Don’t miss the workplace skills plan submission deadline
7 min read
If your business has an annual payroll exceeding R500 000 or 50+ employees, you should be in full swing preparing your workplace skills plan (WSP) and annual training report (ATR). These must be submitted to your Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) by 30 April 2025 – no exceptions, no extensions!
Why your WSP–ATR matters
Your WSP is more than just paperwork; it’s your roadmap for employee skills development and a key to unlocking the Skills Development component of the BBBEE Scorecard. A well-prepared WSP not only boosts business performance but also helps close the skills gap among historically disadvantaged groups, driving inclusive economic growth.
Your WSP–ATR isn’t just a formality – it’s vital to your business’s sustainability and competitiveness. Neglect it at your peril.
Who needs to submit a WSP & ATR?
If your company’s payroll exceeds R500k per annum, you must be registered to pay skills development levies (SDL). Submitting a WSP and ATR allows you to claim back 20% of the SDL via a grant from your SETA and, critically, secure 20 points on your BBBEE Scorecard.
What is the WSP & ATR?
- Workplace skills plan: Identifies the skills your workforce needs and outlines your training strategy for the coming financial year.
- Annual training report: A record of all skills development initiatives completed in the current financial year, crucial for claiming BBBEE points.
Your ATR measures your training progress against the previous year’s WSP, making it a key indicator of skills development within your company.
Your WSP–ATR checklist: Get it right!
To ensure a smooth submission, your WSP–ATR must include:
- Current employee list
- Employee list for previous training period
- Total payroll figure
- Comprehensive training completed summary
- Proof of training completed
- Comprehensive training plan
- Proof of bank details
- Registered SDF (skills development facilitator)
- SDF appointment letter
- Signed authorisation form
- Hard-to-fill vacancies and reasons
- Training committee members and ID numbers
The cost of not submitting is huge!
Miss the deadline, and your business takes a massive hit. Here’s what’s at stake:
- BBBEE level downgrade: Your business can earn up to 20 points for the Skills Development element on the BBBEE scorecard – that’s two levels. The loss of the 20 skills development points by not submitting your WSP–ATR on time will see your BBBEE level drop by two levels – your level 2 gets demoted to level 4 – with serious repercussions for your current and future business opportunities, especially in the government, corporate and public sectors. No submission, no points! And any grant linked to the WSP will then also be suspended for the following year until the submission window opens again. In essence, you’re losing the benefits of two years of learning and development (L&D) investment, not just one!
- Lost grants: You’ll forfeit your mandatory grant, which is 20% of your SDL spend, to SARS – as well as any discretionary grants. This means losing invaluable opportunities to improve the skills of your own employees, and your business competitiveness suffers as a result.
- Tender rejections: Many tenders require a WSP submission as a pre-qualifying criterion. No WSP? No chance of winning tenders.
- No retrospective claims: Any financial benefits of the training undertaken are permanently lost to you, as you cannot account for them retroactively or recoup any of the levies in the following financial year. The doors are closed in terms of the BBBEE scorecard points you could have claimed.
The price of poor planning – a costly mistake
Picture this: A company spends over R900k on training and development during the year and starts with its BBBEE verification just a few weeks ahead of the WSP submission deadline. However, the business has no WSP in place for the coming year, no skills audits were done, nor is there any documented ATR for its training spend. This means that not only is all the company’s L&D investment for the current year lost in terms of its BBBEE points, but it will have to wait another year to submit its WSP.
The business then decides to register a rushed learnership programme rollout before its financial year-end to make up for the error in terms of its lost skills development spend; however, this provides no benefit for the current year, as the learnerships will not be implemented and completed before the February financial year-end – which means none of the spend will fall within the current financial year. Two levels on the company’s BBBEE scorecard are wiped out with the loss of 20 points.
There’s another big opportunity cost. By not planning ahead and having a WSP in place, the business also loses the opportunity to implement learnerships for its own employees, which would have meant the employees could improve their skills and productivity, while the business could have allocated the spend on their learnership training AND the salaries of its employed learners toward the skills development spend!
Overall, the lack of planning and knee-jerk reaction to rectify it will cost the business three times more in L&D spend than necessary.
The human resources and financial directors will find themselves in a tough spot accounting to their board for the gross oversight and lack of planning.
More than compliance – it’s a competitive edge
A WSP–ATR submission isn’t just about ticking boxes for BBBEE compliance. When done right, it’s a powerful strategic tool that helps businesses build a skilled workforce, gain competitive advantage and drive economic transformation.
It’s time to ditch the last-minute scramble and start using WSPs to fuel business growth, create jobs and develop real, in-demand skills.
Anton Visser
Chief Operations Officer
