Spectrum Housing Group saves £50k annually with HR mobility

Housing provider Spectrum is saving 50,000 a year after transforming its HR department's mobile capabilities.

The affordable housing group deployed Advanced's MobileHR solution to cut expenses paperwork by enabling employees to submit reimbursement requests directly from their smartphones and tablets.

The organisation said this has freed up its HR team to the extent that line managers can record all absences remotely, without having to travel into the office, saving on fuel.

The MobileHR tool also interfaces with IT services firm Advanced's OpenHR system that manages information on Spectrum's 900 staff situated at nine UK offices.

This software uses training and recruitment modules and automation to help HR staff track absences, health and safety information and identify internal skills gaps.

Robert Barnett-Moore, HR systems manager at Spectrum, said: "MobileHR has eliminated the need for trade staff to come into the office to manage annual leave requests and other administrative tasks.

"We are now saving approximately 50,000 each year in fuel and efficiency gains which has given us an instant return on our investment.

"In addition, holiday and sickness absence records are now automatically updated remotely by authorised staff. As a result we have saved five per cent of administrator's working time so they can focus more strategically."

Spectrum has also started boosting employee engagement through an internal recognition scheme that allows staff to nominate employees for awards via their mobile devices.

The scheme, supported by the Advanced software, has seen nearly 3,000 nominations since 2012.

Barnett-Moore said: "We wanted to improve our levels of employee engagement and Spectrum Stars, with the aid of MobileHR, is supporting our goal to be named as one of The Best 100 Companies to Work For' in The Sunday Times' annual survey.

"In the last two months alone we have seen a 71 per cent increase in staff nominations for our 2015 scheme, partly due to the fact that Advanced's solution is so easy and quick to use."