As an employer, you may be unfamiliar with some of the benefits of employing someone with a disability. However, through doing so, you can uncover many previously unseen advantages. For example, people with disabilities may have unique skills or be more motivated. Furthermore, 7.5% of the population are currently living with a disability. Therefore, there is a huge talent pool you may not have previously considered tapping into.
This article will explore some of the financial benefits of employing a person with a disability. Information used to write this article was taken from FASSET (www.fasset.org.za) and HR Pulse (www.hrpulse.co.za).
Hiring Someone with a Disability and Employment Equity
There remains an obligation among employers to create a diverse and non-discriminatory working environment, especially for medium to large companies in South Africa. It is therefore important to adhere to the disability quota laid out by the Employment Equity (EE) act. Companies are obliged to have at least 2% of employees on their payroll to have a disability. For more information about the improvements you can see regarding your BBBEE scorecard, see (article about BBBEE).
Financial Benefits of Hiring a Person with a Disability
Furthermore, there are direct financial benefits you can gain by employing someone who lives with a disability. In 1999, the Skills Development Levies Act (SDLA) was implemented in South Africa. According to this Act, every employer in South Africa with a payroll exceeding R 500,000 per annum is liable to register for the compulsory Skills Development Levy (SDL). This entails contributing 1% of total payroll towards skills development, largely in the form of learnerships. This includes staff who fall below the PAYE threshold, but excluding learners on registered learnership agreements.
The best form of claiming financial benefits is putting people with disabilities through a learnership programme. Upon the commencement of each year of a learnership, employers can claim R50,000 from SARS. In addition, a further R50,000 is received upon the completion of each year of a learnership. Therefore, across a 3-year period, a company is able to claim a total of R300,000 for each learner.
Concluding Remarks
ClockWork specialises in assisting unemployed people with disabilities to find jobs, internships and learnerships. Are you an employer looking to hire an individual who lives with a disability? If so, click here to find out more or send us an email: [email protected]
Did you enjoy reading this article: We have plenty more where this came from! See Statistics Surrounding Employment of Persons with Disabilities in South Africa
