In order to maintain excellence in our operations and to enable implementation of future strategies, SARS requires a highly skilled and capacitated workforce. We want our employees to be highly skilled at addressing and resolving taxpayer and trader queries, and disciplined in maintaining organisational processes and governance. We will build and maintain a work environment that supports employee innovation, growth and development, by providing employees with the skills and tools they need to be productive.

SARS will:

• Provide comprehensive human capital management services in pursuance of SARS’ strategic objectives.
• Drive a values-based culture in pursuit of service excellence, cost efficiency and integrity.
• Facilitate skills development and retraining to better align our people to the demands of the new operating model.
• Strengthen the SARS employee value proposition to attract and retain top talent.
• Implement a new model for the SARS Tax, Customs & Excise Institute to provide quality specialised training to our employees and a high-end research capability.
• Develop and implement a new approach to workforce, capacity and vacancy planning to build adequate staff capacity and capability for the organisation.
• Integrate the recruitment process with planning, capacity and talent management processes to ensure that we attract the right skills and people into the organisation, whilst sustaining increased effectiveness and productivity as envisaged in the new operating model.
• Provide employees with the right skills and tools needed to perform at their peak, and to increase productivity.
• Continue with the SARS graduate recruitment programme to create a talent pool and pipeline for the organisation.
• Implement an integrated Talent Management plan that identifies, recognises and rewards talent, accelerates high performers, and builds potential successors for key leadership and critical roles.
• Transition the current performance management system to more closely align with the Balanced Scorecard approach.
• Implement the SARS Language Policy to improve service to taxpayers.

Staff profile

For more information on our staff profile and some statistics, see our latest SARS Annual Report.