It is that time of the year when everyone is tired and looking forward to holidays. However, it is also the time that the Employment Equity report must be captured and submitted, if you have not already done so. A consultation with the Employment Equity Committee must be done before the submission of the EEA2 and EEA4 reports.
The CEO of the company must be given the opportunity to review progress of the Employment Equity for the company before he or she goes on year-end holidays. This is usually the time that most people are away from work and most return when schools return. The deadline for on-line submission is 15 January 2017. Failure to submit is a non-compliance.
Click here to view Schedule 1 for fines.
Critical things to remember:
- The company needs to have an EE Plan which must not be shorter than 1 year and not longer than 5 years.
- The EE Plan is a strategy document based on the analysis of the workforce of the employer. Where the employer has an under-representation of people from the designated groups, the employer needs to identify barriers to equality and put measures in place to correct the under-representation.
- The EE Plan must be communicated to all employees to ensure fairness and understanding of the need to equal opportunities.
- The employer needs to monitor and evaluate the EE Plan progress through the consultative forum.
- The EE committee should meet quarterly, as a minimum. During this meeting the EE Committee should review the recruitment, terminations, promotions and training statistics to see if there is progress being made.
- This information is reported to the Department of Labour each year.
- The report submitted should be accurate and needs to ensure that all details of employees from designated groups and non-designated groups are accurately captured in all sections of the EEA2 report.
- The company should ensure that all employees have completed the EEA1 declaration form as this is a backup document should there be any discrepancies in the employee’s race, gender and disability. This form must be signed by the employee.
- Where the employee’s status changes in respect of disability this form must be changed by the employee and be kept in the employees file.