ERS manages all labour law related processes including grievance procedures, disciplinary procedures, CCMA and Bargaining Council processes, as well as Court processes.

The workflow system guides the user through processes with helpful hints and alerts the user of deadlines. It further tracks cases' progress and keeps statistics along the way. Management of hearing details and case outcomes becomes a breeze, while the automatic correspondence sent to union member/ employer through all phases via sms / fax / e-mail not only saves time, but also improves communication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background

• Accurate statistics not readily available and available statistics are very limited;
• Management only becomes aware of problematic cases when it is at crisis management stage;
• Finger pointing when something goes wrong, with no objective way to identify who was at fault;
• Drafting reports on employment issues is onerous and time consuming;
• Management has no tools to verify the cost of a particular case at any given moment – no or limited cost control;
• Case documentation gets lost;
• If a person who works with a case leaves the company, there is no proper record of the case history (contingency management);
• Labour Relations employees require guidance / training to ensure that they are aware of what the correct process is to follow in a particular instance;
• Labour Relations employees require access to legislation, guidelines, case law and relevant forms;
• No system available that caters for all the different levels of dispute resolution (internal and external) in 1 system;
• No system available that caters for all dispute forums (Bargaining Councils, CCMA, Labour Court, Private Agencies) in 1 system;
• No system available that caters for discipline and rewards (positive actions) in 1 system.

With due regard to the above challenges, the Employee Relations System (ERS) was developed by experienced labour law practitioners to provide the South African labour relations environment with a powerful and comprehensive, yet user-friendly tool to pro-actively manage incidents (both positive and negative) in the workplace

Functionality (Summary)

The system functionality was developed with three focus areas in mind:

1. Management

Automatic alerts of problems/ overdue actions, detailed reporting, dashboard, cost management, positive performance management (reward system).

2. Users

Easy to use and to keep track of what must be done.

3. Training

Wealth of IR information and hints built into the system to ensure correct procedures are followed at all times.

Short overview of some of the ERS’ main functionality:

Benefits

Differences between Payroll HR and ERS

Tracking Cases

Payroll HR keeps information regarding a case in separate locations and users need to proactively scan the system to keep up to date. The system won’t inform you about upcoming hearings or communicate directly with the parties involved.

ERS keeps all information relevant to a case in one place, and can notify parties automatically about case statuses or upcoming hearings or events, via SMS or e-mail.

Automatic alerts

Payroll HR does not have this function.

ERS alerts a user or management automatically via SMS or e-mail if deadlines to perform a particular function are approaching.

Bookmark

Payroll HR does not have this function.

ERS allows a user to bookmark cases or documents that they need to access on a regular basis.

Calendar

Payroll HR lets users add hearings as notes or actions to an employee’s master file. The system does not have a central area for viewing all past and future hearings.

ERS has a central case roll that shows you all past and future hearings in a list or as a calendar. Parties can be automatically notified of upcoming hearings.

User guidance

Payroll HR gives the user basic guidance as to which action may be appropriate for a specific misconduct, e.g. a written warning for a level 1 offence.

ERS provides a workflow with steps that needs to be followed for each case type with appropriate hints at each step to guide the user. The steps and workflows can be customised to fit your company’s procedure exactly.

System Costs

Payroll HR requires you to purchase the HR module for Payroll, and to also purchase the Business Intelligence module if your business requires more extensive reporting.

ERS contains all the functionality needed in one system.

Case Costs

Payroll HR can’t directly track the costs against a case.

ERS tracks costs per case and have extensive reporting and statistics.

Document Management

Payroll HR has the ability to store documents in the employee’s file. This may be problematic where different cases’ documents will be stored at one employee or multiple employees are involved in a single case, with the documents for that case spread across different employees.

ERS stores all case documents under the specific case, with links to the specific parties and their case histories. In addition, ERS features a full-featured document management system that can track document revisions and manage user-rights.

Reporting

Payroll HR has basic reports regarding employee cases. For more advanced reports, the BIC module has to be purchased and reports have to be created.

With ERS, multiple reports and graphs are available out of the box and can be customised to your needs.

Audit trail

Payroll HR provides a basic audit trail regarding cases.

ERS provides an extensive audit trail regarding every detail of the case. The system stores the date and user for actions such as workflow, costs added, documents added and details changed for the case.

Library

Payroll HR does not have a library function.

ERS has an extensive built-in library containing case law, guidelines, legislation and relevant forms.