Talk to anyone on the street and the word is “business is tough”, stores are closing and the property value is estimated to drop by 20% in the next two years.[1] Retrenchments, strikes, UIF TERS and POPI are all terms businesses have had to come to terms with while making peace with lockdown regulations. Ask our clients and they are bound to tell you how ProFile has revolutionised the way they are doing business during this pandemic.
“SEESA ProFile was developed with the small business owner in mind but with big business support. The software was developed over years of consultation with thousands of clients in order to address their basic needs in terms of Labour, BEE, Skills Training and now also Payroll and Time and Attendance. Providing our clients with ProFile at no additional costs, we truly now do put them in a position to manage their business on any platform at any time from anywhere. There is no other software like this in SA with onsite legal support, all with the aim of helping business owners do what they do best, focusing on growing their business.” – Ewert Kleynhans, Director of Marketing at SEESA
ProFile Chat
With ProFile Chat, clients are able to speak to their dedicated legal advisors live and in real-time. From the start of lockdown, SEESA has had 5469 conversations with over 2150 clients. We are able to send all documents and attachments via the Chat, with a complete chat history which is easily accessible. With ProFile Chat, our legal advisors were able to remotely assist clients with various queries, ranging from:
- Following correct retrenchment procedure;
- Supply chain regulations and what the Consumer Protection Act says about price increases;
- COVID-19 and what the OHS requirements are in the workplace; and
- TERS and other relief fund applications.
Advice was and remains, just a keystroke away with ProFile Chat.
ProFile Payroll
Through ProFile, it was possible for 2539 clients to effortlessly apply for leave 64749 times. ProFile ensured that those employees who had to take annual leave or unpaid leave during lockdown were able to view and apply for leave from wherever they were based. This meant that the correct balances pulled through to their payslips during this period.
Many of our clients applied for TERS benefits during this period. Through ProFile, our clients knew exactly which benefits to apply for and how to reflect these on the payslips of their employees, in terms of the various incentives and concessions.
ProFile Misconduct
Through ProFile, it was possible for 2450 clients to issue 71738 various misconduct warnings. Managers were able to view misconduct history from the comfort of their home which meant that even though on-site assistance was not possible due to lockdown restrictions, they could rest assured that with ProFile’s easy-to-use on-screen guidance system, the correct disciplinary action was taken.
With ProFile’s misconduct software, your chances of winning at the CCMA improves with 50% as this cutting edge software guides you through the requirements of procedural fairness. Where our clients proceeded with disciplinary hearings, SEESA was just a chat away to book those hearings with one of our labour experts on ProFile.
ProFile Work From Home
SEESA as well as all our clients soon realised the challenge that arose with employees working from home. Not only is it difficult to measure employee productivity, it’s even more difficult for managers to identify the bottlenecks in production time without being on the same premises as the employees. ProFile Work From Home was developed to ease these frustrations. With accurate live tracking of keystrokes and mouse clicks, your employees clock in and out and ProFile Work From Home does the rest. Managers now have access to real-time tracking and reporting software to identify any issues in employee productivity before it affects overall production.
COVID-19 OHS in the Workplace
Lockdown has been hard, but if you speak to our clients, they will tell you that the most challenging part of lockdown was reopening their business. The amount of red tape and government gazettes were enough to make anyone lose hope. SEESA’s OHS & Skills Training department compiled an easy to follow, step-by-step guide which clients could easily access from the OHS-COVID-19 resources link on the ProFile Dashboard.
These resources included a webinar on how to complete a basic COVID-19 Health Risk Assessment as well as all the necessary templates needed from visitor screening forms to PPE policies and awareness posters.
ProFile Uptake
Change may be the only constant but it is also the hardest constant, especially for a business that does not have the time to change the way they have been doing things for the longest time. SEESA understands the growing pains involved in the changing processes that take place within a business that is already functioning on intricate and established systems. This is why ProFile aims to make the change an easy one so that once your business is on ProFile, you will see why ProFile makes it possible for your business to Work Smarter, not Harder.
If we look at fig.1 below it is evident that the need for a web-based HR & IR management system has never been more in demand. ProFile’s total monthly web logins grew from 109 in March to over 3000 in June 2020, this indicates a growth percentage of 2652%. The total new logins per month grew from 41 in March, to 802 in June which indicates a growth percentage of 1856%. We foresee these numbers growing exponentially over the next few months as we introduce even more new and exciting developments, including a new free version of ProFile, called ProFile Lite, as well as a refreshed Employee page and Dashboard that will not only look great but work great!
The Why behind ProFile
At SEESA, we believe that small businesses also deserve to have the tools that big corporations have – for free, just for being a SEESA client. We want all our clients to take their businesses to the next level – with ProFile. Now, more than ever, businesses are going to need to focus on growth over the next few months to recover from the devastating impact of the lockdown period. Our software solutions are ready to support you as you adapt to the new normal.
With over 20 years of experience in servicing the needs of our clients, we realised there was a huge gap in helping businesses streamline their operations online. This led to the decision to start with the development of ProFile Desktop in 2015. From this platform, we could streamline how we service our clients and how clients manage their day-to-day HR & IR administration.
In its simplest form, ProFile was a way in which clients could digitally store their HR & IR documents for safekeeping and easy access. Back then, manual processes were still the trusted way in which all businesses worked. Fast forward to the year 2020 and remote work and digital automation is imperative for the future survival of all businesses.
At SEESA, any new features to ProFile, are always tested and implemented internally first, allowing us to troubleshoot and identify where employees are apprehensive towards the software so that we can make it as easy as possible for our clients.
With meticulous attention to troubleshooting, requirement elicitation, usability tests, and client requests, ProFile has progressed into a comprehensive web-based HR solution. This not only makes it possible for SEESA to improve its communication, accuracy, and turnaround time to its clients but allows your business to have instant access to a dedicated professional Legal Advisor and full control over your day to day HR & IR responsibilities.
SEESA will continue developing ProFile into a consolidated platform that will manage employee productivity, leave, misconduct, reporting, training, and payroll all on one easy to understand and easy to access platform. This will allow our clients to focus on what they do best – growing their businesses.
How ProFile has revolutionised the way SEESA operates during the pandemic
Internally, ProFile has allowed SEESA to move away from a time, paper and labour intensive way of doing business to a streamlined cloud-based way of seamlessly working in an eco-system. SEESA has close to 1000 employees in our 19 branches nationwide. All our employees were using an Excel sheet to apply for leave and then printing these applications for their managers to sign. They then had to scan these applications and submit them to our payroll department manually.
We now use ProFile to apply for leave and the entire process is paperless as employees and managers can now add a digital signature to the application. It has helped us save on printing costs, but more importantly it has freed up an incredible amount of time, for our managers, employees and payroll department.
ProFile further allows us to render accurate and responsive service to our clients on a platform that encourages effective communication between us and our clients. This has removed the need for files and files of paper as well as storage space and has taken away the risk of storing client information in this manner. Tasks that previously took hours to complete are now able to be done in half the time. Our platforms have allowed us to continue rendering professional service to our clients even though our country went into lockdown, this is something that would not previously have been possible.
The adjustment to working from home was a smooth one for SEESA. We were able to have internal team conversations via ProFile Chat as well as track our productivity with ProFile Work From Home. Our employees logged a total of 10020 sessions for the month of June alone which is a clear indication that our employees have embraced their new normal. The way the world does business is changing and as your preferred service provider, we are making sure that we stay ahead of these changes.
SEESA has always relied heavily on providing on-site services, as we understand the importance of face-to-face relations with our clients. Amidst lockdown, however, we had to be innovative in how we render services to our clients. Thanks to ProFile Chat, we could maintain our standard of professional legal advice while all our legal advisors operated from the comfort of their own homes. Time is money and ProFile has saved us lots of it.
SEESA manages the needs of over 36 000 clients nationwide, across multiple industries, for clients with anywhere between 5 and 5000 employees. It is our vision to be South Africa’s preferred business solutions provider. We continue to strive towards this goal of providing service excellence in an ethical and responsible manner so that each and every one of our clients receive the personalised and professional service that they are entitled to as a client of SEESA.
Testimonials
Don’t just take our word for it, read the testimonies below:
“Needless to say I have always urged my new employees to join SEESA and CEO – so that they have the ultimate tool/s in their toolbox to stay ahead of all of their HR needs (along with keeping the companies’ requirements up to date with UIF as well as the Compensation Commissioner).” – Christopher Peppas
Chef de Cuisine Roman’s Villa – Fynbos Deck
“Hierdie sisteem is amazing! Hoekom het julle dit nie al lankal gedoen nie?!” – Santy Carelse- Paramedics on Call
“WOW! ProFile is going to make my life a whole lot easier!” –Dillan Botha – LMTK Electrical Warehouse
“Sjoe, dit is so ‘n user friendly sisteem om te gebruik!” – Thea Zwankhuizen – Zwank Con Industrial Renovations
“SEESA has upped their game. This has made sharing information more efficient.” – Hloni of Phumatra Transport Services
“We like the leave application section and will be using this going forward.” – CB Filling Station CC t/a Paul Kruger Filling Station
“Enjoying the Skills Share, Happy that we do not need to send info via e-mails anymore.” – Fibricon CC
“Ons is regtig beindruk met ProFile web veral dat dit nou maklik is om alle dokumente op een plek te share en dat dit daar bly indien mens dit weer benodig.” – Maryke van CGIS Refrigeration Group #754 ST
“ProFile is ‘n wonderlike sisteem. Dit verminder papier werk en ek weet ook dat my dokumentasie nie sal weg raak solank dit op ProFile is nie.” – Marie van World watch
“Ek vind ProFile baie behulpsaam. Ons komunikeer maklik op chat en ek maak gebruik van die dokumente wat julle vir ons share. Ons werkers se kontrakte word ook gestoor op ProFile wat beteken ek het toegang al werk ek van die huis. Die labour library is ook van hulp. ProFile is beslis `n aanwins.” – Marieta van Aqua Instrumenta
About the Author: Carli
Erasmus is the Professional Multimedia Designer at SEESA. She holds a
bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Design from Pearson Institute and a Business
Systems Analysis qualification from UCT.
[1] https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/growthpoint-warns-of-up-to-20-decline-in-sa-property-values/