12 Days of IRIS Christmas: “On the 6th day of Christmas, I saw how efficient my elves are…

By Adam Deakin | 9th December 2016 | 16 min read

...using brand new IRIS HR."

If you’ve been keeping up-to-date with our 12 Days of IRIS Christmas blog series, you’ll know that we’ve been focusing on Claus Industries, a valued customer here at IRIS.

Today, we’ll hear from the CEO of Claus Industries, a Mr S Claus, about the various seasonal HR difficulties his company faces throughout the year.

“I need to monitor absences regularly to see any trends that pop-up, especially around Christmas – you know what elves can be like, appearing and disappearing on a whim. And don’t get me started on gingerbread men and their unions, insisting on having the right not to be eaten...”

Many businesses will be able to relate to Mr Claus’ conundrum (okay, maybe not the gingerbread men bit), with absences always seeming to increase around the seasonal period, in January and on Mondays. However, without a proper reporting system in place, it can be difficult to monitor.

IRIS HR, being a self-service system, puts the emphasis firmly back on Mr Claus’ workforce, meaning they must submit holiday requests and sickness directly through the software for their Line Manager (Head Elf) to approve or reject.

He can then keep track of used, pending and available absence totals, automatically calculate each individual’s Bradford Factor, and view a team calendar of leave booked by colleagues, elves, gingerbread men or reindeer.

“I have a large workforce consisting of full-time and part-time staff, and A LOT of seasonal workers. It can sometimes be difficult to manage…particularly in the run up to Christmas, with figuring out who’s owed what and in which currency. Can’t I just pay everyone in candy canes?”

In this example, Claus Industries has a large workforce that takes on additional members of its manufacturing staff around a particular time of year to cope with demand.

Luckily for Mr Claus, IRIS HR comes with an in-depth Employee Records feature so you can record and store details of employees, their role, contract and salary info, emergency contact details and any company equipment that’s been issued. Storing this information electronically can help with employment legislation.

Additionally, the Employee Directory feature enables employees to quickly source contact details of colleagues throughout your organisation, while users with administrator permissions can view details of leavers and any new starters you have joining.

Whatever the size of your business, IRIS HR helps you keep track of your whole workforce.

N.b. Candy canes are not currently recognised as legal tender by the UN (not that we’d complain if they were).

“My workforce is constantly producing new products, which requires training. It would be handy if Claus Industries could keep track of all training in real-time…”

Claus Industries manufactures hundreds of millions of products annually, many of which are new products as consumer demand changes each year.

Last year it was Furbies, this year it’s Hatchimals; next year, who knows? It’s because of this that Claus Industries invests heavily in workplace training and now needs a system in place to monitor training in real-time.

IRIS HR comes fully integrated with an IRIS training module to provide a solution for managing internal training programmes for employees. This way, Claus Industries no longer has to rely on inaccurate spreadsheets and can use a centralised cloud-based system to monitor, and identify potential gaps in, training.

Try out IRIS HR now and streamline your workforce from top to bottom

If, like Mr Claus, you could benefit from modern, cloud-based, elf-friendly self-service HR software to improve efficiency within your business, simply click below to start your free, no-obligation trial of IRIS HR.

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If you'd like to read more in our ‘The 12 Days of IRIS Christmas’ series, click on the links below:

Day 1: “On the 1st day of Christmas a client gave to me, a shoebox full of receipts…”

Day 2: “On the 2nd day of Christmas I looked back at what I'd seen, at IRIS World 2016…”

Day 3: “On the 3rd day of Christmas a client questioned me, about my A-M-L philosophy…”

Day 4: “On the 4th day of Christmas I fear I must confess, I've not a clue about the new F-R-S…”

Day 5: “On the 5th day of Christmas a client said to me, what on earth is M-T-D?”

Day 7: “On the 7th day of Christmas my clients profits saw a lift, thanks to forecasting from GearShift...”

Day 8: “On the 8th day of Christmas we looked back at all the ways, we'd spent our IRIS 'Giving Back' days...”

Day 9: “On the 9th day of Christmas as we sipped on our eggnog, we took a look at this year's popular blogs...”

Day 10: “On the 10th day of Christmas I slept peacefully at night, after upgrading to an OpenWebsite...”

Day 11: “On the 11th day of Christmas we travelled overseas, to see what life is like at Claus Industries... (Part I)”

Day 12: “On the 12th day of Christmas we travelled overseas, to see what life is like at Claus Industries... (Part II)”