The Charity Commission
Self-service HR - How self-service HR set the Commission on a winning course
The Charity Commission carries out essential work regulating and advising UK charities on best practice for efficiency and effectiveness. HR for the commission’s 500 employees is a crucial part of the organisation’s success – and this was recognised as such when the HR team recently won an award for the Best Innovation in Internal Customer Service at a Customer Service Award ceremony voted for by employees themselves.
The Commission uses online self-service technology to process holiday requests, sickness, absence and employee details. It’s also used to help conduct appraisals, so both managers and employees can access their appraisal goals at any time, and track progress easily.
The win was announced after self-service HR technology from NorthgateArinso helped the Charity Commission become more efficient across the board – not just in the HR department. As well as working more efficiently, the Commission now saves around 4,000 pieces of paper every year, so it’s a much greener organisation.
According to Helen Tidmarsh, HR development manager at the Charity Commission: “It has been well received by employees. It’s flexible and intuitive to use, and the HR team receives very few enquiries from users. Technology needs to ‘just work’ these days – no one teaches you to use Amazon and eBay at home, and employees expect the same from business systems. Self-service from NorthgateArinso achieves just that. As it was users themselves who voted for the award, it’s the best possible endorsement of the system.”
“As well as helping the organisation overall, self-service has made a big difference to the way the HR team works,” Tidmarsh continued. “We’re spending far less time on routine administration – entering details, chasing managers and processing requests. We have valuable information we need at our fingertips – it’s faster to access, and we can rely on its accuracy. This means we can spend more time advising and supporting the Commission on issues like recruitment, employee development and talent management, and providing a more valuable service overall.
The Commission is still finding new ways to use self-service HR. It has just started posting pay and award details online, and more paper-based HR processes are going to be moved online – for example job specifications. “Self-service from NorthgateArinso is sufficiently flexible to allow us to customise it to our own requirements, which makes a big difference,” Tidmarsh concluded.
