Many years ago, when Human Resources was still commonly referred to as the personnel department, employers calculated employees’ wages and recorded their hours manually.
For employers, it was a tedious and labour-intensive exercise that involved calculating wages, deducting taxes, distributing pay checks, and recording attendance by hand. This time-consuming and extensive paperwork was often vulnerable to errors, delays, and inefficiencies.
With the rise of the internet and cloud computing, there has been a paradigm shift from paperwork to cloud-based systems that are accurate and efficient, provide real-time updates, and offer enhanced security.
“Majority of big organisations like banks don’t have one system that can take all these manual processes into one platform,” says Peter Muchemi, the co-founder of Faidi HR, a Kenyan startup that helps businesses automate their manual HR and payroll processes.
Alongside ushering them from the manual origins to the digital era, Faidi HR also aims to integrate its clients’ various processes into one system.
“We realised that so many companies had a problem moving to the cloud, and specifically the HR department. So, initially, there were systems, and there were a lot of improvements until 2015 or 2016. At this point, HR would have an average of three systems: for managing payroll, another system for leave, and another manual system for timesheets. So, the goal was to bring all these processes into one system, and the system was to be accessed via the cloud,” Peter explains.
Three years into the business, Faidi HR has improved its product, attracted more customers, and consequently received funding from the Spark Accelerator Programme run by Safaricom, which scales commercially viable businesses.
The programme has been instrumental in helping Faidi HR develop a financial model and learn about the best practices for running a company in terms of corporate governance and fundraising.
Additionally, the programme has enabled Faidi HR to form partnerships which will help it scale across the country.
“We have built credibility just by the fact of associating with Safaricom, and through that, signed deal with partners, like our partnership with Strathmore University, where we are training their accounting students how to use our platform,” Peter says.
