AssemblyPoint

Microsoft Bizspark highlights HRLocker

AssemblyPoint — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:53:53 +0000

Microsoft’s Bizspark site featues HR Locker as startup of the day today. This is a fantastic promotion for HR Locker helping us to reach a truly global audience. We’re delighted, even if the audio and video is a bit patchy

I posted on the HR Locker blog that the Bizspark team are genuinely fantastic to deal with. I meant it. In Ireland, Clare and Enda and all the rest of the team are true champions. Internationally, the Bizspark team are also extremely helpful. I would 100% recommend engaging with them.

This is the last blog post related to HR Locker from here. From now on all HR Locker blogs will be posted here.

John

AssemblyPoint announces venture capital round

AssemblyPoint — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:34:33 +0000

I know it’s rude to talk about money but it’s worth putting it out there that we recently secured a venture capital backed seed round. The investors include Enterprise Ireland and the AIB Seed Capital Fund, managed by Enterprise Equity. Enterprise Ireland is a state body responsible for promoting high potential companies in Ireland.

The funding is being used to improve our existing products and bring them to new markets. We’re currently localising HR Locker for the Chinese market.

Both Enterprise Equity and Enterprise Ireland were great to work with through the fund raising process.

Electronic signatures in China

AssemblyPoint — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:57:41 +0000

According to Article 3 of the Electronic Signature Law of China (2004):

“The parties concerned may agree to use or not to use electronic signature or data message in such documentations as contracts and other documents, receipts and vouchers in civil activities.
The legal effect of a document, with regard to which the parties concerned have agreed to use electronic signature or data message, shall not be denied only because the form of electronic signature or data message is adopted.”

Looks like it’s legally ok to sign employment contracts online. Anybody know a really good lawyer in Shanghai?

China Employment Law 2008

AssemblyPoint — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:43:08 +0000

There’s a relatively new piece of employment law governing the provision of contracts to employees in foreign owned companies in China. Here’s a clause that would be ignored at the employers peril:

Article 82. If an Employer fails to conclude a written employment contract with a worker within one month after the date on which it started using him, it shall pay to the worker wages being twice the amount of due compensation for his labor.

www.hrlocker.com beta launched today!!

AssemblyPoint — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:16:15 +0000

Today we launch the first beta of www.hrlocker.com. It coincides with the launch of Microsoft’s Azure platform in Ireland. And, it’s a day after the launch of iPad. Sandwiched between these two giants we probably won’t make many newspaper headlines.

If you do want to try it yourself – it’s free for less than five users – you can read more here: www.hrlocker.com.

The next step is getting generic HR information in the system so that companies with no staff handbook (prob 60% of SMEs) can generate a basic one for very little cost.

Staff handbooks – as staff might write them

AssemblyPoint — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:18:24 +0000

This is class. It’s hopefully a joke and all credit to employeehandbookstore.com.

Computers and Related Equipment

EZ2WORK4 Company provides employees access to computers, printers and other equipment for personal and business use. Feel free to use company computers to create and print personal projects and homework assignments. Playing online games allows employees a break from the stress of the work load. Feel free to take a break and play solitaire or any of your favorite games, any time you wish.

Internet

Company computer systems, connected to the internet, are connected for your convenience and enjoyment. Feel free to search, view and download anything you wish as long as it is legal to do so within our state. You may use up to 60% of the hard drive on your computer to store personal items.

eMail & Electronic Communication

Company furnished email accounts are provided for instant communication with friends, family and business contacts.

Managing staff handbooks – made easy

AssemblyPoint — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:38:02 +0000

Many people have asked if we’d release a tool to help manage their staff handbook, or policies and procedures. Most HR departments print the document, distribute it and request a signed confirmation page by return. Most employees comply. Some don’t. It’s a pain in the ass to monitor.

So, we’re launching HrLocker.com at the end of this month. A manager uploads the staff handbook onto our web site. Staff names and email addresses are added. An email is sent to all staff with a user name and password allowing them access the doc online. They read the doc, and hopefully confirm they’ve read, understand and will abide by the policies set out.

The electronic signature carries the same legal status as a paper based one. The system takes the drudgery out of distributing the handbook, reduces print costs, and most importantly, ensures staff read and sign it. It’s not the most exciting tool in the world but it’s very useful.

NERA investigates Irish employers for poor HR practices

AssemblyPoint — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:25:18 +0000

The National Employment Rights Authority released its quarterly report yesterday. It’s main sectoral focus has been on catering, retail, cleaning and construction.

Here are the main findings:

To date in 2009 NERA Inspectors have carried out a total of 18,273 calls, interviews and inspections and unpaid wages
due to employees totalling €1,474,650 were recovere.
There were 3,001 inspections related to the Organisation of Working Time.
47% of the above resulted in a reported breach. That’s nearly 1,500 companies reported to be in breach this year alone.
So far this year NERA referred 61 cases to its solicitors for prosecution.
NERA dealt with over 112,600 telephone enquiries during the period January to September
2009. This is an increase of over 37% on the same period in 2008. Over 8,800 email enquiries were dealt with
during the same period. The most requested information categories continue to be redundancy, holiday/public
holidays, terms of employment and payment of wages.

Strange employment clauses

AssemblyPoint — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:47:26 +0000

I’ve heard of some strange clauses appearing in contracts of employment. I’m going to try to keep a list of them on this blog. Here’s the starting point:

1) This contract of employment can be terminated for any reason, or no reason.

2) Here’s one from a European pilot’s contract: From time to time, foreign travel may be required.

3) Employees at IT company Nutzwerk, in Leipzig, have to agree to be in a good mood as part of their employment contract. More here: http://bit.ly/2ebrft

4) Dress Code: It is advised that you come to work dressed according to your salary. (This I assume to be a joke)

Porting an application to Microsoft Azure

AssemblyPoint — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:29:04 +0000

We’re in the process of porting AssemblyPoint to Windows Azure. Why? It allows a small Web company to scale massively without incurring large costs at the early stages. Additionally, it improves security and data integrity. In essence it removes most of the headaches associated with hosting.

The good news is that the process, so far, has been painless. We have a test database and timesheets running in (on?) Azure. It took less than one man week of development time. Sure we’ll hit a few dead ends and nasty bugs will surface in QA but it’s a really encouraging start.

We did evaluate the other cloud offerings but feel for an app built entirely with Microsoft tools and technology it would be a natural fit to move to Azure. I’ll revisit this topic towards the start of December and report on our experiences.