South Africa’s labour market is becoming more diverse, with growing numbers of people working outside the traditional full-time employment model. This shift raises an important question: how can all parties gain greater protection and certainty without undermining the employment models that are creating new ways to access and provide work?
Statistics cited by IWG show that part-time employment grew by 50,000 jobs in the third quarter of 2025, reaching 1.144 million. Alongside this, businesses are increasingly turning to contract, temporary, and contingent talent to access specialised skills, respond to fluctuating demand and resource specific projects.
This makes the Department of Employment and Labour’s Draft Employment Laws Amendment Bill particularly relevant. While public discussion has focused largely on domestic workers and household employers, the proposed changes look more broadly at South Africa’s evolving labour market. They are aimed at strengthening protections for those working outside of traditional employment models – employers and employees alike – without removing the flexibility that makes these models valuable.
The important distinction is that greater protection does not necessarily have to come at the expense of adaptability. Proposed requirements relating to availability periods, working hours, reasonable notice, and compensation when work is cancelled at short notice point towards greater clarity around flexible employment, rather than its removal.
This clarity stands to benefit employers as much as workers. A workforce is only genuinely flexible when both sides understand the parameters within which it operates. For workers, greater predictability can make it easier to plan income, family responsibilities, and career development. For employers, clearer expectations can support more accurate workforce planning, improve availability, and reduce the operational uncertainty that can arise from informal arrangements.
This matters because contingent talent is no longer confined to traditional temporary roles. Professional contractors are supporting technology implementations, transformation programmes, finance, administration, customer experience, supply chain, and project management. For businesses, the question is therefore not simply whether to employ people permanently or temporarily, but how a blended workforce can work together effectively.
A well-structured workforce can give organisations a stable permanent core while providing access to specialist skills when demand changes. Getting this balance right requires a more sophisticated approach to workforce planning, including a clear understanding of which capabilities should remain permanent, which can be accessed non-traditionally, and which employment model best serves each requirement.
This is where experienced staffing partners have an increasingly important role to play. The value of a specialist partner is not limited to sourcing talent. It lies in understanding the interplay between labour legislation, workforce economics, and the practical realities of deploying people across different roles, locations, and project cycles.
As regulation develops, this expertise will become ever more important. Organisations will need to build workforce models that are commercially responsive while providing transparent and responsible employment arrangements. Specialist staffing providers such as Quest Staffing Solutions, are well placed to help employers make this transition because they sit at the intersection of business demand and the labour market itself.
South Africa’s flexible workforce is likely to become more diverse, not less. The opportunity is to ensure that the structures supporting it evolve alongside it, creating a labour market where fluidity is not synonymous with uncertainty, and where employers can access the skills they need while workers have greater clarity about the conditions under which they work.
Written by Carole Ratcliffe, Managing Executive at Quest by Adcorp