Clúid Housing is a not-for-profit group that has provided more than 12,000 affordable, high-quality homes to people in housing need. It is the leading Approved Housing Body (AHB) in Ireland. Clúid has its head office in Dublin, along with operations in Limerick, Cork and Galway, as well as many field employees working as Resident Housing Officers which involves spending much of their days off site. All told, it has more than 360 people and with such a dispersed team, keeping track of important HR information in one place is essential.
Clúid has a large workforce, requiring significant coordination to ensure the HR team stays informed about key employment milestones. This includes tracking probation periods, upcoming contracts expirations, and visas. Previously, Clúid managed these processes manually, relying on spreadsheets and direct communication with employees.
When the time came to upgrade its manual HR processes, Clúid went to the market to look at options. As a non-profit organisation, one of the biggest considerations for Clúid is to watch its budget carefully and look for value for money wherever it can. Grouper’s HR system was recommended and Clúid began to move all of its manual human resources processes onto the cloud-based technology.
Grouper played a critical role in creating new workflows in the system to help Clúid’s HR team. “We went through what could possibly be put through the system and what could be automated. Grouper helped us create tables within the system that helped streamline a lot of processes like probation, which meant we could track and pull reports on where we were at with outstanding probations,” says Stephen Willis, People Projects and Operations Lead at Clúid.
The system automates the process of sending notifications to managers ahead of scheduled check-in meetings with new recruits during their probation periods. The same feature is also useful whenever an important date arises such as contract expiry. “It makes a huge difference. Probation used to be a huge manual task that we had to track on a manual spreadsheet that we had to update,” Stephen adds.
This valuable feature has reduced administration times considerably. “It would probably be a 2-3 day piece of work because you have to track everything and manipulate it where now when we are setting up an employee on the system, the start date triggers the automatic reminder email,” he says.
Having all of the information in easy reach makes it easier to extract data needed to produce reports for audits. “It’s made a huge difference and has helped a huge amount,” Stephen adds.
Asked to describe Grouper’s approach to customer support, Stephen describes it as “exceptional service, responsive, with a human touch.” Clúid appreciates how Grouper’s approach differs from other technology providers. “With many vendors, reaching out for support often means receiving automated replies and waiting a week for a response. Even then, the replies can feel scripted. With Grouper, however, the support feels more personalised, and solutions are handled efficiently,” Stephen says.
“Moji goes above and beyond, and he would always try to help or make recommendations for what to do. Generally, Grouper do make a huge difference if you are stuck with a question or need help with something.”
