We’ve officially launched Jem 2.0. It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever shipped, and we can’t wait to introduce our updated features, new products and our new employer-facing dashboard to all our customers. Employers can expect deeper insights, richer live data, a more user-friendly, faster and intelligent experience, with AI built in, and so much more.
We have become so much more than ‘Employee Benefits, Comms and HR on WhatsApp’. We are now a comprehensive workforce management platform for Africa’s deskless teams, built on WhatsApp.
Along the journey, we realised that our original Hub and products needed to become more robust, to better serve our growing employee network of over 250,000 deskless workers. The decision was made to build Jem 2.0.
But why did we need to do this?
“Every single customer we speak to wants a better way to manage their workforce. We’re going to make that happen, using technology that actually works, for the people who really need it,” says Simon Ellis, Jem co-founder and CEO. “Technology is a moving target. Giving our customers the best technology in the world is the root of everything we do. These companies and their employees deserve to benefit from the best that’s out there, and Jem 2.0 is the first of many new versions to come,” says Caroline van der Merwe, Jem co-founder and COO.
Deskless workers make up around 80% of the global labour force. They are the people who physically keep an economy moving: security guards, cleaners, drivers, factory workers, baristas and retail assistants. Only around 1% of what the world spends on HR software goes anywhere near them. Across Africa that gap is wider still, and it’s the one we exist to close.
The employers trying to close it are working with what they’ve got.
“Right now a typical employer is running six to nine different systems to manage their people: HR, payroll, time and attendance, benefits, comms, earned-wage access, rostering. None of them talk to each other,” says Simon. “Our new Hub and our growing list of products and features works to close that patchwork by providing Jem customers with an all-in-one workforce management platform.”
“Three years ago, our clients logged onto Jem maybe once a month. Today, payroll, finance and ops managers are logging in every single day, because that’s how much of their employee data flows through the platform,” says Caroline.
That’s what the new Hub is for. Everything an employer needs to run a deskless workforce, in one platform.
We asked our CTO, Thamsanqa Moyo, what’s genuinely better on the new Jem Hub already.
“A more streamlined user journey that takes into account the work that users do; our new Home and Insights pages provide deeper and more meaningful data insights; it has faster and more accurate document matching; and, of course, there’s the introduction of Lutho, our AI agent, that helps users get their work done faster.”
Yes, Lutho, Jem’s AI guide. Customers will be able to ask Lutho a question about their workforce and it answers against their own data. Ask it to do something and it opens the right workflow, prepares the draft, and hands it back for you to confirm. A person still makes every call, but what changes is everything they used to have to do before they could make it.
All of Jem’s new code is written by AI agents working alongside a small core of engineers. Engineers run several projects at once. Routine maintenance increasingly resolves itself.
“A team our size ships and supports a genuine multi-product platform at a throughput that would normally need an organisation many times bigger,” says Thamsanqa. “We have increased our code deployments this year to date by more than 8x whilst keeping the headcount level over the same period.”
“Our culture treats automation as the goal rather than the threat, which is not a given in this industry and took some deliberate building,” says Simon.
That same instinct is now moving out of the engine room and into the product itself.
“Take Time & Attendance, which is live now,” says Product Lead, Dawie van der Westhuizen. “Clocking in happens over WhatsApp, validated against geo-fencing, so a security guard on a site in Boksburg doesn’t need a biometric reader, a card, or another app to download. What we’re building behind it is the intelligence layer that an operations professional actually spends the day on: chasing the missed clock-in, flagging the shift that’s going to be short, and finding the right qualified person to fill the gap without going over budget,” he explains.
To read more about Jem’s Time & Attendance product, click here.
“Our goal remains to be the single source of truth from the day an employee is onboarded until their last day at work. That includes everything from payroll, to certifications, learning and development and onboarding,” says Caroline.
We’re currently looking for design partners for our new rostering tool. If you’re keen to sign up, reach out to your account exec or customer success manager.
“At the end of the day, Jem 2.0 improves the bottom line for our clients: greater efficiency, gaps identified automatically, and a workforce unlocked by the most innovative benefits system in the market,” says Caroline.
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