Cascade HRi’s ‘transformational’ change for Transform

Transform Housing & Support provides accommodation and support for around 2,000 homeless and vulnerable people each year in Surrey and surrounding areas. With such crucial work, every second counts! That’s why an integrated HR and Payroll system was important for Transform to enable colleagues to spend their time on what matters most – their work with clients.

Main benefits of Cascade HRi to Transform:

• The organisation now saves a week of staff administration time each month
• Managers now have better oversight of their teams
• A seamless transition was achieved during the challenging Covid period
• Cascade adapted to Transform’s every need

From paper trails to digital efficiency

IRIS Cascade HRi enabled Transform to go from paper to digital and, with that, came a whole heap of benefits. Gillian Steers tells us how life used to be as a Senior HR Officer before Cascade HRi: “We used to have annual leave requests on paper and managers had to tell me when someone was sick, after which I would have to manually input it onto the system. Since it wasn’t integrated with the payroll system, it didn’t update the sickness entitlement, so at the end of the month, I used to have to run a sickness report and cross-check it with all the individual staff records to ensure they matched up.”

Now, with an integrated platform which eliminates the need for manual HR and payroll tasks, Gillian tells us she saves a good week each month: “Until you get an integrated system, you don’t realise how much unnecessary additional work you’ve been doing.”

Transform smooth transition to Cascade HRi

Going live with Cascade HRi in April 2020 meant Transform was implementing a new HR and payroll system in the middle of Covid. Gillian tells us: “Because of the work we do, Transform staff were considered keyworkers so a large percentage of our staff were continuing to work in the field with clients and others were trying to manage operations working from home all at the same time as we were bringing a new HR system in!”

However, the process wasn’t as daunting as the organisation had initially thought. “We had our training online during Covid and when we were in a position to put all the records in it, we just moved our data from the old system. It wasn’t such a big deal and it went a lot more smoothly than we thought. Plus, the team at IRIS looked after us during the move.”

Now, Gillian tells us that managers have embraced Cascade Hri: “Our managers have demanding jobs juggling a number of priorities so it helps them to have processes that are efficient and easy to follow.”

“They do also have much better oversight of their teams now, and it means we – as the People team – don’t have to be as involved in the admin of such things as absence requests. The employee just requests holiday and the manager approves it, and it’s all done within the system.”  

Making Cascade HRi your own

One of the biggest benefits of Cascade HRi for Transform is the flexibility of the system. Gillian tells us: “Since we implemented the system – four years ago now – we’ve added quite a few screens and a lot of workflows to it. That’s one of the things we really like about Cascade HRi, it is so flexible.”

Modifying the platform to suit your organisation’s specific needs can be a sure way of getting the most out of Cascade Hri. For example, Transform added a screen specifically for DBS requirements. “Everyone who works for us needs an enhanced DBS, so we’ve added a ‘right to work’ alongside a DBS screen to the system to make that process as smooth as possible.”

“We’ve also added screens for overtime and extra fields to existing screens so that it works more efficiently for us. That flexibility to build it so that it perfectly meets our needs is a huge benefit of Cascade. I would highly recommend it.”

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