluating performance throughout your organisation
- Accountability – Communicate and evaluate performance against clear qualitative and quantitative expectations
- Involvement – Involve employees, managers in all aspects of performance management
- Development – Develop a high-performance workforce
- Pay For Performance – Recognize and reward high performance
- Empowerment – Empower employees with the ability to exceed desired results and expectations
If you are interested in seeing a demonstration of the system please contact Tammy Groenewald at our offices.
TRAINING
Connold & Associates has a number of accredited training programmes which we will be running as public courses in the first quarter of next year.
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Leadership Development Programme
We will be scheduling new Leadership Development Training Courses early in 2015.
There are 3 different levels of the Leadership Development Programme:
Supervisors: This programme is aimed at Supervisors whose highest qualification level is below a matric qualification. The Supervisors course is run over a 6 month period with delegates attending training one day per month
Middle Management: This programme is aimed at Middle management who have Matric plus a further qualification. The Middle Management course is run over a 10 month period with delegates attending training one day per month.
Senior Management: This programme will ideally be a Senior management level i.e. directors etc. The Senior Management Course is run over a 10 month period with delegates attending training one day per month.The programme covers 5 unit standards:
- Demonstrate basic understanding of the Primary labour legislation
- Describe the management functions in an organisation
- Manage individual and team performance
- Plan strategically to improve business performance
- Recruit and select candidates to fill defined positions.
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Industrial Relations Training
The Industrial Relations Training programme is a detailed yet simplistic guideline to the legislation and provides appropriate practices to operate within the law. It is ideal for staff in supervisory or people management positions and will include updates on the recent changes in legislation.The course will run over two days and will cover the following topics:
- introduce managers to the eight acts that govern our management of staff
- demonstrate how to conduct a counselling session
- demonstrate how to deal with the poor performer
- demonstrate how to conduct a disciplinary hearing
- look at the workings of the CCMA
- demonstrate how to prepare for an arbitration
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Life Skills Training
The Life Skills programme covers a selection of the most essential skills and techniques that are designed to enhance motivation and personal effectiveness.The Life Skills Programme will cover the following topics:
- Emotional intelligence
- Goal orientation and setting
- Personal finance management
- Business Etiquette
- Career development
- Financial management
As these courses are all very popular programmes, I would suggest that you let Tessa know as soon as possible if you have any delegates who would like to attend and who would benefit from any of these programmes. As soon as we have established the numbers of delegates who would be interested, we will then advise you of the respective dates per course.
HR Business Partnering Workshop
The purpose of this Workshop is to provide HR Practitioners with the necessary skills and action plan to effectively transition into a trusted HR Business Partner.
The Workshop will cover:
- HR Functions in Relation to other Functions and the Operating Environment
- What is Leadership and Management vs. Leadership.
- Understanding Styles of Leadership as an HR Partner
- Importance of a Professional Persona, Placing the HR Function at the Forefront
- Branding HR in Your Environment
- SWOT Analysis
- Enhancing Personal Image
- Critical Skills for a Successful HR Profession
- Strategic Thinking and Decision Making
- HR Strategy
- Case Study in Strategic Decision Making
- Analysing Data to Understand Trends and Make Accurate Forecasts
- HR Analytics and Benefits
- Case Study in HR Planning
- Turning Data into Insights
- HR Information & Reporting
Please contact Tessa at our offices on 011 452 1707 or Tessa@connold.co.za if you require any additional information on any of the above courses.
RECRUITPROTECT
Candidates hired from recruitment companies who “fall off” shortly after being hired have a significant financial impact on the employer and can cause debilitating business interruption. The current solution of a “free” replacement or credit note currently offered by the Agency is unsatisfactory in many respects.
RecruitProtect is a unique and innovative solution that pays cash back to the employer and releases the recruitment Agency from its guarantee obligation.
In the event of a candidate leaving the employer within 6 months of employment, RecruitProtect will pay back cash to the employer (T’s and C’s apply).
Recruitment agencies can take comfort in the fact that they are no longer obligated to their agency guarantee. Clients can take comfort that they are not out of pocket should the candidate they hire not see out the 6 month period, and the recruitment industry gains substantial credibility.
For more information, please click through to their website: http://www.recruitprotect.co.za/
DOMESTIC WORKERS
It is the time of the year when the Minister of Labour gazettes the new minimum salaries for Domestic Workers. According to the Department of Statistics CPI was set at 5,9%, and the determination is CPI +1%, HOWEVER this year the minister has set a new minimum wage which is in fact a 10% increase over last year. The new minimum rates for Domestic workers (based on a 45 hours week) are as follows:
- R 10,59 per : hour an increase of 9,96% over last year
- R 476,68 per week : an increase of 10% over last year
- R2 065,47 per month : an increase of 10% over last year
The regulation indicates that next year the increase will be determined by CPI as at 1 November 2015 +2,5%. This may be a good indication of what the government intends to do with the suggested national minimum wage.
We wish you a happy holiday and safe travelling if you are going away. We hope that 2015 will be a prosperous and happy year for everyone.
Desrae & staff