Sector Targets, Five-Year Plans and What Non-Compliance Really Means
For years, Employment Equity (EE) reporting has been approached by employers as a routine exercise; submit your annual EE report, file it away and move on until the next reporting window opens up. That era is over. With the Employment Equity Amendment Act now in effect (1 January 2025) and final sector targets gazetted in April, employers must now shift their approaches to navigating and ensuring compliance with EE above and beyond the paperwork exercise, and instead a critical component of their transformation strategy. Failure to comply is no longer an option for designated employers.
As the start of the 2025 EE reporting window inches closer i.e. 01 September 2025, designated employers particularly must ensure that they adequately prepare themselves for the changes they will face not only in the way they report, but in the EE plans which will shape the next 5-years as a result of the compliance amendments. This reporting cycle will be the first where designated employers will be required to not only declare and commit to sector targets until the year 2030, but the structure of reports has also been changed altogether.
Sectoral Targets: Why All Industries Are Exposed
The Department of Employment and Labour (DoEL) has set numerical targets across 18 economic sectors, covering every occupational level from Skilled to Top Management. These include Manufacturing, Mining, Wholesale and Retail, Information and Communication and more.
Each sector faces unique hurdles, and the sector targets, as communicated by the DoEL have been designed with these unique observed dynamics in mind. For example:
- Manufacturing: Male-dominated and slow to diversify management ranks
- Financial and Insurance Services: diverse at entry levels, but senior and executive layers remain untransformed
- Information, Communication (ICT): technical skills shortages making meeting demographic and disability targets difficult.
- Agriculture: historically overlooked, with limited transformation in leadership structures
Compliance Meets Strategy
The new law makes one point clear: Employment Equity can’t be separated from business strategy. It is not an HR side project, it is a compliance obligation tied directly to operational continuity and future growth. As designated employers develop their EE plans for the coming 5-years, it is advisable that these companies adopt proactive strategies for alignment. In order to avoid risks of non-compliance, employers must ensure that the five-year EE plans are not only compliant in the structure of their numerical goals and targets, but have been backed up by measurable internal strategies in order to avoid unplanned deviation and subsequent non-compliance.
As we navigate this new compliance landscape, designated employers can expect to be held to a far higher standard of implementation and achievement of EE. Among the risks of non-compliance with the amended regulations is exclusion from participation in state contracts as well financial and legal penalties which would be of significant detriment to companies and their key stakeholders.
Why Acting Now Matters:
- The window is short. Once the reporting cycle opens in September, companies need to have their plans in place as opposed to scrambling to catch up
- Penalties are real. The Department has indicated stronger enforcement, and exclusions from state contracts will directly affect bottom lines
- Transformation is measurable. Targets are numeric, not aspirational. Companies must show progress year-on-year
How Okiru Can Help
At Okiru, we specialise in tying strategy to compliance. We don’t just draft EE reports, we help clients:
Conduct a sector-aligned workforce analysis against gazetted targets.
Develop five-year EE plans that integrate into broader HR and transformation strategies.
Implement skills development, recruitment, and retention pipelines to move the numbers.
Manage the reporting process end-to-end, ensuring submissions are compliant, defensible and audit-ready.
This September cycle is the last chance to align your plans before the full five-year compliance period begins. Don’t leave it until January. Start now. Speak to Okiru Consulting and turn compliance into strategy.
