Fennies Nurseries invested in Synel’s Synergy Workforce to future-proof their workforce management

One of the UK’s leading providers of under 5’s education has invested in a future-proof Synergy Time & Attendance (T&A) solution from Synel to ensure it has a payroll system that will continue to meet its needs, regardless of how many people it employs across its fast-growing number of nurseries.

Fennies provides nursery level education and care for pre-school children, with a focus on well-being and teaching children how to implement future healthy lifestyle habits.

The curriculum has been devised to fully engage children across the seven areas of learning, and the nursery rooms have been specially designed to enhance each stage of a child’s development.

With an ambition to expand to 17 sites by the end of 2021, Fennies currently employs over 450 teaching and administration staff at its 11 existing nurseries located throughout London, Surrey and Kent.

The Challenge

“With the number of people we employ planned to significantly increase over the coming months, it was felt that there could be no better time to invest in a scalable T&A system which could be customised to meet our unique set of operational requirements and as such, help us to deal with our payroll issues more efficiently, both now and far into the future.”

“Although they were sufficient when we were a much smaller organisation, we found that we could no longer rely on our existing processes and systems to ensure we could efficiently and accurately remunerate our fast-growing team which comprises full-time and part-time people, with a mix of those on fixed hour contracts and others who are working flexitime.”

“Simply put, we were faced with an endless challenge of our individual nurseries having to accurately capture payroll related data respecting new starters, hours worked, overtime, time off in lieu (TOIL), absences due to illness, holidays and leavers.”

Fennies’ Payroll Manager, Elize Germishuizen.

The Solution

An independent Payroll Consultant, having evaluated a number of solutions offered by various manufacturers, recommended to Elize Germishuizen that Synergy T&A software would best meet Fennies’ immediate and long-term requirements.

Synergy T&A, which Elize Germishuizen is using as an essential tool for payroll purposes and as such, has been integrated with Fennies’ Cascade payroll system, is packed with advanced functionality such as Cost Centre, which is enabling her to manage and track the shift costs of employees who work across different departments.

It is also being used by her operational and management colleagues, who can use the captured data to identify opportunities to improve productivity.

This is because in addition to ‘clocking in/out' functionality, Synergy T&A offers a wide range of scheduling and productivity tools, such as a dashboard, real-time visual overview of Fennies’ workforce and a graphical scheduler which enables a clear visual breakdown of Fennies’ employees’ activities and shift information.

Synergy T&A is part of Synel’s wider Synergy Workforce platform, which offers a host of modules designed to assist businesses to keep people and assets safe, as well as operate more efficiently and save money.

The optional modules, which include access control, shift scheduling, time costing, document, expenses and visitor management and cashless catering, can be used alongside Synergy T&A at an unlimited number of sites, as well as by those who work remotely.

Benefiting from being part of a Cloud-based system, the modules can share the same database and are accessible from the same graphical user interface (GUI).

The availability of these modules is of particular importance to Fennies as it continues to expand and employ more supervisory and management colleagues who may be ‘on the road’.

Facial Recognition Data Capture

The Synergy Face data capture devices installed at the entrance/exit to each nursery utilise proprietary three-dimensional facial analysis and identification algorithms to provide a hands-free and hygienic way for employees to clock in and out.

Enrolling any new Fennies’ employees takes just a matter of seconds and can be carried out from a Synergy Face device located at any of the nurseries. The devices deployed at other locations are then automatically updated across the network, meaning employees only have to be enrolled once to be able to clock in and out of the sites.

The technology is extremely accurate and can even distinguish between identical twins. For privacy and security purposes, no images are stored on any of the Synergy Face devices. Instead, templates are created from the captured algorithms, and these are used to verify the identity of an employee.

Support

“We were delighted with the support provided by our Synel Account Manager during the system design and implementation process, as well as the comprehensive training which is enabling us to make best use of Synergy T&A”,

“We highly value having access to a dedicated Account Manager who we can speak to if we have any queries or wish to make any changes to the system.

This gives us peace of mind in knowing that we do not have to join a queue, as is often the case with other suppliers, to speak to someone at a central call centre, who may not be familiar with our way of working”.

Elize Germishuizen.

Success

“With our unique set of work patterns, Synergy T&A has dramatically reduced the time it takes to administer our payroll.

Its deep integration with our Cascade payroll system is minimising errors and is making it far more efficient for us to process the remuneration of, for example, our open shift employees by allowing us to accurately track actual hours worked against contracted hours, which helps us manage operational equality.

It is also helping us identify ways to make better use of our available resources, maximise efficiency and control costs more effectively.”

Elize Germishuizen.