You sign one agreement with a UK company, governed by English law and invoiced in pounds sterling. A South African company employs your people and carries every employment obligation that comes with them. You never touch South African labour law.
South African talent is one of the strongest value propositions available to a UK business. Native-level English, a working day that overlaps yours almost entirely, and salary levels that make a genuinely senior hire viable on a junior UK budget. None of that helps if you cannot legally employ them.
Registering your own South African entity is not the difficult part. Reaching operational readiness is. Company registration moves quickly, but employer registration with SARS, UIF, the Compensation Fund and a local bank account are what turn a short administrative job into a multi-month one. At the end of it you own a permanent foreign entity, an annual compliance burden and a labour law regime you have never operated under.
The alternative most companies default to is worse. Paying someone as a contractor when the relationship is functionally employment is a misclassification exposure, and South African labour law looks at the substance of the arrangement rather than the wording on the invoice.
This is the part most providers gloss over, and it is the part your legal team will actually ask about. There are two entities involved, and the separation between them is what makes the arrangement work.
Your master agreement is with a UK-registered company. Everything commercial runs through it and nothing about your contractual position is unfamiliar.
A separate South African company is the legal employer of your team. It holds the employment contracts and carries every obligation attached to them.
Your people can use your email addresses, your systems, your equipment and your business cards. They can sit in your stand-ups and be managed by your line managers. None of that makes you their employer, and the agreement says so explicitly.
The clearest way to understand an Employer of Record is to see where the line falls. This is not a summary of our intentions, it is how the agreement is actually written.
Where you raise a performance concern, we assess it and run whatever process is appropriate. You can ask for someone to be replaced. What you cannot do is action a dismissal yourself, because that is the single fastest way to convert a compliant arrangement into a liability for both of us.
The large global EOR platforms are payroll and compliance rails. They will register your employee and file their tax. They will not give that person a laptop, a desk, an IT helpdesk or a manager to escalate to. Our fee covers the operating infrastructure around the employment, not just the paperwork.
Devices provided and maintained, so nobody starts week one waiting on a shipment through customs.
Local IT support your team can actually reach, in their timezone, without opening a ticket with you.
A physical place to work where the role needs one, rather than assuming everyone has a functioning home setup.
Named operational contact, employee relations handled locally, and management escalation that does not land on your desk.
Statutory registrations, monthly and annual returns, and record keeping maintained on an ongoing basis.
South African public holidays taken as days off in lieu aligned to your calendar, and a contractual shutdown over Christmas and New Year.
The commercial structure is deliberately simple, because complexity in an EOR arrangement is usually hiding a cost.
You sign one framework agreement. It is non-exclusive, it commits you to nothing, and it sets no minimum headcount. Each hire is then added by a short annexure setting out the role, the person, the leave terms and the monthly cost, which means scaling from one person to ten is a matter of adding annexures rather than reopening the contract.
Each annexure carries a single all-in monthly figure in pounds. That figure covers the employee's full base salary inclusive of every statutory deduction and employer contribution required under South African law, together with our operational overhead and margin. There is no separate compliance fee, no per-payslip charge and no platform subscription underneath it.
The rand-to-sterling rate is fixed for the engagement and reviewed quarterly, adjustable only by mutual written agreement. If no adjustment is agreed, the existing rate continues to apply. Your cost per head does not move because the currency did.
Notice periods to end an individual engagement are set in that role's annexure and are deliberately flexible, so you are not locked into a headcount decision you made a year ago. And we cannot substitute your assigned person without your written consent, with any replacement required to have substantially equivalent skills and experience. You keep continuity in the people you have trained.
We quote per role rather than publish a rate card, because the number moves with the seniority of the hire, the salary the market requires to attract that person, and what the role needs around it. What we will not do is quote you a headline fee and then add compliance, equipment and support back on as separate line items. Tell us the role and we will give you the whole number.
Strongest where language, judgement and client interaction matter, which is why operations, support and account management are where most engagements start. We will employ any legally permissible role.
We respond within one business day. If your question is not here, twenty minutes on a call will resolve it faster than a thread.
Book a callA South African company within our group is the legal employer. It is named on the employment contract, the payslip and every piece of HR, payroll and legal documentation. You are the recipient of the services and are expressly not the employer for any purpose.
This matters more than it sounds. Your people will use your email address, your systems and your equipment, and they will be managed by your managers. The agreement states specifically that none of that creates an employment, worker or agency relationship between you and them.
Your master agreement is with a UK-registered company and is governed by the law of England and Wales. Commercial disputes go to LCIA arbitration in London. Data protection runs under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, with an international data transfer agreement in place where personal data moves outside the UK.
Employment disputes are a separate matter and are dealt with under South African labour law through the CCMA. That is the correct forum and it is not one you have to appear in.
You tell us, and we run it. South Africa is not an at-will jurisdiction. Under the Labour Relations Act a dismissal must be both substantively fair, meaning there is a valid reason, and procedurally fair, meaning the correct process was followed. We manage performance procedures, disciplinary process, redeployment, retrenchment and termination.
You may ask for someone to be removed from the engagement and replaced. What you must not do is discipline or dismiss anyone directly, because doing so is what turns a compliant structure into a joint liability.
On costs, the agreement provides that we remain responsible for employment-related liabilities including notice pay, severance, statutory payments and CCMA claims. As with any commercial contract there are limits and carve-outs, and your legal team should read clause by clause rather than take that summary at face value.
A single all-in monthly figure per person, invoiced in pounds. It covers the employee's base salary inclusive of every statutory deduction and employer contribution required under South African law, plus our operational overhead and margin covering payroll administration, equipment, technical support, office space, HR and operational oversight, compliance and management.
The rand-to-sterling rate is fixed for the engagement and reviewed quarterly, adjustable only by mutual written agreement. If no adjustment is agreed, the existing rate continues to apply. You are not carrying the currency risk month to month.
On payroll and statutory compliance in South Africa, honestly, similarly. They are competent at that and they operate at a scale we do not.
The differences are these. They are a platform covering many countries, so South Africa is one country page among many and their advice on the LRA, the CCMA and local employment practice is necessarily general. We operate in one country. Second, their fee is a compliance fee on top of a salary you fund separately. Ours is one number that includes the device, the IT support, the desk and a local manager. Third, on a small number of hires the total cost is often closer than the headline rates suggest once you add up what a platform does not include.
If you are hiring across fifteen countries, use a platform. If you are building a South African team, we will be closer to it.
The master agreement is non-exclusive and commits you to nothing. It is a framework. Each role is added by its own annexure with its own term and its own notice period, agreed when the role is scoped rather than imposed by a standard contract. Adding a fifth hire means adding an annexure, not reopening the agreement.
Leave entitlement is set out in the annexure for each role and is drafted to comply with the Basic Conditions of Employment Act as a minimum. South African public holidays worked are compensated with a day off in lieu, aligned to your calendar where practicable, and there is a contractual shutdown between Christmas Day and New Year's Day that is not deducted from annual leave.
Intellectual property created specifically for you in the course of delivering the services vests in you, and this is set out in the relevant annexure for your engagement. Anything either party owned before the engagement began stays with that party, and the tools, systems and methods we use to deliver the service remain ours.
If IP ownership is material to the role, raise it at the point of drafting the annexure so it is dealt with explicitly rather than assumed.
Yes. All personnel are vetted to good industry practice and are confirmed as entitled to work in the relevant jurisdiction. Everyone assigned to your engagement signs confidentiality undertakings covering both us and you. We maintain insurance covering our obligations under the agreement and will provide evidence of it on request.
Twenty minutes, no deck. Tell us the role and the budget, and we will tell you the all-in monthly cost in pounds and whether this is genuinely the right structure for your headcount. Sometimes it is not, and we will say so.
Book a 20-minute call