Moving forward
with further improvements

By leveraging Zellis HR system optimisation, Ainscough are streamlining their employee management processes for significant cost and time savings

Reporting

Ainscough are keen to implement further ideas from their review, in particular BI as a service.

While they are currently using the reporting tool in ResourceLink, the HR team finds it a heavily manual process to draw and report on data such as absence rates, employee turnover, gender pay, and demographics.

The transfer to HCM and Power BI means that the team can now create dashboards that present that information in real time, and drill down into any area or to a particular manager for specific live information rather than the cumbersome manual processes they previously used.

“We also use Power BI through our ERP system for booking cranes, so I can see not only some of the hard metrics around how we were doing in terms of revenue and crane utilisation, but I can also see some of the people metrics as well, so it's familiar for our managers.”

Darren Thompson, HR Director at Ainscough Crane Hire

As Ainscough further develops their use of Power BI, they look forward to making reporting to the Operations Director and Chief Executive easier and more tailored.

Onboarding

One of the next priorities to come out of the system review is to move Ainscough’s onboarding process onto the system.

“When we looked at the onboarding module, we realised that rather than the paper-based system we have right now, candidates would be able to just go online and provide the information we need.
This means we can engage them more easily throughout the process by offering a video employee handbook for instance.

We would also be able to track the completion of tasks throughout the process. This will give a much more professional edge to the candidate experience which is key since we recruit around 200 people per year.”

Darren Thompson, HR Director at Ainscough Crane Hire

Probation and talent management

Having the review has uncovered even more opportunities to automate existing manual processes going forward.

Setting individuals up for success during their probationary period is one of them. “We’d like to send out reminders to managers for specific actions throughout a probationary period, to check in and provide updates on the individual’s progress.”

Darren Thompson, HR Director at Ainscough Crane Hire

“We now know that it incorporates things like succession planning and performance potential, this is going to be so useful!”

Darren Thompson, HR Director at Ainscough Crane Hire

This would also be useful for performance management in general. Ainscough’s existing performance management tool is being underutilised, the tools available through Zellis systems includes far more than simply capturing objectives and individual progress.

Time and money saved

Like many companies, Ainscough often sends out letters to staff. But with 800 staff members this can add up to £1000 in franking costs alone, not to mention the time and cost involved in printing, folding and stuffing envelopes. Darren and the team are keen to relegate paper letters to the past, and instead send all communications through MyView, which will make things easier, cheaper and faster, not to mention a permanent digital record for staff members.

Now that Ainscough are aware of the potential of their Zellis system and are working closely with their customer success managers, they are saving both time and money, as well as providing a better experience for their staff.

And this growing relationship is what Darren feels makes Zellis stand out as a supplier.

“We often talk with our customers about wanting to be their key partner. If they are building bridges or whatever it might be, we want them to think first of Ainscough, because they consider us their partner. And that’s certainly how our relationship with Zellis has developed over the course of the last year, it feels much more like a partnership than a supplier and customer.”

Darren Thompson, HR Director at Ainscough Crane Hire