Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Founded in 2005, HRdownloads has become a leader in practical human resources (HR) solutions for business leaders and HR professionals. Today, HRdownloads delivers complete bilingual support in every jurisdiction, across multiple industries, to thousands of Canadian organizations. Through time-saving live HR advice and HR tech solutions, we provide documentation, software, online training, and surveys to streamline HR processes. The technical challenge to be undertaken is to develop a new software product to be offered by HRdownloads; ""Time and Attendance"". The purpose of this software is to add essential time and attendance capabilities to the existing Employee Management System; a suite of HR-focused software tools that is currently sold and maintained by HRdownloads. HRdownloads has turned to Fanshawe's reactr (Rethinking Education through Applied Collaborative Technology Research) and the School of Contemporary Media's Rob Haaf to design and implement this new product. The three students who undertake work on this project will be required to learn tools, processes and workflows for Web development far in advance of their standard curriculum and applicable in a wide variety of work settings and consequently they will represent highly skilled developers in the Web-based digital media sector. The results of this project will allow HRdownloads to launch their new software after successful integration and testing. Approximately 1100 companies would be using the product in the first 12 months after implementation assuming a 5-20% uptake among direct clients and newly acquired companies. Many companies both in Canada and internationally are outsourcing the majority of their HR especially small to medium sized businesses which; in turn allows them to take advantage of cost reductions and the increased benefits of having a professional employer organization.