Your staff can look it up themselves
Every employee gets a login. It shows their leave balance and requests, payslips, their own documents, anything waiting for their signature, their expense claims and training, the org chart and the company calendar. It works in a phone browser with nothing to install, and there is no charge per user.
A noticeboard
Announcements go up, whether that is the OHS inspection, the December shutdown or a record month, and people react and comment. Birthdays and work anniversaries appear on the day with a button to send wishes. Anyone can give a colleague a shoutout, not only managers. There are no direct messages, deliberately: private staff-to-staff conversations sitting in an employer's system is a POPIA problem nobody asked for.
- Pin a notice so it stays at the top
- Attach the insurance certificate, the new policy, the braai poster
- "Out today" shows names and never the leave type
The things that used to arrive as WhatsApps
A letter of employment for the bank. A salary confirmation. An IRP5 copy. New bank details. A shift swap. Staff submit these from their profile, they land in an inbox with a deadline, they go through the same approval chain as leave, and they are closed with a note the employee can read. Expense claims work the same way, with a photo of the slip attached. Finance approves the claim, then marks it paid separately, because approving and paying are two different acts.
- Line managers get an "awaiting your approval" card on their home page, even with no other HR permissions
- Every approved claim not yet paid shows on the leavers view when someone resigns
Their own file and nobody else's
The portal is filtered on the server rather than hidden in the interface. An employee sees their own record, their own balances and requests, and the documents HR has made visible to them. Their ID copy is their own personal information, so they see it. The chairperson's notes from a disciplinary case are not, so they do not. A line manager also sees their direct reports, and not the whole tree below them. Nobody can review themselves.
Invite one employee and see what they get
Do it during the trial, then invite the rest. There is no charge per user, so there is no reason to hold back.