Human Resources and Industrial Relations Manager

The Human Resources and Industrial Relations Manager holds day to day ownership of the human resources function across VirtuHire's managed client accounts, with a key client account as the primary account. The key client account is an outbound sales contact centre of approximately 85 employees originating lending for United States based small and medium enterprises, operated from Cape Town on United States Eastern business hours.

The role exists because the volume and legal risk profile of the function has outgrown part time ownership. It is a hands on, high autonomy position. The successful candidate will run the substantial majority of matters end to end, including chairing disciplinary hearings, drawing on the HR Representative and external employment counsel for the highest exposure work.

The environment is a fast moving sales floor with a young workforce, a high volume of conduct, attendance and performance matters, and unforgiving procedural fairness requirements under South African labour law. The quality and defensibility of documentation is the single most important output of this role.

Reporting and Structure

• The role reports directly to the HR Representative.
• The HR Assistant reports into this role. The incumbent is responsible for allocating document dispatch, electronic signature coordination and minute taking, and for assessing on every matter whether the HR Assistant is conflicted and must be ring-fenced from that matter.
• The role works in close daily partnership with the Sales Director and the Head of Sales Enablement. Instructions from those stakeholders are routed through the HR Representative rather than actioned directly, so that the function retains a single line of accountability.
• The role liaises directly with external employment counsel, the designated independent external chairperson, the South African accounting partner and the United States based Financial Controller.

Key Responsibility Areas

Employee Relations and Discipline

• Own the disciplinary process end to end, from incident report through to final outcome, across misconduct, attendance, substance, dishonesty and conduct related matters.
• Assess whether conduct is chargeable and frame charges accurately, distinguishing impairment from consumption, and misconduct from incapacity. Ensure that uncharged conduct never appears in findings or reasoning.
• Draft notices to attend and statements of allegation, evidence bundle indexes, witness statement packs, chairperson's packs and initiator's briefs.
• Chair disciplinary hearings, run them properly on the record in accordance with Schedule 8 of the Labour Relations Act, and produce written outcomes with findings and reasons capable of surviving external review.
• Prepare and issue precautionary suspension notices, written warnings, final written warnings and termination instruments.
• Produce a consistency and comparator file note for every sanction, benchmarking the proposed outcome against all comparable matters before it is issued. Consistency is the dominant risk in this business and is treated as a mandatory step, not a formality.
• Review, correct and certify hearing transcripts, retaining the original automated file alongside the corrected version.
• Maintain the disciplinary register, including warning validity periods and expiry.

Grievances and Workplace Investigations

• Receive, acknowledge and classify grievances, including anonymous and confidential complaints, and determine the correct notification and escalation route in each case.
• Conduct workplace investigations, including harassment and discrimination matters under the Employment Equity Act and the 2022 Code of Good Practice on the Prevention and Elimination of Harassment.
• Obtain and document recording consent in compliance with RICA and POPIA, prepare interview scripts, conduct interviews and produce formal minutes for confirmation and signature.
• Screen every matter for conflict of interest and ring-fence conflicted parties, including within the HR team itself.
• Prepare terms of reference and briefing packs where an independent external chairperson is appointed.

Performance Management, Incapacity and Probation

• Run probation reviews, extensions and probation terminations, together with the associated notification instruments.
• Design, issue and monitor performance improvement plans on an incapacity footing, keeping poor work performance out of the misconduct framework.
• Investigate metric integrity issues using dialler and call recording data, including comparator analysis across the team before any finding of artificial inflation is put to an employee.
• Conduct return to work interviews and manage the pro-rating of performance standards for approved or certified absence.
• Maintain the sales performance standards schedule and keep targets consistent across every instrument that references them.

External Dispute Resolution

• Manage CCMA referrals from receipt through conciliation, con-arb and arbitration, including timelines, forms and bundles.
• Prepare bundles, witness schedules and opening statements, and represent the company at conciliation.
• Assess settlement exposure realistically and negotiate within a mandate agreed in advance.
• Prepare case briefs for external counsel and manage that relationship on high exposure matters.
• Draft and manage mutual separation agreements, with particular attention to voluntariness and the evidential record surrounding signature.

Employment Documentation and Onboarding

• Draft and maintain offer letters, employment agreements, annexures, commission schedules, restraints of trade and variations to terms.
• Run cross-document consistency checks so that clause cross-references, targets and commission mechanics agree across the whole signing pack.
• Manage the electronic signature workflow, including sequential signing order, merge fields, envelope tracking and the retention of executed originals.
• Coordinate background verification and indemnity documentation for new starters.
• Run onboarding and induction, and manage offboarding including system access revocation, company property recovery, certificates of service and exit documentation.

Policy Development, Maintenance and Rollout

• Draft, review and maintain the full policy suite in house style, ensuring plain language that a sales floor will actually understand.
• Identify gaps in the framework and build the missing instruments.
• Ensure that every policy is properly anchored, whether through the employment agreement or a separate signed undertaking, so that it is contractually enforceable rather than merely published.
• Manage rollout, including obtaining fresh signature where terms change materially, and maintain an auditable record of acknowledgements.

Payroll, Leave and Statutory Administration

• Own the monthly payroll cycle end to end on SimplePay for approximately 85 employees, covering basic salary, commission, unpaid leave and lawful deductions.
• Audit leave coding before payroll cut-off and reconcile the leave system against source records.
• Calculate termination pay accurately, including notice, accrued leave under section 40 of the BCEA, and any deductions within the section 34 ceiling.
• Prepare and submit EMP201 returns, the EMP501 reconciliation and IRP5 certificates, and manage UI-19 submissions.
• Coordinate payroll funding requirements with the United States finance function, including foreign exchange timing and appropriate buffers.
• Act as first line for payroll queries and maintain a complete audit trail for every adjustment.

Records, Data Protection and Compliance

• Maintain complete and defensible personnel files for every employee.
• Ensure compliance with POPIA, including lawful processing, retention, cross-border transfer requirements and operator agreements where third parties access employee personal information.
• Manage litigation holds on recordings and correspondence where a matter is live or reasonably anticipated.
• Ensure compliance with the BCEA on hours, leave, records and particulars of employment, and with applicable Occupational Health and Safety Act obligations.

Advisory, Reporting and Stakeholder Management

• Advise line management on conduct, performance and termination risk before action is taken rather than after.
• Flag legal and procedural risk clearly and once, then execute.
• Report on headcount, attrition, absence, disciplinary volumes and open matters.
• Coach team leaders and managers on how to document performance and conduct issues correctly at the point they arise.

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• A relevant tertiary qualification in Human Resources, Industrial Relations, Labour Law or a cognate field.
• A minimum of three years of hands on generalist human resources experience, a substantial portion of which must be industrial relations.
• Demonstrable experience chairing or initiating disciplinary hearings. Candidates whose exposure is limited to administering or minuting hearings will not meet this requirement.
• Applied working knowledge of the Labour Relations Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the Employment Equity Act, POPIA and Schedule 8 of the Code of Good Practice on Dismissal.
• Experience running or closely supporting a full payroll cycle, preferably on SimplePay.
• Strong written English. This role produces instruments that are read by commissioners, attorneys and employees under stress.
• Availability to work from the Cape Town CBD office during the stated hours.
• A clear criminal and credit record, subject to background verification.

Advantageous

• Contact centre, business process outsourcing or high volume sales floor experience.
• Prior CCMA appearances at conciliation or arbitration.
• Experience of a workforce operating on offshore client hours.
• Familiarity with SimplePay, ZohoSign, and other related software stacks.
• Exposure to multi-entity, outsourced or managed employment structures.

Competencies and Personal Attributes

• Procedural discipline. Willing to do the process properly when it would be faster and easier not to.
• Sound judgement under pressure, and the confidence to tell a director that a decision is not defensible.
• Comfortable with conflict and with distressed people, without absorbing either.
• Meticulous drafting, with genuine attention to dates, figures, names and cross-references.
• Absolute discretion. The role holds the most sensitive information in the business.
• Organised and self-directed across a heavy concurrent caseload.
• Emotional neutrality. The role adjudicates on colleagues and must be seen by both sides to be fair.

Measures of Success

• Every disciplinary outcome supported by a complete, consistent and defensible record.
• No matter lost at the CCMA on procedural fairness grounds.
• Payroll accurate and on time every cycle, with statutory submissions filed on or before the due date.
• Policy suite current, signed, anchored and enforceable.
• Open matters closed within agreed turnaround times.
• Measurable improvement in how line managers document conduct and performance issues.

Systems and Tools

• SimplePay (payroll and leave), ZohoSign (document execution), Google Workspace, Claude/Gemini (or other AI software basic proficiency) and general usage and understanding of CRMs. Training will be provided on client specific systems.

Terms and Conditions

• Permanent and full time, subject to a three month probationary period.
• Monday to Friday, 10:00 to 19:00 SAST, aligned to the primary client's operating hours. Reasonable flexibility is required around hearings, payroll cut-off and statutory deadlines.
• Office based - Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town, 8000.
• Remuneration is negotiable and will be benchmarked to demonstrated capability and experience rather than to a fixed band.