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How Meridian Group Went From Printed Payslips to Full Employee Empowerment With Jem.
Meridian Group is one of South Africa's largest sales and merchandising businesses, with 5,500 field-based merchandisers working in retail stores nationwide. They came to Jem to solve one problem: printed payslips.
Within months, they'd adopted every product in the Jem platform at zero cost to the business. But this isn't an operations story. It's a story about what happens when a company decides to genuinely invest in the lives of its deskless workforce — and finds a partner that can make it real.
""It's not just 5,500 people, it's 50,000 people. Jem has transformed the lives of not just Meridian employees, 
but their extended families too.""
"Absolutely disastrous."
Before Jem, Karen Hammond describes Meridian's employee engagement in two words: "absolutely disastrous."
Payslips were printed in bulk, couriered to regional offices and handed out whenever a rep happened to pass through. Employees would often receive their payslips three months late.
Getting a company-wide message to 5,500 merchandisers was impossible. Only around 600 have access to a computer or email, with the rest scattered across retail stores in every corner of South Africa.
When Karen visited employees in the field, the message was consistent.
"We don't feel heard. We don't feel like we're part of the company. We never get communication on time. We don't see our pay slips. 
What is the company doing for me?"
Karen wasn't looking for a collection of point solutions to patch individual gaps. She needed a single platform that could digitise HR, open up employee benefits, give employees a voice and reach a workforce that doesn't sit behind desks.
98% registration. In weeks.
Jem's initial brief was digital payslips. Meridian hit 98% registration in a matter of weeks — a remarkable number for a deskless workforce 5,500 strong. No more printing. No more couriering. No more payslips gathering dust in the boot of a car.
"The day people get paid, the payslips must be out."
But payslips were the entry point, not the destination. What made the partnership different was how quickly each product proved its value.
Earned Wage Access gave employees the ability to access a portion of their earned salary before payday. For merchandisers earning modest
salaries without access to affordable credit, it was a revelation. And employees coined their own term for it.
Jem Mobile put affordable smartphone contracts within reach of employees who otherwise couldn't access them. Karen wove it into Meridian's own BYOD strategy, turning Jem into core infrastructure for how the company operates. Within 4 months, roughly 10% of the workforce had a new phone with reliable, consistent data.
The impact went far beyond the individual employee. Their children need internet access to study and research. For many merchandisers, a Jem Mobile contract was the first time that was possible at home.
Savings gave employees a way to prepare for the expenses that hit every family — and hit hardest when you earn minimum wage.
"You have a lot of our merchandisers that have kids still going to school. They need stationery, uniforms, school fees. The Jem savings option has been absolutely amazing. They can now save for when life happens. And life happens to everybody."
Then came the rest of the benefits. An Employee Assistance Programme, insurance optimisation, airtime and data vouchers and digital leave applications — all through the same WhatsApp channel.
"Communications, training and development, access to payslips, savings, early wage access, leave. Where could you get all of this on one solution and one platform?"
Reaching a workforce that's never in one room
For many companies with large deskless workforces, the hardest nut to crack is access to their employees.
Before Jem, Meridian running an employee engagement survey meant surveying the 10% of the workforce that had computers and email.
Jem's Communications product changed that completely. Meridian can now reach its entire workforce instantly, with company announcements, training modules, promotion briefs for clients, internal newsletters, engagement surveys and and feedback requests.
"You can never run an employee engagement survey with 600 people out of 5,500. Through Jem, I've run two engagement surveys, my eNPS scores exceeded the market-related scores for our industry, and more than 80% of our workforce completed it."
The operational and cultural impact is immediate. When a client needs a promotion executed across stores at short notice, the brief goes out through Jem, reaches the right merchandisers instantly. Then real-time feedback, photographs and sales data flows straight back. What used to fall through the cracks now happens same-day.
"Before Jem, there were just complaints; we don't feel heard, we don't feel like we're part of the company. Now when I visit the trade, it's 'Can we have more of Jem?' People are feeling more engaged, more connected. They feel that we really, really listen to them."
Stop waiting. Just do it.
Meridian answers a common question Jem hears from executive teams evaluating the platform: "Can't we just start with payslips and see how it goes?"
Karen's response is blunt.
“Just do it. Your employees will thank you for it.
And your employee engagement will immediately increase. “
The point isn't that every company needs to adopt everything on day one. It's that Jem is built as a platform. And when leadership buys in and genuinely commits to its workforce, the expansion happens naturally. Each product solves a real problem. Each one builds on the last. And the employees feel it.
What the client has to say
Ready to connect with your deskless teams?
We’d love to chat to you about how Jem can help you engage and empower your frontline employees through WhatsApp.
