Norton Rose Fulbright launches award-winning ContractorCheck in South Africa

A useful tool to characterise working relationships

ContractorCheck gives organisations a quick insight into the law and an early risk indication as to whether or not they need legal advice, without incurring legal costs.  

Across the globe, organisations use human resources under different contract types to perform business functions. Workers are typically hired as employees or engaged as independent contractors.  ContractorCheck is an innovative tool designed to help organisations determine whether they could unwittingly face serious tax and legal implications by incorrectly classifying workers as independent contractors, when they should be employees. 

This smart identification tool has been tailored to apply the key characterisation indicators across multiple jurisdictions. The tool has already been launched in Australia, Germany, Canada and the UK and has won a Legal Innovation Award. South Africa is the fifth jurisdiction to launch this service.

Whether a worker is a contractor or an employee remains a vexed question in South Africa. Getting this wrong could mean that the workers are reinstated with back pay or compensated for up to 12 months’ remuneration. 

By completing this diagnostic, organisations will receive:

• an immediate screen result indicating level of risk; and
• a detailed email analysis identifying any areas of risk.

ContractorCheck is available at no cost to all organisations and interested parties and will be developed for additional regions in the coming months.

If you have any questions, please contact Jonathan Jones on +27 11 685 8914 or RSAcontractorcheck@nortonrosefulbright.com.