Housing Plus Group has chosen Carval Computing’s fully integrated HR software solution HR Unity, to provide HR services to over 600 members of staff, in a move from transactional to transformational HR.
The Group is using Carval’s solution for Payroll, Absence Management and Recruitment, and will be rolling out Learning and Development later this year. Following a recent merger, the Housing Plus Group comprises six different member organisations that provide residential, care and property services to individuals and families in the area. A key factor in the selection was the Self Service platform that HR Unity provides to support the administration, building services and care staff in the organisation with the wide range of HR functions.
Helen Watkins, Senior HR Business Partner at Housing Plus Group, explained: “Housing Plus Group’s business has grown in terms of service provision, but our HR system was still quite antiquated – it just didn’t meet our requirements with the functionality that we needed.
“We are now running with about 70% of our staff using the HR Unity Self Service portal. Carval’s software is intuitive, easy to use and since adopting it to administer our HR functions it has created efficiencies for our managers and HR team. The staff all say how easy the system is to use and that includes feedback from our Directors As far as serving our front office it has definitely been a successful project.”
The HR team carried out a phased roll out of the new Self-Service system to ensure smooth adoption before extending it to include all the options available. The Group will be introducing the Learning and Development module later this year. It will help the HR team to manage the professional, managerial and vocational skills required by staff both to support its continual personal development programmes and to comply with health and safety regulations. Training records are maintained in a central place and referred to by individuals and managers, with requests and evaluations managed through built-in workflow approvals. Other future plans include the rollout of the Recruitment module, which will enable successful applicant data to be integrated into the system.
Housing Plus also plans to roll out the Mobile Self Service App for its team of 120 operatives who are site based and use PDAs, enabling them to use the App to book annual leave and access their personal data.
“The whole purpose was to move from transactional HR to transformational HR. We designed a five-year programme which we have almost completed to move to the position where managers manage their staff and HR provides an advisory service. We have done it already for one organisation and since the merger have now started the process for our new, larger group. There is no doubt that implementing Carval’s solution has helped us to achieve this,” said Watkins.
John Ovington, Sales and Support Director at Carval said: “As organisations grow, whether organically or by merger and acquisition, it can present challenges for HR teams that need to manage and provide HR services, including Payroll, Absence and Sickness management and Training for all staff. Our integrated HR software has been designed to reduce the administration burden for HR teams and empower the staff to access their own personnel records, providing a win-win for the employees and the organisation.”
