Founded in 1990, this large community bank has 28 branches, 330 employees and offers personal and business banking services, mortgages, loans, and investment vehicles. The bank succeeds in part because of its focus on superior customer service and commitment to growing its services to meet the needs of the community. When it comes to its employees, the bank has the same commitment to service and chooses HROnline from PeopleStrategy to help deliver on that commitment.
Growth Dictates Change
When the bank acquired another community bank four years ago, neither organization was using a computerized HR Information Systems (HRIS). “We rapidly grew from 160 to 230 employees and our system of spreadsheets and paper files was just too cumbersome,” recalls the bank’s HR Generalist and spokesperson. “We started researching HRIS and found PeopleStrategy and their HROnline product.”
Full-Featured Hosted Solution
The product demonstration PeopleStrategy provided impressed the bank’s team. “We liked what we saw. HROnline offered ease-of-use, a full feature set, and a lot of flexibility in one strong package.”
While a hosted solution was not an initial requirement, the bank says the hris benefits of an online solution have now been proven. “There was a massive power outage last year, and our offices were shut down. I had power at my home and was able to complete payroll processing for all of our branches. I know our employees appreciated that!”
Another advantage of utilizing HROnline rather than a local, server-based application is the predictable cost structure. “We pay a fixed fee per employee and have no upgrade fees and no additional IT expenses. It makes it simple to budget our HR expenses.”
Eliminate Paper Time Sheets
HROnline has streamlined the bank’s time and attendance collection system. “Before, we used paper time sheets that managers faxed to the home office for payroll processing. I had to manually go through hundreds of time sheets, adding up the hours and calculating any overtime. It took me all day Monday and Tuesday, often working into the evening.”
Now, employees at each of the bank’s branches log on to the HROnline secure Web site and enter their hours. Those time sheets are automatically routed to the employees’ managers for approval and once approved, to the HR department for final approval. “It’s a tremendous time savings. What was two long days is now down to less than four hours.” Once approved, the time records are uploaded directly from HROnline to PayCor, the bank’s payroll service provider.
Effectively Monitor Attendance
In addition to slashing the time spent processing time records, HROnline facilitates attendance tracking and time-off requests. “Employees can make time off requests directly in HROnline. Before they would make a phone call, write a note, or send an e-mail. That request would have to get written up and passed to the appropriate manager for approval.”
With HROnline, time-off requests are automatically routed to the employees’ manager. The managers have access to a full vacation calendar within HROnline, enabling them to make informed decisions about staffing levels before approving a request. Once a request is approved, it is automatically added to the vacation calendar.
HROnline also tracks unscheduled absences, allowing management to detect and address attendance trends and before they become problematic.
Streamline Open Enrollment
Last year was the first year the bank moved its annual open enrollment cycle online, utilizing the power and flexibility of HROnline. “It was a success. We got great feedback from the employees. They loved that they could complete the process from one location and didn’t have to enter and reenter the same information on forms for every provider.
“HROnline has totally changed the way our HR department operates. Without HROnline we would have needed to hire more employees to keep up.”