Success story: University of Hertfordshire

In the education sector, the University of Hertfordshire leads the way in terms of innovation.

With a student community of over 25,300, including 2,800 international students from 100 different countries, the university has a global network of more than 210,000 alumni.

The university is one of the region’s largest employers with a total of 5,900 employees.

The legacy HR processes at the university was done on a series of manual systems.

The organisation wanted to move from an integrated database for HR, students and finance to best of breed for each area.

Payroll was conducted within a separate system and there were no self-service elements for line managers or staff.

Access People’s relationship with the university has been a long-standing one, with a gradual digital transformation process that has taken place over the years.

The university’s journey with Access People began when they implemented our Personnel, HR Recruitment software, Timesheets and Payroll solutions.

On average the team receives 6,000 timesheets submitted by visiting lecturers in a year which is a strong indication of how the staff have embraced the self-service functionality of the system.

Find out how our self-service HR portal can improve employee engagement.

Implementing a Time module

The next big project was to implement our Time module to handle leave requests. Historically, the University was running a paper card system, with resources required at the start of each year to allocate entitlement and issue the cards to each staff member.

They configured the system to automatically work out leave entitlements, building a workflow for the approval process and providing full transparency of balances in the staff portal.

Since its implementation, the team now has an average of 30,000 leave requests processed via the HR system each year.

Implementing an Expenses module

Two years later, the Expenses module was introduced, replacing paper-based systems which were paid via the payroll department or through cash advances.

With the Expenses module, staff submit their expenses or advances online which are sent to budget holders for approval, amounting to an average 8,000 expense claims which are now fully automated.

“By using the Expenses module, we can separate the expense payments from the main payroll, allowing us to make payments on a fortnightly basis, resulting in staff being paid more frequently and not having to wait for reimbursements,” says Sarah McMurdie, HR Systems Administrator at the University of Hertfordshire.

Implementing My Vacancies

The following year, the university implemented My Vacancies, enabling recruiting managers to shortlist vacancies online.

Previously line managers would have to wait for application packs to be sent once a vacancy had closed, which meant they would often receive large application packs via email or post.

Using My Vacancies, line managers can now view all applications instantly online and upload all shortlisting documents against the vacancy. 

“On average, the university advertises 400 vacancies per year and receives 18 applications per vacancy, so having visibility of applications earlier in the process allows recruiting managers to manage their workload and shortlist as they go,” says Sarah.

Implementing a Training module

Another year on, the Training module was launched. Previously, training requests were held in a separate enterprise system and staff had no visibility of the courses they had attended or were due to attend.

The staff portal allows all staff to view every course available at the university. They can also maintain their own training record by inputting data on conferences they may have attended externally, creating an extensive learning record for every employee.

In the last year, 10,000 training requests were made via the HR system.

The university has continued their digital transformation journey with the creation of an HR system strategy; a roadmap identifying how the university plans to utilise Access People products over the next 12 months.

The team has also looked back on implementation decisions and questioned whether they are using Access People’s solutions as efficiently and effectively as possible. Working with the Access People Customer Success team, improvements were identified and further manual processes have been made redundant.

The university has begun using the restructure tool to merge two of their schools into one entity. They were able to move 518 appointments into a new business unit, saving the team 30 minutes of administration per record – amounting to 259 hours in total.

Salary changes have also been automated, generating a further saving of three days. The university now has an average of 500 logins to the system every day, highlighting the continued engagement of staff with Access People products.

Throughout their journey with Access People, the University of Hertfordshire has seen a huge reduction in HR transactional tasks, improved business effectiveness and more accurate data collection and reporting, enabling the university’s HR team to work on more strategic priorities for the business.

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Access People offer an unrivalled suite of HCM solutions for businesses of all sizes, 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. 

We have operations across the UK and Ireland including 16 offices in England and three offices in Ireland. Today, we have over 13,000 customers in the UK, over 500 customers in Ireland, and over 60,000 customers across the globe.