How to Create the Employment Equity Plan

In this article, I’ll explain how to create a real-world practical employment equity plan for the organisation. The reason is, trying to do transformation the organisation is difficult enough, trying to do it without a reasonable practical plan is almost impossible. So let’s do it and have a look at how to create a real-world employment equity plan for the organisation. Now because this is more detailed than just completeing a form I’ve split this into 3 articles.

Part 1

To create the employment equity plan the organisation must use the EEA13 provided on the Department of Labour website. And in case you are thinking of doing your own version, don’t do it. The Department of Labour inspector will need the actual EEA13 form. The EEA13 can be downloaded directly from our website and includes the questions to consider when drafting the document.

The employment equity plan is broken down into sections each dealing with either a section in the employment equity act or detailed information on transformation within the organisation. It is suggested to peruse the Employment Equity Codes of Good practice as the different codes provide excellent guidance and assistance.

It is extremely important that the organisation be very conservative with its projections, goals and targets as these must be achieved within the projected timespan, failing which the organisation may be fined by the labour court for non-compliance.

Administration questions.

The employment equity plan is the organisation’s transformation plan for the next 2 to 5 years. Its a lot easier to stick to a plan that’s 2 years than 5 years, because you don’t know what’s about to happen that can drastically alter the plan, case and point COVID19. This information will largely determine to what extent the organisation will grow or shrink within the next 2 to 5 years. It will be really daft to report to the Dept of Labour that the company will grow and transform and appoint more people if the company is about to go bust.

Before starting you need to consider where the organisation is now, what is the current financial position of the organisation, what is the inflation rate, and the average GDP Growth Rate of South Africa as well as the growth rate of the organisation industry? All things considered, an organisation will not much grow faster than the industry that it’s in. It would be wise not to extend projections beyond three years especially in South Africa where many factors can influence the growth of an organisation

Year 1 and 2

During the first year, the organisation must attempt to comply with the objectives of the act by fulfilling mostly administrative requirements such as policies procedures, employment contracts as well as an in-depth audit of the current employment equity of the organisation.

The Organisation employment equity committee must also complete a detailed barrier analysis and adjust its operation to eliminate at least 50% of the barriers to employment equity. This must be linked to specific dates as well as people responsible within the employment equity committee.

The 1st thing the Labour inspector will want to assess is the appointment process. The organisation must check and change its advertising policies as well as the process of new employees to remove additional barriers. This will allow the organisation to comply with affirmative action transformation for new entrants. It is very important to note that the appointment of new employees into opening positions must be according to the transformation goals and targets of the organisation if possible.

All appointments within the organisation must comply with the numeric goals and targets as calculated to achieve the projected numeric goals for year one. If the organisation have a lot of employee movement then the targets can be linked the specific dates in year one

When an equity position becomes available all the relevant parties in the organisation must be notified and the process must be monitored and evaluated to ensure that the correct person will be employed to achieve the numeric goals and targets.

It is the responsibility of the employment equity committee and the human resource person to oversee the compliance with the transformation of the organisation. Transformation must be monitored and verified against the numeric goals and targets at least every quarter and adjustments made as required.

A report must be provided to the employment equity committee on the progress of transformation, this progress report must be added to the employment equity committee agenda for the annual general meeting of the directors.

A new plan must be created approximately six months before the ending of the current employment equity plan.

The Employment Equity Plan must state the following:

When drafting the employment equity plan it must contain the Employment equity act objectives and must meet the following principles

is the information specific
are the goals and targets measurable
are the goals and targets attainable
is the transformation relevant to the organisation
Is the objectives time bound with specific milestones

The following objectives must be attained within the employment equity plan

affirmative action measures and barriers
the numerical goals and targets for the workforce profile
the duration of the plan which might not be shorter than one year or longer than five years
all procedures to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the plan
Internal procedures to resolve any disputes
the responsible persons including the members of the employment equity committee.