Human potential is what social agency e180 values above all. They’ve made it their mission to cultivate it, too. Founded in Montreal in 2011, e180 is the company behind the Braindate app: a platform that has reinvented professional and event networking into relevant, enriching and instructive opportunities.
Sylvain Leclair, Chief Operating Officer at e180, is extremely passionate about the Braindate app. “When you attend conferences,” he tells us, “the speakers don’t always seem relevant to you. At least, they don't necessarily tell you what you were looking for. But what you don’t know is that in the same room, there may be THE right person with whom you could exchange information, learn about their experience, develop ideas, etc. This is what Braindate is for: creating peer learning experiences in event communities around the world."
The e180 team has had significant success, and they now employ 25 talented specialists.
However, onboarding and integrating new employees takes time, especially when it happens in freestyle mode. “Our processes were constantly changing depending on the manager and it was not ideal for optimizing hiring or creating adequate documentation. So we were looking for an effective solution to centralize and standardize the processes for new hires,” continues Sylvain.
A conversation between Sylvain and Diane Lafontaine, Chief Operating Officer at Rise People in Québec, was the start of a great collaboration—a true meeting of minds, you could say.
Personalized support for implementing Rise’s HR solution
Shortly after, e180 signed up for Rise’s HR solution, which automates and centralizes HR management through our intuitive, efficient platform. The team at Rise held a weekly workshop with e180 to ensure an easy implementation process that suited their specific business reality: the lack of an HR department.
“We don't have an HR department in our agency. We had a lot of questions and we realized that each employee generated specificities at the administrative level. For us, it was essential to be well supported in this process and that’s what the Rise specialists did.”
Answering the needs of the business to gain efficiency
When it comes to suggestions from our clients, the Rise team is always all ears. We believe in the spirit of co-development, which allows us and our clients to keep learning and improving.
As Sylvain tells us: “We have witnessed a rapid development of the platform's functionalities over the past year. It is very important for us to have a real collaboration between the needs of our small business and the developments made by Rise. It really gives us confidence to have that.”
The team at e180 now enjoys the advantages of Rise’s payroll solution too, which has made onboarding new employees a fluid and dynamic process for them. In other words, no more headaches from dealing with paperwork, allowing managers to focus on the human side of business.
According to Sylvain, administrative follow-up now only takes up between 10 to 20% of a team manager’s time. "It's not a big workload and we have everything we were looking for: centralized, standardized and secure management of our employees and their pay. There’s good monitoring of the up-to-date administrative documentation. Everything is well synchronized and this avoids lost email exchanges and information loss. It makes me feel confident and I don't have to worry about following up with my employees.”
Managing employees and their time off, the easy way
If managers save time, employees do too. Sylvain tells us that his employees instinctively log onto the Rise platform if they have any questions about their file. “At first, they were afraid it would be additional work for them. But the platform is intuitive and they quickly learned to use it. They can access their information immediately, without asking their manager.”
Sylvain is also particularly pleased with Rise’s time off management solution—especially in our current, challenging times. “With the economic impact of the pandemic, we’re forced to limit for the first time our summer time-off policies (usually unlimited). Rise makes our lives easier because it’s easy to manage our employees’ vacation. We have familiarized them with the platform so that they can plan and apply for leave without stress.”
A 360-degree virtual turn for the e180 team
The team at e180 continues to innovate—and respond to a global crisis. With all networking events, seminars and conferences cancelled in the country due to COVID-19, e180 made an accelerated digital shift to transform its collaborative learning opportunities into virtual ones.
“We had a lot of requests from our customers regarding this, and we revised the model of our offer in 3 weeks flat. I think that we have made the right choice in the long-term: a rapid transition of our company to keep our whole team onboard and also all of our customers.”
Now, the e180 agency is hosting virtual conferences for major companies like General Electric. It’s also working on new features to come that will allow professionals to stay in touch with the people they meet on the Braindate app.
It’s truly an example of what digital efficiency and human potential can achieve, together.
