freedomleisure, a leading not-for-profit provider of community leisure across Sussex, has significantly streamlined its human resource (HR) and payroll processes as a result of implementing a Human Capital Management (HCM) system from COA Solutions. This HCM system, consisting of HR, payroll, recruitment, training and self-service modules has been made available to authorised staff across 15 sites.
As a rapidly expanding organisation, freedomleisure required a flexible HR and payroll solution to streamline payroll processes involving 750 full and part time employees and approximately 150 casual staff. freedomleisure also needed to be able to easily and accurately process its complicated staff payroll and access and update comprehensive HR information ‘on demand’.
Rachel Gambiragio Human Resources Advisor for freedomleisure, says, “Our previous payroll system had basic functionality and was heavily paper-based which, as a growing company, could no longer fulfil our needs. It was clear that we needed a more automated and flexible system with integrated HR functionality to support our business.”
Gambiragio continues “COA Solutions’ HCM system has eliminated laborious paper-based processes and time spent searching through filing cabinets as we can now reliably store, access and quickly update information relating to any of our employees. The system also makes it easy to record job grade information and automatically link this to corresponding rates of pay, improving both efficiency and the accuracy of salary details.”
The recruitment module has proven invaluable to freedomleisure enabling job vacancies to be filled more swiftly. Candidate details are entered directly onto the system and interview invitation, offer and rejection letters are automatically generated.
Gambiragio says, “We have experienced significant time savings using the recruitment module as it would previously take us up to a day just to enter candidate information onto the appropriate spreadsheets. It now takes us a fraction of that time. We have also reduced administrative errors as candidate information is now entered just the once, not re-keyed numerous times as was previously the case. Once a new member of staff is appointed, their details are automatically transferred across to the HR system, further reducing administrative errors.”
As an organisation working in the community it’s essential that freedomleisure’s employees undertake a criminal records bureau (CRB) check and that their training and qualifications are kept up-to-date. COA Solutions’ HCM system enables the company to keep track of this by quickly and easily producing reports detailing which staff have been CRB checked and also those that have recently undertaken training. The reports can also highlight staff whose training record is due to lapse so that appropriate action can be taken.
In addition, the HCM system enables authorised staff at each of freedomleisure’s sites to ‘self serve’ by allowing them access to HR information about all employees working at their particular site, such as start dates and National Insurance numbers. These site administrators can also submit employees’ timesheets electronically, freeing-up the HR department’s time.
Gambiragio adds, “COA Solutions’ HCM system has transformed our HR and payroll processes. As well as making us far more efficient, it has freed-up the HR team’s time so that they can concentrate on more value-adding activities. What more could we ask?”
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