Action Group Shifts Focus Back to Clients

Before their switch to Sparkrock, Action Group struggled to manage the data and process silos that had popped up between the Finance and Human Resources departments.

Information was stored either manually or in different systems, causing staff endless hours of work piecing the information together for a successful payroll process. Compounding this challenge was the management of timesheets. 

For starters, the process was manual, which meant Action Group was processing over 600 timesheets by hand every two weeks. The complexity of the timesheets was huge, and there was no efficient way to cross-reference information to get a complete view of their employees, their time, or schedules. Sometimes they’d have to spread all the timesheets cross a table to determine if people were going overtime, and then all of this data had to be manually coded and keyed into their finance and payroll system. To add even more complication, because some of their timesheets were handwritten, they couldn’t be easily read and then had to be verbally clarified with staff.

Now that Action Group has their Sparkrock system implemented and stable, David Williams—the Communications and Technology Director who’s been with the organization for 15 years—says his staff love it and have become accustomed to having all of their information readily available to them online.

Action's Group's ongoing problems with scheduling were addressed with the Sparkrock Online Employee Scheduling and Relief Bidding modules. This functionality gives staff a way to self-manage shift trading and covering open shifts, so supervisors don't have to dial their way through a backup list every time more resources are needed.

Sparkrock’s Online Employee Scheduling module alone has saved Action Group an estimated 1.5 FTE for payroll processing.

Before the switch, they seemed to be continually increasing staffing to deal with the workload of managing timesheets, schedules, payroll, etc. Now they’ve been able to reallocate these resources to other, more strategic duties. Instead of having highly skilled finance staff occupy a data entry role, they can now use them for data analysis and data monitoring.

Before, supervisors had to spend time calling around to fill a shift; there was no easy way to connect those who couldn’t work with those who wanted to work. Now, they can post the open shift online, and staff who are looking to pick up extra hours can view all of the open shifts and make requests to take them.