Straight answers.

The moment a matter could end at the CCMA. That includes any dismissal, any retrenchment and any grievance involving a manager. The cost of getting the procedure right beforehand is a fraction of the cost of an unfair dismissal award afterwards.

Usually, yes. Contracts written more than a few years ago often predate changes in labour legislation, and many were copied from a template that never matched the operation. A review is quick and tells you where the exposure sits.

UIF registration is required within seven days of your first employee starting. Without COIDA registration you lose the civil liability protection it provides, which means an injured employee can sue you directly and the Compensation Fund can recover from you what it pays out. You also cannot obtain a Letter of Good Standing, which closes off most tenders.

We support you through conciliation and arbitration, and we prepare the case properly. Bring us in as early as you can. Cases are usually won or lost on evidence gathered long before the hearing date.

Yes. Our roots are in labour intensive and agricultural operations, which is where the hardest people problems live, but the same consulting work applies to any business with employees.

Yes. Labour broking is the everyday term. Temporary Employment Services is the term used in section 198 of the Labour Relations Act, which is the law that governs it. A TES supplies workers to a client for reward and remains their employer.

Both parties. The TES is the employer for remuneration and employment terms, but the client and the TES share joint and several liability for basic conditions and statutory compliance. This is exactly why the compliance record of your provider is your problem too.

A worker earning below the statutory earnings threshold who performs work for the same client for longer than three consecutive months is generally deemed to be that client’s permanent employee. The exceptions are replacing someone temporarily absent and genuine short term project work. Above the threshold the rule does not apply.

After three months, workers earning below the threshold may not be treated less favourably than your own permanent employees doing similar work, unless there is a justifiable reason.

Yes. Temporary Employment Services must register with the Department of Employment and Labour, which maintains a public register of private employment agencies and TES providers. Ask any provider for their registration before you sign anything.

It depends on the role and the season. Tell us the numbers and the dates and we will give you an honest answer rather than an optimistic one.

You pay nothing to start a search and nothing to keep it running. A fee becomes due when you appoint someone we introduced. If we do not find the right person, it has cost you nothing but the time in the briefing meeting.

Everything from operational and supervisory roles through to management and specialist positions: engineering, technical, finance, production and agricultural roles among them. If we are not the right people for a search, we will say so rather than take the brief.

Through LinkedIn. Every vacancy we work on is advertised on our page and applications come through there, which keeps everything in one place for candidates and for us.

Never. Being placed by us costs a candidate nothing. If anyone asks a candidate to pay to get work through LabourEeze, it is not us.

Yes. If you want the person working for you without taking them onto your own payroll, that is our temporary employment service rather than a placement, and we will talk you through the difference.

If your annual payroll exceeds R500 000 you pay SDL at one percent of total payroll, collected monthly by SARS and passed to your SETA. Most employers pay it without ever claiming anything back.

The Workplace Skills Plan is a forward looking plan of the training you intend to deliver. The Annual Training Report records what you actually delivered. Both go to your SETA before the annual deadline, which is 30 April for most SETAs. Submitting them lets you claim the mandatory grant back and is a prerequisite for skills development points on your B-BBEE scorecard.

You forfeit the mandatory grant for that year and it moves into the SETA discretionary pool. You also lose the skills development points on your B-BBEE scorecard, because proof of submission is a prerequisite for scoring under that element.

It depends on the programme. Accreditation matters for some purposes and is irrelevant for others, and we will tell you plainly which applies to what you are asking for rather than implying more than is true.

That is usually where it has the most effect. Supervisors handle the conversations that become disputes, and they are typically the least trained people in the business for exactly that work.