Employer's Liability
Employer's liability cover protects the business when an employee is injured or becomes ill in the course of their work. In South Africa, statutory COIDA cover handles the basics. Employer's liability fills the gaps and handles the claims COIDA can't.
We structure employer's liability alongside group life, disability, and occupational benefits so the business and the employees are both protected when something goes wrong at work.
Cover
What this typically covers
Bodily injury
An employee is hurt or killed at work and the claim goes past what the Compensation Fund pays. This is the part that lands on the business rather than on the state.
Injury or death of employees in the course of employment, beyond COIDA statutory limits.
Occupational disease
Damage that arrives slowly: hearing gone after years on a plant floor, a back that gave out, lungs that did. It is harder to date than an accident, and the date is usually what gets argued about.
Illness arising from work conditions, from hearing loss to chronic back injury to occupational asthma.
Legal costs
Defending the claim. Employer liability matters are fought hard and stay expensive even where the employee does not win.
Defence costs for employer-liability claims, often substantial even where the underlying claim fails.
COIDA gap cover
The Compensation Fund pays a formula. A court awards what it decides the loss was. This clause is the space between those two numbers.
The gap between COIDA payouts and what courts award in common-law damages claims.
Contract workers
The people on your site who are not on your payroll. When the labour broker's cover does not answer, the claim tends to arrive at the business that had them on site.
Labour brokers' employees, contractors, and sub-contractors where their cover doesn't respond.
Premises & operations
Where the injury happens does not have to be your building. A client's site, a delivery, a work trip: still your employee, still your exposure.
Injuries on company premises, at client sites, or during work-related travel.
Limits
What this will not cover
What COIDA already covers
The statutory claim runs through the Compensation Fund and this policy does not duplicate it. Report the injury there first; cover here answers to what is left.
Employees you never declared
Premiums are set on your wage roll and your trade. Undeclared staff, undeclared contractors, or work outside the occupation described all put a claim at risk.
Safety you were told to fix
An inspector's notice, a known unguarded machine, a written warning from your own safety officer. Where a hazard was identified and left alone, the insurer will rely on it and so will the plaintiff.
Injuries away from work
The commute is generally not in the course of employment, and neither is the social event afterwards. The line is not always obvious, which is why the incident report matters.
Claim
When you claim
The statutory claim goes to the Compensation Fund
An injury on duty is reported under COIDA first, and that is the employee's route to medical costs and compensation. Get the incident report and the medical evidence in while the facts are still fresh.
This policy answers what COIDA leaves behind
COIDA bars most common-law claims against the employer, so the exposure that remains sits at the edges: contractors and casual workers who are not covered employees, claims falling outside the Act, and the difference between what the Fund pays and what was lost.
Records decide it
Attendance registers, the incident report, induction and training records, the safety file. An employer with paperwork has a defence; an employer reconstructing it afterwards usually does not.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
COIDA pays a formula and bars most common-law claims against the employer, which covers a great deal but not everything. What is left is the contractor who was never a covered employee, the claim that falls outside the Act, and the gap between the Fund's calculation and what was lost.
It can, and it is worth arranging deliberately rather than assuming. When the broker's own cover does not respond, the claim tends to arrive at the business whose site they were working on.
Medical costs and a compensation calculation based on earnings and degree of disablement. It is a formula applied consistently, and it is not the exercise a court does when it assesses what a person actually lost.
The incident report, medical evidence, attendance records, induction and training records, and the safety file. An employer with the paperwork has a defence, and none of it can be assembled convincingly after the fact.