Every year South African employers that pay the skills development levy can claim back part of it as a mandatory grant, provided they submit a Workplace Skills Plan (WSP) and an Annual Training Report (ATR) to their Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) on time. For many HR teams the submission becomes a scramble in April. It does not have to be.
The basics
- The levy. Employers with an annual payroll above R500 000 pay a skills development levy of 1% of payroll to SARS, which funds the SETAs and the National Skills Fund.
- The mandatory grant. If your WSP and ATR are accepted, your SETA pays back a portion of the levy (currently 20% of the levy paid) as a mandatory grant.
- The deadline. Submissions are due by 30 April each year for the plan and report period. Late submissions generally lose the grant for that year, and extensions are rare.
The WSP looks forward: the training you plan for the coming year and the skills your organisation needs. The ATR looks back: the training you actually delivered in the previous year, and to whom.
Who does the work
The submission is prepared by a registered Skills Development Facilitator (SDF), who may be an employee or an external consultant. Larger employers are expected to consult employees on the plan, usually through a training or skills committee, and the submission includes evidence of that consultation and the required sign-offs.
What the SETA wants to see
Although each SETA's online system looks a little different, they ask for similar information:
- Organisational profile. Number of employees by occupation, race, gender, disability and age.
- Occupations and skills gaps. Occupations are classified using the Organising Framework for Occupations (OFO), and you identify scarce and critical skills.
- Planned training. Learning interventions per occupation, including learnerships, skills programmes, short courses and bursaries.
- Training delivered. For the ATR, who attended which interventions, with dates and costs.
- Supporting evidence. Attendance registers, certificates and proof of payment may be requested at verification.
Common reasons submissions are rejected
- Headcount figures that do not match payroll or employment equity reports.
- Training reported in the ATR that cannot be backed by attendance registers or certificates.
- Missing consultation evidence or signatures.
- Wrong OFO codes, or occupations that do not match job titles.
- Waiting until the last week, when SETA systems are under heavy load.
Make next year's submission easy
The best time to prepare an ATR is while training is happening:
- Keep one training register for the whole organisation, updated after every course, with employee ID, OFO code, intervention, dates, provider and cost.
- File evidence immediately. Ask every training provider for signed attendance registers and certificates at the end of each course.
- Run a proper training needs analysis in the second half of the year so the WSP reflects real skills gaps rather than last year's list.
- Link training to the employment equity plan, so that development supports your transformation targets.
- Book discretionary grant windows in your calendar. Many SETAs open discretionary funding for learnerships, bursaries and skills programmes, and employers with clean WSP and ATR records are better placed to apply.
How Afriskora supports skills development
Every Afriskora course ends with an attendance register and an Afriskora Certificate of Completion, issued in a format that is easy to file for your ATR. Our Training Needs Analysis course helps HR teams build a defensible WSP, and we can deliver any course in-house so that whole teams are trained and recorded together.
This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Check current levy, grant and deadline rules with your SETA.