Workplace & conduct · 04
Employment instruments and workplace policies
Contracts of employment, fixed-term and independent-contractor agreements, restraints, settlement and separation agreements, disciplinary codes, grievance procedures, harassment policies and…
Contracts of employment, fixed-term and independent-contractor agreements, restraints, settlement and separation agreements, disciplinary codes, grievance procedures, harassment policies and whistleblowing channels — drafted to the current statutory position rather than to last year’s template.
Any employer, and particularly one that has grown past the point where the founding contracts still describe the organisation.
Section 198B and section 200A of the Labour Relations Act decide more outcomes than the wording of the contract does. The label on the document decides nothing: where a relationship walks like employment, the correct advice is to say so, not to draft harder.
The law it sits under
The framework this work answers to.
Section 29 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 requires written particulars of employment, and the BCEA sets the floor that no contract can go below. The Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 governs unfair discrimination and, since the Employment Equity Amendment Act 4 of 2022 came into operation on 1 January 2025 with sector numerical targets set by regulation in 2025, changes what a designated employer has to plan and report. The Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 and the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act 130 of 1993 carry duties that sit on the employer regardless of what the contract says.
How the engagement runs
What you are committing to.
The instruments are drafted as a set that agrees with itself — contract, disciplinary code, grievance procedure, and the workplace policies that the code enforces — because a disciplinary code that punishes conduct no policy prohibits is unenforceable, and a policy no code enforces is decorative. Each is delivered with the communication record that proves the employee was made aware of it.
Section 197 of the LRA transfers employees automatically on the transfer of a business as a going concern, whatever the sale agreement says. It is the single most commonly missed provision in a transaction, and it is the employment instruments that reveal the exposure.
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