Payroll for small business: the 19 October shutdown day
If a national shutdown keeps your staff away on Monday 19 October, you need to decide before Friday how that day is paid. The choices are working from somewhere else, annual leave by agreement, or an unpaid day by agreement. Whichever applies, get it in writing per person, so payroll runs on a record.
BusinessTech reports that a group calling itself Concerned Citizens of South Africa has called for a national shutdown on 19 October, to press the government to cut the General Fuel Levy. Its poster asks workers not to report for work and learners not to go to school. The report gives no estimate of support and records no police or government response, and no other outlet had reported the call by 14 October.
It may come to little. For payroll for small business in South Africa, that uncertainty is the reason to decide now. A rule set on Thursday costs you one message. A rule invented on the following payday costs you an argument with every person affected.
Three groups of people, three records
On the day, your staff will fall into three groups, and each needs a different line in the record.
Those who came in. Paid as normal. Record that they were there, with a time, as you would on any day. If you are short-staffed and others cover extra hours, record the hours, because overtime is paid on the record and not on memory.
Those who could not come. Taxis not running, roads closed, a school that shut. These people did not choose to stay away. Agree with each one, in writing, how the day is treated: annual leave, an unpaid day, time made up later, or work from home where the job allows it.
Those who chose not to come. This is the group that becomes a dispute. Decide your position before the day and tell everyone in advance what it is, so nobody learns it from their payslip.
Get the choice in writing before payroll runs
Two rules from the Basic Conditions of Employment Act do most of the work here. Under section 20(10), annual leave is taken in line with an agreement between employer and employee, and only where there is no agreement at a time the employer determines. Agreeing the day as leave in writing, before payroll runs, leaves nothing to argue about. Under section 34(1), a deduction from pay needs the employee's written agreement to a specified debt, unless a law, collective agreement, court order or arbitration award allows it. An unpaid day should be agreed in writing too, so nobody later reads it as a deduction they never accepted.
A WhatsApp message saying "Monday will be unpaid leave, please reply OK" with a reply from the employee is a record. A conversation in the yard is not. Keep the messages, and copy the outcome onto the timesheet before payroll closes.
Where an employee was ready to work but could not reach the site, and you could not offer work elsewhere, the Labour Court has held that no work means no pay. That was the 2020 Macsteel lockdown case. It found that employees who rendered no service, even through no fault of their own or for reasons outside the employer's control, were not entitled to be paid (Webber Wentzel's summary). A High Court judgment the same week took the opposite view, so apply the principle with care. If you sent people home, or closed the site yourself, the reason they did not work is your decision, and that changes the answer.
What to send staff this week
One message, sent by Thursday, covers it:
- The site will open as normal on Monday 19 October, or it will not.
- If you cannot get in safely, tell your supervisor by 07:00, and do not travel through anything you are not comfortable with.
- A missed day can be taken as annual leave or as an unpaid day. We will confirm your choice with you in writing.
- Anyone who can work from home that day should arrange it with their supervisor by Friday.
The second point matters more than the payroll. No day's output is worth a member of staff driving into a road blockade.
How the day shows on the payslip
Once the record exists, payroll is simple. Leave days come off the leave balance. Unpaid days reduce pay for that period. Run the changed figure through the PAYE calculator for anyone whose pay drops, because the deduction on a smaller month is not the usual one.
What causes trouble is the gap between the two. The supervisor knows who came in, the owner knows what was agreed, and the person running payroll knows neither. The day is entered as normal, paid in full, and corrected a month later by a deduction the employee never agreed to.
When this stops being enough
With eight people on one site, a group message and a spreadsheet will carry this. With forty people across three sites, three supervisors' notes have to reach one payroll, and the shutdown day is just the day the gaps become visible.
Zorah connects the attendance record a business already keeps to its payroll and leave records. A day marked as leave on site then lands in payroll as leave, without being typed again from a timesheet and a WhatsApp thread. On Monday morning, before nine, write down who came in. Everything else follows from that list.