⚡ Quick answer The payslip mistakes that breach the BCEA are: missing statutory items (hours, rates, leave balances are not all required — but the section 33 list is), lumped or unexplained deductions, no UIF line item, invisible overtime premiums, cash-in-envelope payment with no payslip at all, and keeping no copies. Every payslip must show the section 33 particulars every pay period, and records must be kept three years. A compliant payslip takes seconds with a proper generator — there is no workload excuse left. The payslip is the one employment document issued dozens of times a year — which makes payslip mistakes the most multiplied compliance error in small…

⚡ Quick answer BCEA notice periods are the same for resignation and dismissal: 1 week for service up to 6 months, 2 weeks for 6 to 12 months, and 4 weeks for over a year (farm and domestic workers always get 4 weeks after 6 months). Contracts may agree longer but never shorter. Notice must be in writing, may be paid in lieu, and does not apply to summary dismissal for gross misconduct. Notice pay is separate from severance pay in retrenchments. Notice periods look like the simplest clause in the contract — until a resignation lands badly, a dismissal is botched by a week, or a retrenchment package forgets…

⚡ Quick answer South African employees are entitled to five statutory types of leave: annual leave (21 consecutive days per cycle, roughly 15 working days on a 5-day week), sick leave (30 days per 36-month cycle on a 5-day week), maternity leave (4 consecutive months, unpaid by the employer but covered by UIF), parental leave (10 days, UIF-funded), and family responsibility leave (3 days a year for births, child illness and deaths). Public holidays sit alongside, not inside, these entitlements. Leave questions arrive weekly in every small business — and each types of leave has its own accrual maths, pay rules and paperwork. This summary puts all five statutory categories…

⚡ Quick answer South African overtime rules under the BCEA: ordinary hours cap at 45 per week (9 a day on a 5-day week, 8 on a 6-day week); overtime is voluntary by agreement, capped at 3 hours a day and 10 hours a week, and paid at 1.5 times the normal rate — or time off by agreement. Sunday work pays double (or 1.5x if Sunday is a regular working day). Employees earning above the BCEA earnings threshold are excluded from the overtime provisions, and senior managers are excluded regardless. Few BCEA topics generate more payroll errors than overtime rules — who qualifies, what it pays, and the persistent…

⚡ Quick answer A verbal employment contract is legally valid and binding in South Africa — employment exists from the moment someone works for you under your direction, no document required. But the BCEA separately obliges the employer to provide written particulars of employment, and every unwritten term becomes a factual dispute later, where uncertainty usually resolves in the employee’s favour. The law enforces verbal contracts; it just punishes employers for the uncertainty they create. Employers ask whether a verbal employment contract ‘counts’ — usually when a relationship has drifted from informal help into something that looks suspiciously like employment. The answer is uncomfortable: it counts completely. The follow-up matters…

⚡ Quick answer The employment contract mistakes that cost South African employers most are: no written contract at all, copied foreign templates, missing BCEA section 29 particulars, unlawful deduction clauses, notice periods below the BCEA minimums, restraint clauses that are too wide to enforce, and unsigned or outdated contracts. Every one of these surfaces at the worst moment — a dismissal dispute, a resignation battle, a Department inspection — when fixing it is no longer possible. At the CCMA, the contract is exhibit one — and it is remarkable how often it loses the case before the evidence starts. These are the employment contract mistakes commissioners and inspectors see every…

⚡ Quick answer Part-time employees in South Africa have almost all the rights of full-time staff, mostly pro-rata: a written contract, payslips, the national minimum wage for every hour worked, pro-rata annual and sick leave, overtime rates after their agreed hours, and full CCMA protection. UIF applies once they work 24 hours or more a month for you. Employees working fewer than 24 hours a week are also protected against less favourable treatment than comparable full-timers unless the difference is just and equitable. Part-time employees occupy the most misunderstood corner of South African labour law — treated by too many employers as a category somehow outside the BCEA. They are…