I was recently introduced to a company called tiderise.
What is tiderise? They are a Canadian Company that is a workforce extension company with employees in Malawi. Now before you skip to the next article, I encourage you to read through this article. I had the opportunity to interview the Co-Founder & CEO Seth Stover. He is very passionate about what he does, and a lot of thought has gone into it.
How did I hear about tiderise?
- One of my clients in Kelowna uses them and introduced me to their services. I thought if there is one client that could hire an employee and give back, why wouldn’t I let people know about this service?
Why did you create tiderise?
- To bring employment to places on earth where talent and ambition exist, but opportunity doesn’t. Currently, we’re focused on Malawi which is considered the third poorest country in the world. This model helps to fill a critical employment gap in North America as well.
How many employees do you currently have?
- Around 130 Staff.
Are the employees educated, what language(s) do they speak?
- About 5 Presidents ago, President Banda changed the education system to English. This was in recognition of English being the global business language. There have been about 3 decades of people graduating University in English.
What is the impact of hiring Malawian’s?
- When you hire one employee from tiderise, it not only gives the employee the opportunity to move out of poverty but also helps their extended family and the community. They can buy groceries, clothes, rent or buy a home, pay for siblings’ education, etc. It can be far reaching.
Do the employees work directly with clients?
- They work directly with the clients as much or as little as the client requires. They are integrated within the client’s communication channels and act as an extension of their teams. We have team members working in operations, finance, sales, marketing, etc.
I heard that Malawi is the “Warm heart of Africa”. Is there much corruption or how do you avoid corruption?
- One of our executives is Cecilia Mkondiwa she is VP of Operations. She is Malawian and lived in Canada and the US for 30 years. Cecilia manages the Team Leaders in Malawi and due to her time in North America she understands what is expected of her staff. There are systems and processes in place that create accountability. There has been virtually no corruption within tiderise.
What is some of the work you do for Employers?
- Most clients are Tech and employees mostly work with AI and ML, helping to train AI. Although our imagination is the only limitation on how tiderise could help your company. They are an extension of your workforce.
I have traveled to countries that live in poverty and power, wifi is a big factor. How do you deal with that?
- The power grid is off 8-12 hours a day and tiderise has three 8 hour shifts operating 24/7. tiderise has set up the infrastructure for wifi and power. They have a battery and inverter system set up and generators also hardwired into each room. This assists in keep them up and running. Infrastructure has been set up for their wifi and power, so it operates at a 99% uptime.
Do you have access to laptops and other products required to operate?
- We’ve sent over 100 laptops refurbished with high power over to Malawi.
What about theft of the laptops in shipping?
- We have set up a system that gets our computers and other products to the employees safely.
If your facility is outside of the city, how do employees get to work safely?
- We own minibuses that run between 6pm and 6am to ensure that employees can get to and home from work safely.
How do you keep client’s information safe?
- Nothing is stored on site; they are logging into cloud base data.
Is there a price difference between a North American Employee and a Malawian Employee?
- There are significant savings and economy of scale plays a part in the savings. A full-time resource per month can run from $1,000 to $2,000 per month. That includes everything.
Do you provide your employees with benefits?
- The employees are offered benefits that are comparable to North American benefits.
With the education system do you have a good mix of Males and Females working for tiderise?
- Yes, there is a good mix of Males and Females.
Does tiderise give back to the community?
- One area that we would like to support is education and specifically education in business and technology. They are unsure what that looks like right now. They have been focused on setting up the business and keeping it stable.
Are there other areas you would invest in?
- Yes, the elderly in the villages, 60 years plus. These people often sleep on dirt floors or a very thin thatch. We recently purchased 65 mattresses for the elderly and handed them out in a local village. Something as simple as this could be life changing.
I could have talked to Seth a lot longer. This should give you a bit of an idea who tiderise is and I hope you use your imagination to see how they might be able to work with you.
Glendinning Insurance Services, being a resource for our clients is important to us. Contact us at (250) 764-0142 to see how we can work with you on your employee benefits to ensure you have the upper hand on hiring and retaining employees.
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