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
Bad pants or not, you can’t fire someone over a screenshot
Like some of the most important stories in life, this one starts with a pair of cheap trousers: A cleaning company employee complained about the quality of her uniform in her WhatsApp status.
Her employer took screenshots of it and dismissed her for bringing the company's name into disrepute.
Pants, got it, following the story so far…
Problem is the CCMA rejected the dismissal, and the Labour Court agreed, saying that screenshots aren’t proof of anything much. Worth knowing, since most of us have started practically running entire companies (including discipline) off WhatsApp.
Why the courts think your screenshots are weak (as evidence)
Section 15 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act says a data message is admissible in court, but the weight it carries depends entirely on how reliable it is. And the burden of proving that sits with you, the employer. As litigator Ann-Suhet Marx puts it in her analysis of the judgment:
"Screenshots have become a dangerous shortcut in modern human resources. They are treated as if they carry the weight of sworn testimony. But they do not. They are static, easily cropped, decontextualised, and manipulated."
The three things you always have to prove
To lean on a screenshot at the CCMA, you need to be able to prove authenticity (the image is a real and unaltered version of the original), prove authorship (this specific employee actually wrote and sent it rather than a spoofed or copied profile) and provide completeness and context, meaning the whole conversation and not a crop.
That last one decided the cleaning company’s bad pants case, by the way. It showed part but not all of the message.
Either way, a screenshot seems like a reason to start investigating. It is not the finding.
WHAT TO DO NOW
Get the whole thread, not the picture of it. Ask for the full conversation with timestamps, the original file rather than a forwarded image.
Prove who wrote it before you act on it. Confirm the account and the device, and put the allegation to the employee properly.
Write the communications standard down now. Get a policy on what staff may post about the company online, so you have something to measure against if it happens.
02 — TOOL OF THE WEEK
One tool shaping how people work
PERFORMANCE / SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
Start actually tracking development
Most SMEs do performance reviews in a spreadsheet and training in a WhatsApp group, which is why development gets promised in January and forgotten by March. HRSimplified is a South African-built platform, used by more than 2,500 businesses, that joins the two together.
The performance module tracks people against OKRs rather than a once-a-year form, and it feeds a Training Management System where you load providers and courses into a catalogue, assign training to specific employees, and then actually report on whether it happened.
03 — LEADERSHIP STORY
Thirty years, five continents, one lesson
Roy Bagattini has run businesses in Singapore, Moscow, Rome, Beijing and San Francisco, and spent the last stretch as Group CEO of Woolworths Holdings. As he closes out his executive career in September, he was asked what three decades of leading across cultures actually taught him. His answer was not about strategy.
Styles differ enormously, he says. In some markets the expectation is that the boss knows best and everyone executes. In South Africa, it is far more about building alignment around a credible vision.
But underneath all of it he found one constant: people want to feel respected, want to feel heard, and want to believe they matter. Wherever that happens, he says, people grow in confidence and capability, no matter where you are in the world. And he believes SA has plenty of bosses who can show the world how to lead that way.
"South Africa forces leaders to operate with paradoxes every day. We experience extraordinary resilience alongside deep inequality; world-class capability alongside structural constraint; optimism alongside frustration. That environment forces leaders to engage with complexity rather than avoid it."
People rarely remember leaders for the results they delivered, he says; they remember how those leaders made them feel.
The question worth sitting with: If your team described you to someone else this week, would they talk about what you achieved, or about how working for you feels?
04 — THE STAT
22%
is the share of managers worldwide who are engaged at work, down from 31% in 2022, according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace. It is the steepest fall of any group in the workforce, and it matters most because managers impact how their teams feel about the work and the company.
The likely reason is unglamorous: fewer than half of managers globally have ever had any formal management training. We promote the best doer, hand them a team, and then wonder why both the manager and the team are struggling.
Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace (2026 edition)
05 — EVENTS
What’s coming up
27 AUGUST – ONLINE COURSE
Managing Day-to-Day Challenges in the Workplace
A one-day online course working through the things that actually land on a manager's desk: insubordination, absenteeism and abscondment, dodgy medical certificates, etc.
1 SEPTEMBER – SANDTON
Venture Summit at LeaderEx
At the flagship leadership event, there’s also a special room for founders: getting investor-ready, what funders are actually backing right now, how to price and structure a round, and the operational discipline that turns a startup into a scale-up. (Use the code in the link to get in for free.)
Got an event SA employers should know about? Reply and tell us.
06 — QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Have you ever disciplined someone over a message they sent? Could you prove who wrote it, that it was not cropped and what the rest of the conversation said?
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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