PayrollHero client Frontline Accounting liked what they saw on our blog from our visits to the White Cross Orphanage that they organized a trip to visit the kids themselves. Check out their video from their visit:
White Cross always needs visitors and donations. Reach out to us if you are interested in connecting.
Editors Note: Introducing Kieran Peppiatt, Head of Client Success at PayrollHero. He will be contributing to the PayrollHero blog from time to time.
So it might seem a bit peculiar to make my inaugural post to be about commuting! I actually plan to write about Client Success in the Philippines. However, if you live in the Philippines you’ll know it’s a pretty big problem. Traffic in Manila is some of the worst I have experienced. There are now over one billion cars on the planet and I am pretty sure they’re all here!
According to Time.com the average American’s commute to work is 25 ½ minutes, well the average commute in the Philippines is around 2 hours. The Philippine’s is ranked 9th worst for traffic in the world, and although that’s better than their airport rating it’s still not a ranking to be proud of.
Manila’s rush hour, like any, is a total misnomer. In fact the Philippine government estimates that Manila’s traffic costs the country around $3 billion per year. This is from wasted fuel, break downs, road works, deaths (you will go nowhere in an ambulance) and productivity.
Something to think about…
What does commuting mean for ensuring clients are successful?
Studies have shown that commuting will increase your blood sugar levels, cholesterol and likelihood of depression. The UK office of national statistics has also shown that your anxiety levels drastically increase, and another study by the University of Utah shows that your blood pressure temporarily spikes as direct result of a long commute.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg and keep in mind that all of these studies based their findings on commutes that exceed thirty minutes, which is way below the standard here in the Philippines.
Think about that for a moment. Your team arrive, there was a big pile up on the highway. There late and already frustrated before they’ve even logged in to their computer. There’s a backlog of tickets because they’re only just in the door. Is that really going to create an environment that is conducive to excellent customer service?
It’s really hard to build a team of truly exceptional employees in any industry. Add to the fact that even a two mile commute is a one hour mission. It starts to shrink the area of your employment pool. People just don’t want the hassle and who would? If you commute for two hours each way you are wasting 43 days of your life every year stuck in traffic. Not to mention the travel conditions for some commuters.
When it comes to Client Success attracting the right people is important. Without truly empathetic people whatever you try it’s all irrelevant. You want people who instinctively put themselves in the clients shoes, who can evaluate situations quickly, figure out a problem and act to create an environment in which your clients can thrive. These types of people are hard to come by.
So, how do you get them to commute to you? What should you do to try and attract the right talent into making the trip every day to your office? You don’t. We made a rule, you either live within walking distance of the office or you don’t come in. All you need to have is a computer and internet connection that is good enough to bring the office to you.
It’s quite early in our trials and this is definitely going to be a topic that I write about in the future. I’ll keep you guys informed on what we learn from it. That said, the staff who have opted to go down this route are genuinely happier and definitely more productive. They choose to spend more time helping out and don’t have to worry about getting up early to commute to work, or leaving late to miss the traffic home.
The plan is to meet up every second weekend so we can have face to face time, good food and a few drinks. We will also do a retroactive look back on the last two weeks. This is where we can see what we did well, not so well and most importantly learn how we can improve. Something I definitely plan to share more with you on in the future.
By the way, if you didn’t notice we’re hiring in a big way. If you love customers even more than we hate commuting get in touch.
Our friends at PageUp have a book launch coming up in the Philippines for their latest book “Talented Philippines”. If you are looking to learn more about HR in the Philippines and grab a copy of their latest book, then register for their event.
Event Details:
Talented Philippines Book Launch & Summit
Date: Wednesday 18th March, 2015
Time: 10.45am – 3.30pm PHT
Venue: Dusit Thani Manila, Mayuree II Room
Location: Ayala Centre, 1223 Makati City
Metro Manila, Philippines
You must register so that you are able to get into the event.
From their email:
Don’t miss the chance to:
| Agenda: | |
| 10.45am | Registration & Morning Tea |
| 11.15am | Talented Philippines Summit |
| 12.30pm | Networking Lunch |
| 1.30pm | Talented Philippines Summit |
| 3.00pm | Afternoon Tea |
| 3.30pm | Close |
I just returned from the Business Maker Academy’s annual HR Leadership Conference in Manila, Philippines. It was a full house with over 250 HR practitioners from all industries there to learn more about taking their HR skills to the next level.
I was asked to speak about how PayrollHero attracts talent, how we retain talent, some of our more innovative programs and of course show them how PayrollHero’s Philippine payroll software platform works. Here is a quick overview of what I discussed:
And of course, the last bit of the session was about PayrollHero and how our time, attendance, scheduling, HRIS, business intelligence and Philippine payroll software works.
Here are a couple pictures from the event;
PayrollHero is about to release new props into our iOS TeamClocks celebrating Chinese New Year. In the next few days, clients who use the iOS TeamClock for clock in and out will notice some fun, new, Chinese New Year themed props.
PayrollHero’s facial recognition based platform is not only effective, it is fun. Employees love the engagement aspect of our platform and the props just make it even more fun.
Here is a sneak peek of what you can expect;
We announced at the start of November that we will be expanding our payroll platform into the Singapore market soon. Since that announcement we have held a couple Charter Client Events in Singapore where business owners, HR managers and payroll professionals can learn more about our platform and how it will function for the Singapore market. These events have been a big success and we will be holding one more before our official launch into Singapore. So, if you are interested in learning more about PayrollHero’s Singapore payroll platform, contact us now. Our next event will be early January 2015 and space is very limited.
Most software as a service (SaaS) companies focus on the US market, or other western countries with little regard for emerging markets. While there are definitely challenges with focusing on emerging markets (internet, power, traffic, corruption, to name a few) there are some big advantages.
For example, the above photo was taken at a department store in the Philippines. In this photo, of one of the many areas of the 3 floor department store has no less than 12 employees. For a company like PayrollHero that charges based on employee count, you can see why we like emerging markets. In Canada or the US, if I took the same photo, you would be lucky to see 1 employee.
But it is not all as easy as it seems. These employees are actually not employees of the department store but rather merchandisers who work directly for the brands they are standing beside. So while you might see 12 employees, they most likely work for 12 different companies. Making selling a product or service to them a bit more of a challenge.
But still, employee counts in restaurants, retail, etc are usually much higher in emerging markets due to the cost of labour.
Would you like to learn more about PayrollHero? Contact us and we would be pleased to speak further or visit our country specific websites; Philippines, Singapore with the rest coming soon.
Our team has been full on the past few months so a few of them took this weekend to see the sights around the region. The timing was was a coincident, but we have PayrollHero #AdventureEngineers in 7 cities around the world today. They are in Hong Kong, Shenyang China, Whistler Canada, Singapore, Manila Philippines, Cebu Philippines and Squamish Canada. Below are a few pictures from their adventures.
Nico Suria is in Hong Kong along with Kieran Peppiatt and their girlfriends seeing the sights, doing a little shopping and taking in some of the local culture.
(Nico in Hong Kong)
(Kieran Peppiatt in Hong Kong)
Bram Whillock, the very definition of #AdventureEngineer takes his outdoor time to the next level. Today, he can be found in the far off peeks of Whistler mountain in Canada.
(Bram Whillock on Whistler mountain ~
photo by Bradford McArthur of ForeverExploring.com)
Aidan Sullivan is in Shenyang, China which is one hour north of Beijing. Shenyang is one of China’s very polluted cities as you can see from the picture below.
(Aidan Sullivan in Shenyang, China)
(pollution in Shenyang, China)
(Vince Paca in Cebu, Philippines)
(Michael Stephenson and Adam Baechler in Singapore)
Are you looking to join a hard working team? We are looking for a few people to join our team. Roles available: Event Manager, Content Writer, Ruby on Rails Engineer, Customer Service Specialist, Business Development and Marketing Manager.
Watch our Adventure Engineering video below to learn more about us…
At PayrollHero we are proud of our work and want to share it with the business community of Singapore. Over the coming months we intend to release the payroll aspects of our code for free to the public.
That’s right, we are going open source with our Singapore payroll code! Any developer or interested party will be able to scrutinize the code responsible for Singapore Payroll calculations like CPF. PayrollHero’s payroll transparency will allow anyone the opportunity to use our code . It will engage the software community to provide the best possible product to all our clients – this will result with furthering our mission to bring Payroll Accuracy for Singapore Employees.
We write our software using a language called Ruby on the Ruby on Rails Framework (we flew DHH to Whistler in 2004). The Ruby community is a passionate collection of developers who have helped us create the HR Platform we have today. This is our opportunity to give back to the community who helped us get to where we are today.
Not a developer but you are interested in learning more about the quality of our code at PayrollHero? We use a program called code climate that systematically grades every line of code that we write. It helps us to write the best code possible and gives a neutral and outside indication of it’s quality using a GPA system. We don’t release anything less than a 4.0 GPA!
Security important to you? Our code also receives a Security Scan performed every few hours for potential vulnerabilities. When anything is found we immediately act on the alert.
Here are the links you need for our Singapore Payroll CPF Gem:
Source Code: https://github.com/payrollhero/singapore_cpf_calculator
Gem: https://rubygems.org/gems/singapore_cpf_calculator
Code Climate Score: https://codeclimate.com/github/payrollhero/singapore_cpf_calculator
Want to learn more about PayrollHero Singapore? Head over to singapore.payrollhero.com to find out more about our Charter Client Program.
Exciting news – PayrollHero is expanding its payroll functionality to Singapore and we are signing up Charter Clients. What is a PayrollHero Charter Client?
Charter Client ~ an early adopter that signs up for a product at a special price and gets to contribute to its formation.
Are you interested in learning more about the Singapore Charter Client program? Drop us an email and we will get in touch right away. (email: sjagger+singapore@payrollhero.com)
We will be holding an exclusive event next week in Singapore. Contact us for details.