Hiring Your First Employee in South Africa: Contracts, BCEA and the CCMA
The paperwork and legal duties that come with hire number one: written particulars, UIF, probation myths, fair discipline, and why the CCMA only respects a paper trail.
Hiring your first employee is the moment your business stops being just you, and the moment a new body of law starts applying to you. None of it is hard to comply with. All of it is hard to fix retroactively. Here's the honest version of what you need.
The written contract (and what section 29 really says)
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) section 29 requires employers to give every employee written particulars of employment before work begins: names, job description, workplace, hours, wage and how it's calculated, overtime rate, other payments, leave, notice periods and more.
Full disclosure, because we'd rather be accurate than dramatic: the section technically exempts employers with fewer than five employees (and workers under 24 hours a month). So for your very first hire, the written-particulars duty may not yet bind you. Should you skip the contract, then? No, for one overriding reason: in any dispute, the absence of writing counts against the employer. When the CCMA asks what was agreed and there's nothing on paper, the employee's version gets the benefit of the doubt. The contract isn't bureaucracy; it's your evidence.
A proper first-hire contract nails down: job title and duties (including what "poor performance" means), remuneration and payday, hours and overtime, leave, probation terms, notice, confidentiality, and receipt of your workplace rules.
Registrations you can't skip
- UIF: register with the Unemployment Insurance Fund and pay contributions (1% from the employee's pay, 1% from you) from the first month. This one has no small-business exemption.
- SARS PAYE: register as an employer if your employee earns above the tax threshold.
- COIDA: register with the Compensation Fund so workplace injuries are covered.
The probation myth
Probation is widely misunderstood as a free-dismissal window. It isn't. A probationary employee has the same protection against unfair dismissal. Probation merely lowers the bar for what counts as a fair reason on performance grounds, and only if you actually evaluated, gave feedback and offered support along the way. "Probation didn't work out", with no record of any of that, loses at the CCMA.
Discipline: Schedule 8 is the playbook
The Labour Relations Act's Schedule 8 (Code of Good Practice: Dismissal) sets out what fair discipline looks like: the employee must know the rule, the rule must be applied consistently, misconduct must be investigated, the employee must be heard, and sanctions must fit the offence. In practice that means written warnings that follow a procedure, not warnings composed in anger on WhatsApp. Keep copies of everything. The CCMA's first question is always for the file.
Fixed-term contracts: handle with care
Hiring for a project or a season? A fixed-term contract must say why it's fixed-term. Under LRA section 198B, employees on fixed terms longer than three months are, for larger employers, deemed permanent unless the fixed duration is justifiable (genuinely small new businesses are excluded, but the justification habit is worth adopting from day one). Rolling someone over on repeated fixed terms without a reason is how "temporary" staff become permanent in law without you noticing.
The first-hire paper trail, complete
- Signed employment contract before day one
- Job description that defines performance
- UIF (and PAYE/COIDA where applicable) registration
- Signed receipt of workplace rules
- A warning-letter template that follows Schedule 8
- A file where all of it lives
General information, not legal advice. For a live dispute, talk to a labour attorney or visit the CCMA, which offers free processes designed to be used without lawyers.
