What this score measures, and what it does not
The score measures one thing: whether you could produce the records an employer is asked for when an HR decision is challenged. It does not measure whether your decisions were right. A commissioner or a labour inspector tests the paperwork because the paperwork is what can be tested, and a manager’s memory of what happened carries far less weight than a dated document.
A high score does not make a decision fair, and a low score does not make it unfair. It tells you whether your record would support you or leave you explaining a gap.
Why the record decides so much
A dismissal is judged on two questions: was there a fair reason, and was a fair procedure followed. Both are proved with documents. The warning that was valid on the day, the notice of the hearing, the minutes, the outcome letter, the guidance given before a poor-performance dismissal. When one of them is missing, the employer is left with a recollection against the employee’s account.
The time to gather them is short. An unfair dismissal dispute can be referred to the CCMA within 30 days, which is why the employer response checklist starts with finding the file, not writing the defence.
The five records you will actually be asked for
Most South African employers we speak to are not careless. They are busy, and the record of what they did is spread across an inbox, a WhatsApp thread, a spreadsheet and somebody’s memory. When a decision is tested, five things get asked for.
- Written particulars of employment. Section 29 of the BCEA requires the terms of employment in writing. It does not, strictly, require a signature, which surprises people: what it requires is that the employee was given the particulars. A dispute about what was agreed starts here, which is why the employment contract template carries all of them rather than the handful most contracts remember.
- Time worked and pay. Section 31 requires a record of each employee’s name and occupation, the time they worked and the money they were paid, kept for three years from the date of the last entry. A labour inspector can ask for it without notice. It is also the only thing standing between you and an overtime claim you cannot answer.
- The leave trail. Not the balance, the trail: the applications, the approvals and the dates behind the balance. Leave pay on exit is calculated from that number, and a number nobody can trace is a number you cannot defend. The leave tracker and the leave payout calculator both exist because this is the most common thing to get wrong on a last day.
- The discipline chain. Not one document, a chain: the rule the employee knew about, the warning that was still valid on the day, the notice of the hearing, the minutes, and the outcome letter. Break one link and the procedure is arguable, whatever the employee actually did.
- The exit documents. Section 42 entitles every employee to a certificate of service when employment ends, whatever the reason it ended. It is compulsory, it is small, and it is skipped constantly, usually in exactly the exits that later get referred.
The law the questions are built on
- BCEA section 29. The terms of employment must be given in writing. It requires written particulars, not necessarily a signed contract.
- BCEA section 31. A record of each employee’s name, occupation, time worked and pay, kept for three years from the last entry and available to a labour inspector.
- BCEA section 42. Every employee is entitled to a certificate of service when their employment ends.
- The 2025 Code of Good Practice: Dismissal. In force since 4 September 2025. For misconduct it weighs whether the employee knew the rule, consistency, the importance of the rule and the harm caused, with no fixed number of warnings. Poor performance calls for guidance, training or counselling and a reasonable opportunity to improve. Probation now tests suitability, and the employee must be able to make representations first.
- POPIA section 19. Reasonable technical and organisational measures to secure personal information, which starts with knowing where it is.
What changed on 4 September 2025
The 2025 Code of Good Practice: Dismissal came into force and replaced Schedule 8. If your disciplinary policy still cites Schedule 8, it is citing something that no longer exists. Four changes matter in practice.
There is no fixed number of warnings before a dismissal, and there never really was; the Code now says so plainly. Two factors were added to the sanction decision: how important the rule is in your workplace, and the actual or potential harm the breach caused. Consistency still matters a great deal, but the Code is explicit that consistency does not mean identical treatment in every case. And small employers may use simpler, less formal procedures, provided they are still fair, which is the single most useful sentence in it for a 40-person business.
Probation changed too. It now tests suitability, not just performance, and the employee must be given a chance to make representations before you end or extend it. For poor performance after probation, the expectation is guidance, training or counselling, a reasonable opportunity to improve, and a chance to respond before any dismissal.
The thirty-day clock
An employee has 30 days from the date of dismissal to refer an unfair dismissal dispute to the CCMA. That clock is the reason a record kept as you go beats a record assembled afterwards: when the referral arrives, you are not writing a defence, you are trying to find things. If it goes against you, compensation is capped at 12 months of the employee’s remuneration under section 194 of the Labour Relations Act, and at 24 months where the dismissal was automatically unfair. Those are the ceilings, not the averages, and most matters settle well below them. The cost people underestimate is the management time.
How the score is calculated
Each question carries points according to what a gap would cost, not how hard it is to fix. Hearing records, evidence before a performance dismissal, and whether your record survives one person leaving carry 10 points each. Certificates of service and job descriptions carry 4. Yes earns the full points, Partly earns half, and No and Not sure earn nothing.
80 and above is Defensible. 60 to 79 is Exposed. 40 to 59 is Indefensible, the range where cases often settle because the record cannot support the decision. Below 40 is Critical.
Where the record actually breaks
It is rarely the document that fails. It is the filing. The warning lives as an attachment in one manager’s inbox. The hearing notes are on paper in a drawer, if anyone wrote them. The leave balance is in a spreadsheet that two people edit and nobody reconciles. The policy went out once, by email, with no record of who received it, which makes it hard to enforce against anyone who says they never saw it. Employee personal information sits in four places, which is a problem under section 19 of POPIA, because you cannot secure what you cannot locate.
And the failure mode nobody plans for: the HR manager leaves. If the record lives in one person’s head and inbox, it leaves with them, and the next person inherits decisions they cannot explain.
What to do with a low score
Start with the heaviest gaps on your result. In practice that usually means:
- Keeping every current warning, hearing notice, set of minutes and outcome in one place, dated. The written warning and hearing notice templates are aligned to the 2025 Code.
- Documenting the standard, the guidance given and the time allowed before any performance dismissal, which is what a performance improvement plan is for.
- Issuing a certificate of service on every exit, whatever the reason.
- Getting your policies and disciplinary code acknowledged in writing by every employee.
- Mapping where employee personal information sits and who can open it, the first step in the POPIA guide for employee data.
The documents are the easy part. Keeping them current, findable and consistent across every manager is where a spreadsheet and a shared drive run out, and that is the job Synthro does.
Taking the result to your MD
HR usually sees the risk first, and the budget sits with someone else. Your breakdown and two PDFs arrive by email: they are a memo from you to your MD, and a one-page business case. Neither contains a number you would have to defend, only what your own answers show.