Welcome to The People Insider — a weekly brief for anyone who employs people in South Africa.
Every Wednesday: one headline, one tool, one leadership story, one stat and one question. Under five minutes. No fluff. Let's get into it.
01 — THE HEADLINE
Your best people can now be hired from London — here's what lets you keep them
For years, your talent competition was the firm down the road, or at worst a company in Johannesburg. That is over. Somewhere on your team is a person whose next employer will be in London or Dubai, but they won’t actually move there; they’ll never even meet a colleague in person.
You might not even get the chance to counter-offer, because you won’t even know it is happening until the resignation lands.
Don’t worry, you won’t see us stumble…
Most employers used to think they were safe from the big remote work trend of overseas companies luring talent with euros, pounds and dollars. But indications are the game has changed…
It is not just developers anymore
SA recruitment venture Job Crystal’s CEO Sasha Knott told CapeTalk that companies in the UK’s demand for SA talent has spread well past technology into finance, sales and marketing, and across a whole range of ordinary office roles. The economics are what make it durable:
"South Africans are earning more from those international companies. They're still being paid in rands; they're earning more than the local side. But again, the UK or Dubai companies, for example, are getting it at a lesser rate than they would have in their countries."
So basically, everybody wins except you. Your employee gets a raise you would struggle to justify, and the foreign employer still pays less than it would at home. Knott, when asked whether the trend has a ceiling, said simply that she does not see it stopping.
But SA employers still have one ace up their sleeves…
The things even pounds cannot buy
Knott said in her own research she has watched people take these remote jobs and then start to miss things. Subtle things that you don’t think of when they discuss remuneration, but become super important in the long run:
Greater opportunities to climb the ladder and progress in your career; not many growth prospects inside the firm when you’re remote.
Inevitably, everyone starts missing face-to-face contact with colleagues.
Shame, and she hasn’t even taken the London job yet…
That is the whole gap: A foreign employer is buying somebody's hours. It’s not offering the full career package: teams, mentors or a named next role. Most of them cannot, because the person is a line on a spreadsheet in another hemisphere. If the only thing you compete on is the salary on the payslip, you will lose.
But an SA company that competes on progression and giving people a place to belong and grow, well, then you’re playing a game the offshore employer cannot even enter.
Worth noting, too: this is not emigration. Your person stays in the country, spends here, and brings international experience back into the local market.
WHAT TO DO NOW
Work out which of your roles are now globally exposed. Any job that could be done from Durban for a firm in London is on the market whether you like it or not.
Sell the thing an offshore employer cannot. A named next role, a real mentor, a team in the same room, and a path that goes somewhere. Say it out loud.
Have the stay conversation before the resignation. Ask your 3 most exposed people what would keep them for another 2 years, and act on one of their answers.
02 — TOOL OF THE WEEK
One tool shaping how people work
PRIVACY / POPIA COMPLIANCE
POPIA as a score and a task list
You hold more personal information than you think, and it starts with your own staff records. Most employers know POPIA applies to them and have a policy somewhere to prove it. Far fewer could tell you where that information actually sits, or what they are supposed to do in the 72 hours after a breach.
Priviso is a South African privacy platform that turns the Act into something operational: an assessment across more than forty weighted controls that produces a compliance score you can put in front of a board. Built by an SA consultancy that has done this for a decade, with a free trial version. Nice.
03 — LEADERSHIP STORY
Outrage is not damage
Knowing the difference between feeling offended and actual business damage is vital for management. Take SA cleaning and painting distributor Academy Brushware, for example. In 2017, they used a pop-up marketing display of a model posing in shorts and heels next to the company’s branding.
An employee took photos of themself posing next to the pop-up wearing shorts and heels, copying the pose, and posted it on social media. A manager told her to stop. She posted more. She was dismissed for gross insubordination. Reasonable so far, most bosses would say. But the CCMA didn’t agree, saying dismissal was unfair, so the company asked the labour court to review the decision.
The saga dragged on for 9 years, and finally, in August this year, the Cape Town labour court sided with the CCMA. The reason why is important for employers to note:
"… there is no evidence that the business of the Employer suffered any actual harm as a result of the posts made by the Employee. There is no suggestion that the posts occasioned any damage in the marketplace, or complaints or concerns from the Employer's customers."
Being embarrassed is not the same as being harmed, and the difference has to be proved. Two other things to note: When she was clearly told to take the posts down, she did, which counted against any finding of wilful defiance. And the employee’s length of service mattered, because dismissal has to be the appropriate sanction, not simply an available one.
The question worth sitting with: The last time someone's conduct made you angry enough to dismiss, could you have proved what it actually cost the business?
04 — THE STAT
R15.5 billion
is the value of invoices sitting unpaid for more than 30 days across national and provincial government departments, at the close of the last reported quarter. The number of invoices actually fell, down 4,543 to 90,856, while the rand value climbed a quarter from R12.4 billion. Fewer invoices, three billion more rand stuck.
Provincial departments account for 98% of both. If you supply government, or supply somebody who does, your cash cycle is not really yours, and the first place that lands is payroll.
Source: National Treasury quarterly report on non-compliance with payment of suppliers' invoices within 30 days, Q3 of 2025/26
05 — EVENTS
What’s coming up
3 SEPTEMBER – ONLINE COURSE
The OHS Act and the Responsibilities of Management
A full day online on what the Occupational Health and Safety Act actually requires of management, and where civil and criminal liability lands when something goes wrong.
10 SEPTEMBER – CAPE TOWN
AI Uncorked: Agents for Business, What Actually Works
Ninety minutes at Innovation City in Gardens, with the team from Nineteen58 on what companies are actually deploying and where they are seeing measurable results.
17 SEPTEMBER – JOHANNESBURG
Building Iconic South African Companies
An evening in Sandton with Barry Swartzberg, one of the co-founders of Discovery Health and the man who took Vitality global, on rewards-based behavioural incentives, scaling the model internationally, and building an advantage that holds for decades.
Got an event SA employers should know about? Reply and tell us.
06 — QUESTION OF THE WEEK
If a London company offered your best person more money to do the same job from their kitchen table, what could you offer that they could not?
07 — BROUGHT TO YOU BY
PREMIUM SPONSOR
Jem helps South African employers manage and support their deskless, frontline teams: payslips, leave, HR admin, team comms and financial-wellness benefits (including earned-wage access), all over WhatsApp. Trusted by 200+ employers and 250,000+ workers.
This space is reserved for a small handful of partners we're glad to stand behind, and we've kept 4 more spots open. If your product belongs in front of South African business owners, hit reply and let's talk.
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