Three Classifications the Report Wants
South Africa's employment equity regime now sets numerical targets by sector and occupational level, and a certificate for government work turns on them. The report that proves it asks your HR record for three classifications, and a conventional employee record carries none of them as fields.
The short version
This is a data-modelling problem wearing a compliance deadline. The regime asks you to report your workforce split by occupational level and by designated group, and almost no HR system holds either as a governed field — they are typed into a spreadsheet once a year by somebody reading a staff list. The fix is unglamorous and it is a one-off: decide the classifications, hold them on the employee record with the same seriousness as a bank account number, and classify the job rather than the person for the occupational level. Do that and the annual report becomes a query. Leave it and it stays a fortnight of somebody's January, every January, with a different answer each time.
There is a moment in most South African finance departments where somebody exports the staff list, opens it in a spreadsheet, and starts adding columns by hand. It happens once a year, it takes longer than anyone plans for, and the reason it happens is not laziness. It is that the three things the report needs are not in the system it was exported from.
ITEM 01 — What changed, and when
The Employment Equity Amendment Act 4 of 2022 commenced on 1 January 2025, and it changed two structural things before it changed any target.
| What | Before | From 1 January 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Who is a designated employer | Fifty or more employees, or fewer than fifty with turnover at or above a scheduled threshold | Fifty or more employees. The turnover limb is gone and the schedule that carried it has been deleted |
| Where targets come from | Each employer set its own, in its plan | The Minister may identify national economic sectors and set numerical targets for each of them |
The targets themselves arrived on 15 April 2025, when the 2025 Employment Equity Regulations and the Determination of Sectoral Numerical Targets were published. Eighteen national economic sectors were identified, with targets set across four occupational levels and a 3% disability employment goal. The plan period runs 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2030.
The part that turns this from a form into a commercial issue
A certificate of compliance for doing business with the State turns on meeting the applicable sectoral targets. That moves employment equity out of the human-resources filing cabinet and into the tender file, which is usually the moment a business starts asking whether its records can actually produce the numbers. Confirm your own position with an employment adviser rather than with a vendor — including this one. Nothing here is a reading of your obligations, the targets vary by sector, and the reporting deadline is set by the Department and should be checked against their current guidance rather than against a blog post.
ITEM 02 — The three classifications
Strip the regime down to what it asks of a record and you get three axes. Every one of them is a classification, and classifications behave differently from the data an HR system usually holds.
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Designated group
The Act's designated groups are black people — African, Coloured and Indian — women, and people with disabilities. Two of those are attributes of a person and one, disability, is a matter of self-identification that a person may decline to give and may change. So this axis is not one field, it is several, and at least one of them has to tolerate being blank without that meaning anything.
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Occupational level
Targets are set across four levels of management. This is the axis people underestimate, because it is a classification of the job and not of the person holding it. Two people with the same title in two departments can sit at different levels, and a person who moves job moves level on the date they move, not on the date somebody remembers.
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Foreign national status
The workforce profile distinguishes it, and it is the one most likely to be recorded nowhere at all — because it usually lives in a copy of a work permit in a document folder rather than as a field anybody can count.
Occupational level is a property of the job. Almost every organisation records it as a property of the person, which is why the number changes every time somebody different compiles it.
ITEM 03 — Why the second one is the hard one
A person's attributes are stable and can be captured once. A job's level is a judgement, and it is a judgement that has to be made consistently across an organisation and then held somewhere durable. Most systems have a job title, which is not the same thing — titles inflate, they vary by department, and two of them that sound identical routinely sit at different levels.
What is usually there instead is a grade or band as free text: G4, Band 3, Senior II. Useful to the people who use it and useless to a report, because free text has no relationship to a fixed set of levels and nothing prevents a typo becoming a nineteenth category. The work is to map every position in the organisation to one of the levels once, hold the mapping on the position rather than on the person, and then let people inherit it by holding the job.
- Map every position to one occupational level, once, with the mapping reviewed by somebody who can defend it. This is a morning's work at forty positions and a genuine project at four hundred — and it is the same morning's work whether you do it now or the week the report is due.
- Hold the mapping on the position, not on the employee. Then a promotion updates the level automatically and a leaver takes nothing with them.
- Capture the person-level attributes on the employee record with the same seriousness as a bank account number: entered once, restricted to the people who need them, and never carried around in a spreadsheet.
- Allow declined and unknown as real values rather than blanks, because a blank is indistinguishable from an oversight and the difference matters when somebody asks why a number moved.
- Record the effective date of a change of level. A workforce profile is a snapshot on a date, and a system that only knows today cannot reproduce last year's report.
- Confirm the reporting deadline and the applicable sectoral targets with your employment adviser or the Department. They vary by sector and they are not something to take from software documentation.
ITEM 04 — What our record actually holds
Being specific about ourselves, because a general answer here is worth nothing. Our employee record carries names, an employee number, contact details, a national identity number, a work country, a department, a position, a manager, an employment type and status, and hire and end dates. It does not carry gender, date of birth, nationality, disability or population group as fields. Our position record carries a grade or band, and it is free text — the form's own placeholder is "e.g. G4".
That is the honest starting point and it is not the end of the answer, because employees are a custom-field module. You can define the fields yourself, mark them sensitive so seeing them needs its own permission, and they reach the reporting and export surfaces rather than sitting in a corner of a profile page. So the classifications can be held properly today; what they need first is somebody to decide what the values are, which is the part no software does for you.
The payroll half of South African employment — PAYE, UIF and what a payslip has to survive — is a separate machine and is covered in its own piece. This one is deliberately not about payroll, because the workforce profile is a headcount question and mixing the two is how organisations end up reporting a number that reconciles to neither.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- An employee record with department, position, manager, employment type and status, and hire and end dates, so a headcount on a date is answerable from the record rather than from a memory.
- Custom fields on employees, definable per workspace, reaching reports, exports, the API and workflows rather than only the profile screen.
- A sensitivity flag with its own permission, so a field can be visible to the people who compile a statutory return and invisible to everyone else, with exporting it governed separately again.
- Positions as their own records, so an attribute of the job can be held on the job and inherited by whoever holds it.
More we can add to your workspace
- Occupational level as a governed classification on a position, chosen from a fixed set rather than typed as a grade, so a workforce profile groups without a mapping step.
- Designated-group attributes as first-class employee fields, with declined and unknown as real values and their own access rules, rather than as custom fields a workspace defines.
- A workforce profile report that cross-tabulates headcount by occupational level and designated group and reproduces the same figures for a past date.
- A prescribed-form export matching a statutory layout, so an annual return is generated rather than transcribed.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We will not tell you whether you are a designated employer, what your sectoral targets are, or whether you are meeting them. Those turn on your sector, your headcount and a reading of the regulations as they stand, and they belong to an employment adviser who carries professional responsibility for the answer.
- We will not classify a person into a designated group on their behalf, or infer it from a name, an identity number or anything else. Self-identification is the only defensible source, declining is a legitimate answer, and a system that guesses has produced a number no one can stand behind.
The first and third lines are one build seen from two ends: a cross-tabulation is only as trustworthy as the classification underneath it, and a report built over free-text grades will produce a different answer every time somebody adds a new one.
What we can build for South Africa on top of the standard product
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point for South Africa, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do there. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are in the product because Kenyan clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself. The same door is open here. If SARS-shaped return output, a bank or mobile money feed, a statutory return format, a rule specific to how your operation runs, or a link to a system you already have is what stands between you and a decision, tell us and we will scope it as a build — written spec, timeline and price — before you commit to anything.
SARS output and e-invoicing
VAT201-shaped return output from live records, a maintained rate history rather than a single preset, and e-invoicing against any prescribed interface — with retries, a failure queue and a reconciliation report.
Banks, EFT and card acquirers
Bank statement feeds, EFT and debit-order files, and card acquirer settlement reports pulled into the Payments Register so receipts match invoices without anyone re-keying a statement.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
Payroll and statutory returns
EMP201 and EMP501 schedules, UIF declarations and COIDA returns produced in the layout your filing body expects, generated from live payroll records instead of rebuilt each month.
Systems you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. No roadmap slide, and no pretending in a demo that something exists when it does not.
Tell us what you need integratedFour questions to ask of your own records before you ask anything of a vendor
Where is occupational level recorded today?
What you will find
A spreadsheet, usually maintained by one person.
How to read it
That spreadsheet is your real system of record for this, and it has no access control, no history and no owner after that person leaves. Moving it into the position record is the single highest-value change available here.
Could we reproduce last year's workforce profile?
What you will find
Only from the copy of last year's submission.
How to read it
Then you have a document rather than a record. It is fine for the file and useless the moment somebody queries a movement between two years, which is exactly the question that gets asked.
Who can see the designated-group fields?
What you will find
Whoever has the spreadsheet.
How to read it
This is the strongest practical argument for holding them in the system rather than beside it. A permissioned field with a separate export right is a far better answer than a file on a laptop, whatever else is true.
When somebody is promoted, what updates?
What you will find
Their title, and the rest at year end.
How to read it
Then your profile is accurate on one day a year. Holding the level on the position rather than the person makes the update automatic, which is the difference between a record that maintains itself and one that is reconstructed annually.
See how the employee record is put together
Departments, positions and managers as real records, custom fields that reach reports and exports, and a sensitivity flag with its own permission for the fields not everybody should see.
Explore HR recordsFrequently asked questions
Who is a designated employer now?
From 1 January 2025, an employer with fifty or more employees. The alternative test — fewer than fifty employees but a turnover at or above a scheduled threshold — was removed, and the schedule that carried those thresholds was deleted. Headcount is the whole test, which brings some businesses into scope for the first time and takes others out. Confirm your own position with an employment adviser rather than from a summary.
What did April 2025 add?
The 2025 Employment Equity Regulations and the Determination of Sectoral Numerical Targets were published on 15 April 2025. Eighteen national economic sectors were identified, with numerical targets set across four occupational levels and a 3% disability employment goal, over a plan period running from 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2030. The targets themselves vary by sector, so the applicable figures are a matter for your adviser and the published determination rather than for a blog post.
Why is occupational level harder to record than the other classifications?
Because it is a property of the job rather than of the person. A designated-group attribute is captured once and is stable; a level is a judgement that has to be applied consistently across the organisation and then held somewhere durable. Most systems have a job title, which is not the same thing — titles inflate, vary by department, and two identical-sounding ones frequently sit at different levels. Map positions to levels once, hold the mapping on the position, and let people inherit it by holding the job.
Does AWRA OpsHub hold these fields today?
Not as built-in fields. The employee record carries names, an employee number, contact details, a national identity number, a work country, department, position, manager, employment type and status, and hire and end dates — there is no gender, date of birth, nationality, disability or population group among them, and the position record's grade is free text. Employees are a custom-field module, though, so the classifications can be defined per workspace, marked sensitive so that seeing them needs its own permission, and surfaced to reports, exports, the API and workflows. What that does not yet give you is a cross-tabulated workforce profile or a prescribed-form export.
Should we just keep using the annual spreadsheet?
It works, and it has three properties worth naming before you decide: no access control on some genuinely sensitive fields, no history, and no owner once the person maintaining it leaves. The compliance argument for moving it is real but the operational one is stronger — a record held in the system updates when somebody is promoted, and a spreadsheet is accurate on the day it is compiled. If you keep the spreadsheet, at least make the occupational-level mapping live on the position rather than in it.
