Case Study on effectively and efficiently managing people across multiple locations and functions using one cloud-based platform.

About the Client

Our client is a large hospitality retailer with a collection of over 300 airport-based restaurants, cafes and bars across Asia, The Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. The HR Team spent the last year helping almost 300 staff across Australia and New Zealand navigate everything 2020 had to throw at them.  

Customer challenge

The hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by COVID. This has been especially true for restaurants, cafes and bars operating in airports in Australia and New Zealand. The HR Head and HR team, for our Client, have had to communicate each new government directive to employees, which has been a lot of work.

Fully transitioning to working remotely

The support staff at our client’s company are used to working remotely.  Together the HR Head, based in NZ, and the HR coordinator, based in Melbourne, managed 300 staff across both domestic and international airports in two countries. When everything moved online, they were ready. 

However, the sudden switch to remote work was still challenging. Although they had a good communication structure in place, with weekly operations and leadership meetings and weekly staff get-togethers, the transition was a shock to the system.

Employee wellbeing support

Our Client was faced with many challenges during this time with staff losses, and many sites closed. Along with the realisation it was going to be some time before international tourism recovered.

For those who have returned to work at Auckland’s international airport, the reminder of the very real danger of COVID is present in the form of safety measures (including PPE, regular testing, and strict social distancing). Many people in New Zealand have returned to a normal life, but airport staff are reminded of the global pandemic every day. “We are working on a level 1 alert, which requires us to wear PPE and get COVID tests every two weeks. It has been tough on the staff, but we have been supporting them closely.”

Recruitment

Restrictions on international travel have had a significant impact on Our Client’s regular trading activities. Additionally, our client, like many other hospitality companies, hires holiday workers to staff their venues. Instead of waiting out an indefinite stand down, several employees opted to find alternative jobs. In 2021, the main area of focus will be recruitment.

However trying to hire quality personnel will be challenging. Several forms of recruitment will need to be considered, other than just the advertisement, because the borders still have some restrictions.

The Solution

It’s certainly been a quieter year than usual for Our Client, but the HR Team haven’t let the time go to waste. They have been using our HR solutions to streamline their HR processes for close to two years, but used the past year as an opportunity to transition more processes to the cloud-based platform. 

For the past couple of years it’s only been used by HR, but operational practices have now been rolled out to managers to use. During this time the “plan to go paperless” was also implemented so when they were ready to recruit and onboard staff again they could hit the ground running.

Streamline the Onboarding process

The hard work of the HR Team has been rewarded ten-fold. The old back and forth between HR, hiring managers and new starters has been replaced by a 100% paper (and pain) free onboarding experience. Previously the manual paper system was to fill in forms, pass it to the manager to then send to HR and payroll, then to return back to try and match up the paperwork. The process was time consuming, resource hungry and used emails and paperwork. The new streamlined paperless system is all on OCH’s Cloud-based HR platform.

Moving to cloud-based employee onboarding necessitated the use of OCH’s HR Onboarding and Offboarding Checklists. These checklists generate tasks for any employees or managers who are responsible for ensuring that new hires have everything they need to be productive from the start. Whether it’s preparing new hires’ equipment (such as laptops or uniforms) or collecting assets when employees leave (such as security passes and equipment), Onboarding and Offboarding Checklists ensure that nothing is overlooked.

Provide transparency across the organisation

The use of tasks is not limited to employee onboarding and offboarding checklists. Any task created can be assigned by any or all employees to members of various teams, promoting cross-functional alignment and ensuring nothing is missed.  Manager requests or rate changes are just some of the examples of tasks that can be created in the OCH HR cloud-based system.

With COVID restrictions changing on the fly, having a centralised and easily accessible source of truth for managers and support operations working across Australia and New Zealand has proven invaluable.

Fifty people in one week could return to work after the stand down finished.  OCH’s HR Platform provided visibility of all the tasks and where they were up to.  Saving inboxes being flooded with emails as would happened in the past. Additional helpful features of the new HR system is that you can delegate tasks and assign collaborators. For example: Payroll must complete this, the manager must approve it, and HR Manager must set up the contracts. In real-time you can see exactly where the task is at, and if it is on track.

The Results

Using a single cloud-based platform, our Client can now manage its workforce across numerous locations and functions with effectiveness and efficiency. Managers and operations employees may easily share critical information with teams or the entire organisation using a desktop or mobile device, decreasing their dependency on emails and manual procedures.

The new paperless HR management system has provided the HR Team and Managers visibility over the areas of the employee lifecycle that were previously more difficult to access. Our Clients’ employees have been able to be more successful in their roles as a result of providing their managers with the resources they need to be more effective.

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