Client Comments

St Gemma's Hospice Case Study

Who are St Gemma's Hospice

St Gemma's is a registered charity providing specialist palliative care to the people of Leeds and surrounding areas. It is one of the largest units in the UK and employs over 200 staff and works with more than 550 volunteers.

Summary pre Cascade

St Gemma's did have a personnel information system of sorts prior to implementing Cascade. However it was old and had been neither correctly configured at the beginning nor robustly maintained over the years and so was no longer fit for purpose. HR staff were still attempting to enter information into the system but it was something of a pointless exercise as the system was not then used to manage the workforce, create reports etc.

The most useful and accurate information was held either on a series of Excel spreadsheets or within paper based personnel files.

The Challenge

The myriad ways of recording and storing information within the Personnel Department was less than ideal and it became clear that one system would solve many of the accuracy and time consuming input problems that had plagued the staff for many years.

It was also becoming clear that more modern and proactive means of monitoring and reporting upon workforce trends and statistics would benefit the personnel management at St Gemma's. Of key importance was a system that allowed monitoring of sickness absence, age profiling for succession planning, diversity reports etc.

The Decision

The Director of Personnel visited the Computers in HR exhibition in London in the summer of 2006 and was immediately impressed by the way that Cascade responded to the somewhat vague questions posed. (The project was still in its infancy at this stage and the Director really wasn't sure what she knew and didn't know!).

Having impressed in London it was a natural choice to include Cascade in the 'beauty parade' later in the year.

Cascade shone for a number of reasons including the ease with which we'd been able to navigate the system after only a few minutes observation, the flexibility of the system in terms of the ability to configure the screens to meet our requirements and the value for money was excellent.

The Solution

Core HR Module: This module now gives us accurate information at the touch of a few buttons and allows us to run reports and interrogate the information for basic reports, workforce profiling and all manner of external information requirements. we have configured to our heart's content and are now very happy with the appearance and functionality of it. We are in the midst of a large data audit exercise which will hopefully mean our information is as accurate as possible by the end of March 2008.

System Designer Module: fabulous tool! We've changed screens and added, deleted and enhanced to our hearts' content. Anybody who doesn't buy this bit is crazy and will sorely miss out!

This module enables us to create a system that looks, feels and operates as we want it to, rather than as somebody imagined it should. Personnel information systems invariably succeed or fail depending upon the people using them everyday - put rubbish in, you'll get rubbish out. If you can configure a system so that it looks how you want it to, with information on screens that mean something to you and without fields being present on screen that you will never use then you are more than halfway there to getting the Personnel staff to buy into the system, own it and use it.

To find out about Cascade please contact us via the web site, or by phone or email:

CONTACT:

Andrew Court
Cascade Human Resources Ltd.
Phone: 0113 255 4115
Fax: 0113 255 9073
Email: Andrew.Court@cascadehr.co.uk