The Challenge
Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) is a nonprofit that promotes the healthy development of individuals, families and communities through direct services, volunteerism and partnerships in the San Francisco Bay Area. The growing organization also provides operational support to smaller nonprofits. To get this multifaceted job done, BACR needs to hire large numbers of seasonal employees each year, effectively doubling and halving their workforce over and over again.
The problem? There are just two dedicated HR professionals in-house managing the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, workflows and offboarding of 1,200 people each year – not to mention the related paperwork. By contrast, the California standard is to have one HR person for every 90-110 people. Meanwhile, the mountain of data management required to handle the hectic HR processes put stress on the nonprofit’s IT group, which had to invent workflows to try to cope with the mass hires and separations each fall and spring that coincide with BACR’s programming in local schools.
The Solution
BACR looked at several different vendors and made the decision to implement SharedHR Central, a human resources management system (HRMS) that includes a Web-based HR database and employee portal. In addition, BACR added SharedHR’s optional payroll partner, TRAXPayroll. The client’s decision was based on a number of criteria including SharedHR’s and TRAXPayroll’s depth of HR and payroll experience, their dependable technologies, their reputation for high-level customer service, and the cost-effectiveness of the services provided.
“By switching out our current payroll vendor with TRAXPayroll, we were able to save enough on payroll processing costs to largely underwrite the cost of the much-needed HRMS.” said BACR Director of Human Resources Sally Shine. “The coordinated implementation of both systems went very smoothly and we were able to rollout employee and management self-serve capabilities at each of our field locations within 60 days.” After the initial implementation, SharedHR built a technology “bridge” to Salesforce, BACR’s CRM database, which was used by the IT group to initiate its employee onboarding workflows.
“The technology we employed has allowed us to increase our HR and IT services without adding additional headcount. We used SharedHR’s library of HR compliance documents to standardize our HR paperwork throughout our offices and we use the system’s email reminders and custom fields to track and maintain employee information, including electronic personnel files,” said Ms. Shine. “All our HR documents and data are now in a central location for easy access by all employees and managers.”
The Result
By utilizing SharedHR, BACR was actually able to “achieve more with less.” Significant efficiencies were achieved in payroll, as the Web integration between SharedHR Central and TRAXPayroll eliminated duplicate entries and significantly reduced payroll processing errors. Since SharedHR is so simple to use and is Web-hosted, IT is no longer needed to program the HR intranet. Meanwhile, HR, without need of a technical background, can set up custom fields, upload and store documents, and even change Web pages and post company news quickly and easily. HR also has been able to provide great customer service to its employee population without having to add to department headcount.
With SharedHR’s help, BACR managed to quickly bring their hectic HR function under control, freeing the organization up to spend more time on fulfilling its mission while also safeguarding the nonprofit from a compliance standpoint. BACR is expected to continue to grow with consolidation in the nonprofit sector, and the organization will continue to be able to effectively provide shared services including payroll, IT and HR to smaller nonprofits.