03/11/2025
SARS ending work from home in South Africa
Public service union, the PSA, has confirmed SARS commissioner Edward Kieswetter’s withdrawal of the tax service’s work-from-home initiative, insisting that employees return to the office.
Sources alerted BusinessTech to the withdrawal in early October, with the Public Servants Association of South Africa (PSA) confirming the move.
According to the PSA, while SARS did not have an official work-from-home policy, the initiative was allowed by Kieswetter in terms of the service’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP).
The EVP is an umbrella of benefits and values that are initiated and offered to employees by the SARS commissioner in exchange for their skills, capabilities and experience.
According to SARS, the EVP aims to provide a “flexible, agile, and meaningful value proposition” by offering a conducive working environment and continuous career development.
This, in turn, enables SARS to attract and retain the best talent while “aligning the EVP to the changing world of work and employee expectations”.
The PSA noted that, among the initiatives offered, the SARS commissioner gave employees the opportunity to work from home.
This initiative was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent years of lockdown, and continued after the pandemic.
However, Kieswetter has now withdrawn this initiative, with communication seen by BusinessTech pointing to workers having to return to the office full-time from 1 January 2026.
The PSA stressed that it was communicated that this arrangement could be withdrawn at any time; thus, no formal dispute has been raised.
Nevertheless, affected employees are not happy with the withdrawal. As a result, the PSA said it has registered an item at a National Consultative Forum (NCF) to discuss the matter.
A key issue it wants to address is that “it remains unclear how EVP elements are structured and integrated,” it said.
The PSA said it requested that SARS make a presentation on the EVP, covering the following areas:
Integration of benefits under the EVP umbrella
Anticipated timelines or implementation phases
Alignment of the EVP with reward, recognition, and retention strategies
Alignment with SARS’ broader reward and retention strategies.
“A meeting of the NCF took place on 27 October 2025, and the employer failed to make the presentation,” it said.
“The PSA has registered the Union’s dissatisfaction with the failure by SARS to make a presentation on the EVP, and the PSA anticipates a presentation in the next NCF.”
BusinessTech asked SARS for comment about the withdrawal of the work-from-home initiative and to confirm timelines, possible exemptions and other standing policies, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
In its annual report, published on 31 October, the group said it “remains committed to finding the best balance between employee and taxpayer/trader experience.”
It added that it is “refining its EVP” to prioritise a conducive working environment and continuous career development.
SARS’ Employee Value Proposition (2024/25)
Ending work from home in South Africa
SARS is not unique in terminating work-from-home initiatives in South Africa, as many companies have started drawing workers back to the office.
While the Covid-19 pandemic rooted work-from-home into the largely corporate work culture, the shift did not end up as permanent as most had expected.
Employers, seeing the benefit of closer in-person collaboration and needing to better manage productivity and align working hours, have steadily been breaking down the trend.
Various big-name corporates in the banking, insurance and administration space gradually shifted from work-from-home to hybrid-work structures. This saw employees return to the office for a couple of days a week.
This also evolved over time from a couple of days a week to almost a full week back at the office. Some eventually moved back to full-time office work.
According to legal experts, ending work-from-home policies isn’t necessarily illegal or in contravention of labour laws, but this comes with several caveats.
Notably, there is no specific provision for remote work in South Africa’s labour laws, including the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) and the Labour Relations Act (LRA).
Instead, provisions for remote work, hybrid work and virtual work are determined when negotiating and signing contracts.
If employers have negotiated working conditions that facilitate remote or hybrid work, they cannot unilaterally change these without renegotiating with employees.
Additionally, South Africa has standing rulings from the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and the Labour Court that require that ending such policies needs to be reasonable.
This means return-to-office orders can’t be given without any substantiated or pressing reason for the termination of the remote work agreement.
For most employers, the warning is that any change to work structure or policy requires ongoing engagement.
