Last updated on 25 August 2026.
In brief
Most of the coverage of the 2026 COIDA amendments has focused on bigger penalties and a longer claims window. The change that will actually reshape how an employer handles an injury is quieter and easy to miss: a new statutory duty to rehabilitate injured workers and to plan their return to work, rather than simply pay a claim and move on. [1][2] The same requirement is arriving from a second direction, the draft of ISO 45001:2027, which for the first time expects a controlled return to work after injury or ill health. [3] For once, statute and standard are asking for exactly the same thing, and both ask for something a folder cannot produce: a live, dated record that a plan existed and was followed.
What actually changed in COIDA
On 23 January 2026 the President published Proclamation Notice 306 of 2026, bringing into operation key provisions of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Amendment Act 10 of 2022. The provisions took effect in phases across 23 January, 1 February and 1 April 2026. [1] The headline items are well reported: harsher administrative penalties for late or defective injury reporting, and an extension of the prescription period for a claim from twelve months to three years from the date of the accident. [1][2] A three-year window means an employer can face a claim long after the incident has faded from memory, which by itself is an argument for keeping incident records live rather than filed.
The less-reported change is the one that creates ongoing work. A new Chapter VIIA, built around section 70A, establishes a statutory rehabilitation and reintegration framework. It places positive obligations on the Compensation Fund and on the employer to provide facilities, services and benefits aimed at rehabilitating an injured employee and returning that person to work, or reducing the disability that results from the injury or disease. [1][2] The rehabilitation contemplated is not only medical. It expressly includes clinical rehabilitation and assistive devices, vocational rehabilitation to help the employee keep working, and social rehabilitation to help restore independence. [2] An employer that participates in these programmes may, at the Commissioner's discretion, receive a rebate on its assessment. [2] Regulations governing the return to work and rehabilitation programmes have been published in Government Gazette 54273. [1]
Two further changes matter for record-keeping. Post-traumatic stress disorder is now formally recognised as an occupational disease, and injuries sustained during work-related training and during employer-provided commuting now fall within COIDA's scope. [1] The period to object or appeal a decision of the Commissioner extends from 180 days to twelve months, and employers must keep a register of employees and their earnings for at least five years or risk a penalty. [2]
What replaced the criminal offence
The phrase "harsher administrative penalties" above understates a change of kind, not only of degree. For the specified sections, non-compliance with COIDA no longer attracts criminal prosecution at all. It attracts an administrative penalty. [4][5] Bowmans places this in the tranche that commenced on 1 April 2026, describing it plainly as an administrative penalty system introduced to replace criminal offences. [5] Webber Wentzel reaches the same conclusion and adds that the 1 April sections are the ones dealing with assessment payment deadlines, interest calculations and penalty enforcement mechanisms. [4]
The practical difference is who does the arithmetic. A prosecution requires a charge, a court and proof beyond reasonable doubt. An administrative penalty is calculated by the Commissioner and levied. Two of the formulas are worth stating exactly:
- Late accident reporting. A failure to report an accident within seven days attracts a penalty equal to the full compensation payable on that claim, plus interest running from the date of the accident. [4] CMS independently records the same formula, describing a penalty equal to the full amount of compensation payable plus interest from the date of the accident where the employer does not report in the prescribed manner within seven days. [2] Note that the interest runs from the accident, not from the discovery of the failure, so delay compounds the exposure by itself.
- Record-keeping failure. Records must be retained for five years and produced on demand. A failure attracts a penalty of up to ten percent of the actual or estimated annual assessment. [4][2] Bowmans frames the same duty as maintaining proper earnings and employment records, manual or electronic, for five years. [5]
Two further penalties in the same tranche are easy to miss. A failure to pay the first three months of temporary disablement compensation attracts a penalty of double that three-month amount plus interest, and a failure to provide required conveyance attracts a penalty equal to the full conveyance cost. [4]
The inspectorate nobody has met yet
The amendments also create something South African employers have not dealt with before under this Act: a COIDA inspectorate. Chapter XA allows the Commissioner to appoint inspectors to monitor and enforce compliance, conduct inspections and investigate complaints. [4] Their powers are wide. An inspector may enter a workplace, require disclosure under oath, inspect and copy records, remove documents or machinery, and question persons. Employers must co-operate and answer truthfully, and answers may not be used in criminal proceedings except in a prosecution for perjury. [4]
Where an inspector finds non-compliance, the output is a compliance order specifying the contraventions, the corrective steps, the timeframes and the maximum fines. If the employer does not comply with the order, the Commissioner may apply to the Labour Court to have it made an order of court. [4][5]
This matters for a reason that goes beyond COIDA itself. Until now, a South African employer's mental model of an inspection has been the Department of Employment and Labour inspector arriving under the OHS Act. The Compensation Fund was, in practice, a paperwork relationship conducted by post and portal. That is no longer a safe assumption, and the documents an inspector can demand are the ordinary ones: the injury register, the reporting dates, and five years of earnings and employment records.
The same duty, arriving from ISO 45001
An employer working towards or certified to ISO 45001 will meet this expectation a second time. The Draft International Standard for ISO 45001:2027, out for its ballot until 08 September 2026, introduces a new requirement for a controlled return to work following injury or ill health, so that reintegration is planned rather than left to chance. [3] It is one of the more concrete new duties in a revision that certification bodies otherwise describe as moderate. The point of the overlap is simple: the statute now requires rehabilitation, and the standard now requires a planned return to work. An organisation that builds one process satisfies both, and an organisation that builds neither is exposed on two fronts at once.
What a compliant employer can actually show
Neither the Act nor the draft standard is satisfied by a policy that says the right things. Both turn on evidence that a specific injured person was managed through a specific plan. In practice that means a dated record of the injury and its reporting inside the seven-day window, a documented rehabilitation or return-to-work plan for that worker with review points, and proof that the plan was followed to a defined outcome, whether that is full return, adjusted duties or a recorded reason it was not possible. Because the prescription window is now three years and the register must be kept for five, that record has to survive well beyond the month of the incident. This is ordinary, unglamorous administration, and it is precisely the kind that goes missing when it lives in an inbox.
GRC Shop view
This is guidance and interpretation, kept separate from the sourced facts above.
We read the rehabilitation duty as the clearest sign yet of where South African occupational health is heading: away from proving that an injury was paid for, and towards proving that an injured person was managed. That is a harder thing to evidence, and it is exactly the kind of thing a live compliance record exists to hold. An injury on duty is not a single event to be closed; under the amended Act it opens a plan that runs for weeks or months and must be shown to have been followed.
Our practical suggestion is modest. Do not wait for a claim or an audit to discover whether you can produce this. Set up, now, a simple standing process: every injury on duty generates a dated record, a return-to-work plan with named steps and review dates, and a closing outcome, all kept where they can be retrieved three years later. An employer who does this satisfies the new COIDA duty, prepares for the ISO 45001:2027 return-to-work requirement in advance, and, not incidentally, treats an injured worker better. That is the whole argument for a managed compliance platform in one example: the evidence is already there when the Commissioner, the auditor or the worker's representative asks for it.
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Abbreviations
- COIDA: Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act
- DIS: Draft International Standard
- HR: Human Resources
- ISO: International Organization for Standardization
- OHS: Occupational Health and Safety
- PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder
- SME: small and medium enterprise
References
The sources below are external links to third-party websites. We link only to publicly accessible pages and check periodically that the links still work.
[1] Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, "COIDA Amendments now in force: A new era for workplace injury compensation in South Africa", 12 Mar 2026. https://www.cliffedekkerhofmeyr.com/en/news/publications/2026/South-Africa/Employment-Law/employment-law-alert-12-march-2026-coida-amendments-now-in-force-a-new-era-for-workplace-injury-compensation-in-south-africa
[2] CMS, "From Penalties to Rehabilitation: Understanding the 2026 COIDA Amendments and Its Impact on Workplace Risk", 13 Feb 2026. https://cms.law/en/zaf/legal-updates/from-penalties-to-rehabilitation-understanding-the-2026-coida-amendments-and-its-impact-on-workplace-risk
[3] DNV, "Draft Version of ISO 45001:2027 Released", 03 Jul 2026. https://www.dnv.com/news/2026/draft-version-of-iso-45001-released/
[4] Webber Wentzel (Kate Collier and Kalene Watson), "COIDA amendments take effect: What employers need to know", 27 Jan 2026. https://www.webberwentzel.com/News/Pages/coida-amendments-take-effect-what-employers-need-to-know.aspx
[5] Bowmans (Mendel Sass and AmandlakaThixo Magubane), "South Africa: The COIDA, Key amendments come into effect", 30 Jan 2026. https://bowmanslaw.com/insights/south-africa-the-coida-key-amendments-come-into-effect/