Amber Family
“We chose myhrtoolkit because it was easy to use. We find their administration is much more transparent and simpler, but also secure with its permission settings. All of this makes our lives managing employees much easier.”
Lauren Benbow, HR manager
Amber Family is an organisation that operates residential centres dedicated to giving parents a chance to demonstrate their parental abilities within a safe and welcoming environment. The Amber Family’s team of experienced Key Workers and Support Staff have collaborated with a large number of Local Authorities in order to complete parenting assessments for families.
Currently, Amber Family is made up of around 38 employees within its team and operates 3 residential centres within the north west. Lauren Benbow is the company’s HR manager and has worked with Amber Family since 2017.
Myhrtoolkit makes staff management easier
Before myhrtoolkit, Amber Family was managing its employees by using their server-based files to host spreadsheets and documents relating to staff management. This often caused issues, as only specific staff members could access these, which included holiday requests and staff documents. They eventually decided they wanted to make their HR and staff management more streamlined and have everything in one place.
“We chose myhrtoolkit because it was easy to use. We find their administration is much more transparent and simpler, but also secure with its permission settings. All of this makes our lives managing employees much easier.”
Automatic holiday entitlement calculations
One major benefit for the company by using myhrtoolkit is the effective record-keeping, such as employee file notes, which ensures an established paper trail. “This is especially helpful to us as the majority of our staff are on variable hours, which used to cause a lot of work using spreadsheets in the past. With myhrtoolkit however, it automatically calculates staff holiday entitlement for staff members based on their hours.”
Best Feature: The Holiday Planner
Lauren’s favourite feature of the toolkit is the holiday planner. “The automation of entitlement calculations and the ability to see an overview of employee leave via the calendar is very useful”. The reports feature also helps to generate the reports needed instantly and with no fuss, saving time on collecting and analysing data manually. Lauren additionally finds the document storage feature helpful – “we are regulated by OFTSED, and therefore it’s handy to have all the required policies and documents in one easy-to-access place”.
The Customer Support Team are helpful and supportive
Lauren found the support from myhrtoolkit very helpful when first setting up. “The customer support team member who assisted me at the time was really helpful and supportive, especially as it was the first time we had used any software like myhrtoolkit within the company.” Since set up, Amber Family have contacted the support team a handful of times with questions or queries related to the myhrtoolkit and always found the responses and guidance very timely. Lauren also makes use of the support section on the myhrtoolkit website and finds the user guides are very informative with step-by-step guides with demos and diagrams to help navigate any issues she faces.
Day to day, myhrtoolkit makes things a lot quicker
Lauren says she would definitely recommend myhrtoolkit to other organisations and businesses. “it has taken a lot of time out of managing HR administration duties, everything is in one place, and with the permissions feature whoever needs to see certain information can see it. Day to day, it makes things a lot quicker for us.”