Success story: Tearfund
Access People delivered an integrated HR & payroll solution for global charity, Tearfund, to improve their business efficiency, connect their teams and increase employee engagement and productivity.
Business size
1,000 - 2,500 employees
Industry
Not for profit
Products
Access SelectHR & Access EarlyPay
Background
Tearfund is one of the UK’s best-known charities, providing relief and development support in some of the poorest countries in the world.
Established in 1968, it now employs over 1,000 staff members working in more than 50 countries.
Working through churches and other local organisations, Tearfund has helped millions of people out of poverty, and is committed to continuing its work until poverty has been eradicated.
What were the requirements?
Tearfund’s HR department had been using separate systems for its HR database and payroll, which was proving to be an inefficient way of working. Employees within the organisation often found the system unresponsive, while the HR team itself struggled with the complex processes, designed to speed up daily tasks.
As a charity, Tearfund’s HR team must provide a clear and transparent audit trail for its partners and donors – which previously involved a great deal of paperwork and time spent chasing staff members, asking them to sign documents. Keen to move towards a paperless payroll, they needed a system that could be integrated with their existing software and, crucially, was easy and intuitive for the whole workforce to use.
The fact that it is a global organisation meant that Tearfund was also looking for a system with a central database to hold employee information, wherever they are based in the world, and be accessible from any device in any location. Finally, the charity needed a solution that would allow key payroll information to be translated into different languages.
The investigation and selection
Tearfund’s partnership with Access People began in 2016, when it invested in its HR and Payroll software and worked with the implementation team ahead of the ‘go-live’ date in February 2017.
“The main thing we liked about Access software was that it was user-friendly and looked a lot more intuitive. It was better designed than a lot of HR software, which sounds a bit surface level, but it was important to encourage staff to use it so we can get the data we need,” says Hannah Archer, Global HR Officer at Tearfund.
A year after its implementation, the system is now well-used by the workforce and new starters are trained on it as part of their induction process, driving user adoption and engagement from the beginning.
What we like the most about Access People's HR & payroll is that you can put staff and changes on at any point and the two systems will communicate with each other, and send the data through as and when it’s needed. This is so much better than our previous payroll process, where we would all run around just before the deadline, chasing signatures and putting in changes. Now it’s so much smoother and frees up our assistants’ time to get back to doing what they were originally hired for and develop their skills.
The results
With so many staff members working out in the field, it was vital that Tearfund could hold all its employee data in one place.
While absence reports and holiday requests were once managed separately for each department and location, Access People’s software has created a single login platform that ensures processes are consistent and accurate. The HR team can now track employee data more effectively, looking out for patterns that appear in absence and
addressing issues as soon as they arrive.
Powerful self-service enables employees and line managers to log in anywhere, on any device to update their personal information and make holiday requests while moving between projects. Booking
leave, for example, once involved emails being sent back-and-forth between staff members and line managers, but it’s now possible to check availability in a global chart and get it approved quickly.
Tearfund has also started working with Access People to create a translation feature for multiple languages, making the system accessible and engaging for every member of its staff.
With one central database, the HR team has seen a considerable reduction in the time it takes to retrieve the information needed for its reports. What was once a time-consuming process can now be done quickly, whenever a donor or partner requests data.
By collating data centrally, the team has started running ‘health checks’ on the organisation and is now able to accurately report on turnover, absenteeism, appraisals, diversity and inclusion. As a
result, everyone knows exactly what is going on in the charity, and can make better-informed decisions, quickly.
The implementation of Access People's HR and Payroll software has also resulted in a significant drop in admin.
I’d recommend working with Access, especially the service and care we’ve received from the support team and consultancy. I think there was a time when we potentially tried to do a little too much on our own, and that brought up a lot of problems for us later down the line, but as soon as we reached out to Access People they were really helpful, and responded to our queries almost immediately.
Every solution, in one place, for your people
The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform.
The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.