Our firm’s mission is “to positively impact the success of our clients, staff and community in a pivotal way.” That success can be impacted in many ways, not all of which are necessarily related to accounting services and tax planning. To that end, we’ve launched Pivotal’s Picks, to showcase some of our favorite tools, products, services, apps, and so on.
DISCLAIMER: Our firm will never accept requests from companies to have their products included in Pivotal’s Picks and will never receive any compensation for these picks either before or after the fact. They are simply tools that we’ve found are a good fit for our organization, and we think you should consider for yours. We hope you find a gem! Now on to our first pick: BambooHR.
What Problems Were We Encountering?
With an increasing number of staff, our Human Resources management was getting more complicated and very time-consuming, more specifically:
- Managing everyone’s time off schedules and recording the details in all the necessary places required too many steps.
- Overseeing our training curriculum was complicated; who had taken what, who needed what, did people need a refresher on something they had taken previously, how did people get the right training to move up in the organization, etc.?
- The client service side of our business had embraced paperless document management tools a number of years ago, but the internal administration side was still quite heavily paper-reliant. It was time to banish the paper storm for a digital solution.
- Our regular feedback cycles and annual review processes were based on a framework that hadn’t been updated in many years. These items were mentioned frequently when we polled our team on what they found most frustrating about their jobs, so we knew they needed attention.
- Goal setting for everyone in the firm is an important component of supporting our firm’s Accountability core value. The problem was the recording, scheduling, updating, and measuring the success of each person’s numerous goals.
- Our dedicated HR Professional had moved on to pursue another opportunity and her responsibilities had been distributed out among a few other staff members rather than replacing her. This placed significant time pressures on those other staff members who already had full time responsibilities of their own.
How Did We Locate Potential Solutions?
Our firm was a member of an association of independent public accounting firms throughout North America, so we started by asking that network for suggestions. BambooHR was the most frequently mentioned solution and was already being used by a number of other firms in the association. What better way to enhance the successes and avoid the pitfalls than to be able to rely on your peers who have already experienced things first hand?
We also asked for recommendations from HR Professionals in our personal networks, since they would have the most experience with such systems. And finally, we did research across the web to see which platforms were available and which came highly recommended.
The alternatives were shortlisted and a live demonstration of each of the top six products was scheduled so we could see the platforms, tools, and interfaces in action for ourselves.
What Were the Most Important Factors to Consider?
- Security of Personal Information: Human Resources deals with the most private and personal of information, and such data simply must be secured.
- User Friendly Interface: One of the frequent complaints about our performance management system was that it was unwieldy. We knew that our new solution could not be that way. It had to be friendly for all of us to use or we’d just end up with no one using the new system either.
- Pricing and Contract Requirements: We were looking for an option that would allow us to recognize some cost savings by licensing on a per-user basis and not requiring an annual contract for a pre-set block of users. Obviously we also wanted to find a solution that was fair in its licensing costs, with an appropriate feature set for the cost being charged.
- Digital Only Solution: One of the biggest problems with the old system was the paper storm and all the documents moving around the office. The new solution had to be electronic only and remove the administrative hurdles that were taking so much of our time.
- Anytime Anywhere Accessibility: With our team members having such varied schedules and facing the demands of the modern world of work, we needed a solution that could be available to everyone in our organization at all times, regardless of where they were or when they were able to accomplish their work.
Which of the Available Options Did We Select?
BambooHR (https://www.bamboohr.com/) got the nod from our evaluation team.
The Nitty-Gritty:
Features
BambooHR dramatically reduced the amount of administrative time it was taking to cover off the many HR requirements associated with running our organization. Here are some examples of how it has positively impacted the success of our firm:
- We’ve replaced our old filing cabinet full of employee records with the secure online database in BambooHR. Personal details, job details, training info, and benefits tracking all safe, secure, and accessible from anywhere at any time.
- Our job postings are run through BambooHR now and we use the applicant tracking tools to sift through and find the best candidates. We can see at a glance which resources are providing the best candidates and focus our attention on those so we get the most bang for our buck.
- New hires receive an onboarding package electronically before they start with us, so they don’t need to spend that boring first day that comes with any new job, filling out all the personnel forms and reading all the policies. Instead, they dive right in and get to work with their new colleagues.
- Onboarding and off-boarding templates have been designed so everyone involved remembers all the steps necessary to add new staff members or remove those who have moved on.
- Time off requests are handled either through the website or the handy mobile app that lets people make requests with a few taps on their smartphones and lets managers approve them in the same way. Time off balances are tracked and visible to staff and managers for complete clarity at all times. Balances show the current amount, and also any time already scheduled for the future. There is a great calculator feature that will let staff and managers see how much time someone will have available at a given date in the future. The time off calendar shows everyone who’s in and who’s out on any given day. As an added plus, it also keeps track of celebrations like birthdays and employment anniversaries for that personal touch.
- BambooHR has a number of useful reports built right into the system and we’ve designed many of our own through the user-friendly report writer. Point-and-click to select the fields you want and just like that, there’s your report.
- Our internal HR paperwork now runs through the electronic signature tools in BambooHR, meaning we don’t need to distribute paper forms to anyone anymore. Documents can even be completed and signed on a mobile device if the staff member is away.
- There are a few standard Access Levels but additional Custom levels can be created if necessary. It is very easy to set up so anyone in any role can see exactly what they need but nothing more. HR Administrators can even see what BambooHR will look like for a given user by accessing a Preview as This User option so they can be sure things are set exactly right.
- Asset tracking has been added to our implementation so we can track everything from who has been assigned which equipment, to when someone has borrowed a portable scanner for fieldwork, or even when someone has signed out one of the business books from our extensive Leadership Library. (As an aside, our Leadership Library is pretty awesome, if we do say so ourselves – we’d even be happy to lend you a book if you’d like!)
- Employee Experience tools help us understand what matters most to our team members and survey them to evaluate their satisfaction and wellbeing, what is providing a great employee experience, or what is lacking and needs some work.
- The built in Help resources guide you step-by-step through problem resolutions, Bamboo’s Support Heroes (as they are called) are very helpful and respond quickly to queries (often same day), there are lots of webinars (both live and pre-recorded) to demonstrate the many components, monthly video updates are provided to spotlight any changes or new features they have added, and all points of contact at BambooHR really do seem to love their jobs. Every message ends with a cheery “Happy Bamboo-ing!”
Pricing
- There are three different flavours of BambooHR, the basic Core version, the middle Advantage version, and the full-featured Pro version. Our firm uses the Advantage version, which includes more advanced features like Hiring & Onboarding as well as the integrations with other products. There are also add-ons that can take care of things like Performance Management and Time Tracking.
- Monthly billing plans are very flexible, only charging for the number of users each month. As we spin up more staff members during busy season we are charged more and when they leave we are charged less. No need to contact anyone at BambooHR to make the changes; it’s all self-serve – add and remove people whenever you need. The service has no contract period and can be cancelled at any time.
Implementation & Timeline
- BambooHR assigned us one of their own Implementation Project Managers to assist with the initial setup process and ours was great! She guided our implementation team through the set up stages with regular phone calls, dealt with all our questions, handled much of the data importing, and got us rolling very smoothly. Tt was one of the smoothest implementations we’ve ever done.
- The timeline from making our decision, through the implementation project, to the live rollout to all our staff took about two months. That was comprised of five weeks working with our assigned Implementation Project Manager and three weeks of getting ourselves organized so we understood everything, preparing the training documentation to share with the staff, and scheduling training sessions so everyone in the firm could attend. Given the importance that BambooHR was going to play in our firm’s HR management, it was mandatory that everyone in the organization attend a session to get up to speed.
Final Thoughts
We’d be happy to share our story with you if you’d like more information. Of course, you may also want to visit their website at https://www.bamboohr.com/ for all the details. If you don’t want to take our word for it, you can even try out BambooHR with a free trial if you would like to dive in yourself and see what you think.