“Since using Breathe, I now have far greater visibility of what people are working on and how this correlates to their performance goals and objectives. This is incredibly useful and essential for strategic planning."
A friendly team of ergonomics geeks, Posture People are an office-furniture consultancy specialising in Digital Screen Equipment (DSE) assessments and ergonomic products. They've helped more than 3500+ companies and individuals to improve their environments.
Every member of their team is fully DSE qualified which means they are always ready to offer expert advice. Collectively they have 60 years’ experience assisting companies with their DSE compliance, procurement of ergonomic furniture & accessories and workplace design. There aren’t many workplace issues that they haven’t seen and resolved.
The services offered by the company range all the way from entire office refits to suggesting how an individual can be more comfortable at their desk. Together with their office design division (Love Your Workspace) they make sure their own staff and customers are thriving in the most productive work spaces possible. Over the years they have had the privilege of working with some of the best and brightest companies in the UK.
The Challenge - manual HR admin
Like many small businesses, the team at Posture People used to rely on a mixture of paper filing and Excel spreadsheets to manage HR-related data and paperwork. When the company was in its early years, managing this and HR-related tasks and processes manually was relatively straightforward. As the company began to grow, however, this became increasingly time-consuming and complicated. Recording absences due to sickness and holiday requests were becoming particularly challenging.
HR is jointly managed by Posture People’s Managing Director, Jo Blood and Finance Director, Lisa Oakley. Neither had prior experience in HR-specific roles and their expertise lay in businesses development and financial management respectively.
Breathe’s partners earn a commission from reselling and recommending Breathe. So far, it’s paying off. As it’s a low-cost system, the value really comes from enabling Helen to access her clients’ information on one, centralised system as opposed to multiple spreadsheets and paper files.
“Human resources is vitally important for every business. Even as a company that doesn’t employ dedicated HR-management-personnel, there is still administration to complete. As the businesses grew, Lisa and I found we were spending more time in these areas of management than our actual roles. It was clear we needed a system that would minimise the time and effort spend on administration so we could focus on growing our business”
Jo Blood, Managing Director
The Solution - Breathe: cloud-based HR-management software
Jo and Lisa began investigating their options and looked at several HR management software systems, only to be put off by their complexity and high cost.
“We looked at several systems and these were clearly designed and priced for larger businesses with significant IT budgets. Having discovered Breathe, we liked the simplicity of the system, the low monthly cost and the fact that support was included in the subscription. It ticked all the boxes as far as we were concerned.”
Jo Blood, Managing Director
Breathe is a cloud-based system that’s hosted on the behalf of its users in secure, state-of-the-art datacentre facilities which would otherwise prove too expensive to set up by small businesses themselves. The facilities are ISO 27001 accredited, which means they comply with stringent security requirements that guarantee that data is properly ring-fenced and safe at all times.
Other features include document, performance and recruitment management, applicant tracking and employee self-service.
"It was a relief that we didn’t need to invest in servers to host the software. This would have been expensive and maintaining this to ensure that personnel records – some of the most sensitive data we hold – would have been costly and involved a third-party IT company. With Breathe we don’t have to worry because this is all managed on our behalf."
"I regularly need to work from home or away from the office and the fact that I can access Breathe when I’m on the move is so useful. I can use Breathe on my laptop, tablet and smartphone, which is brilliant."
Jo Blood, Managing Director
Having initially taken out a 14-day trial of Breathe, Jo and Lisa decided to set up a monthly subscription plan. Since then, they haven’t looked back.
In terms of functionality, Breathe automates tasks and processes related to various aspect of HR management. These include:
- Holiday booking
- Absence reporting
- Employee data and document management
- Performance
- Training
- Expenses
The Result - time savings for Jo, Lisa and their team members
Lisa uses Breathe to manage day-today and routine HR admin including:
- holiday bookings
- absence management; and
- uploading personnel related documents, such as:
- identifications
- contracts
- and other related correspondence
For every holiday booking, she estimates that Breathe saves the company 20 minutes per request. That’s 10 minutes of her time and 10 minutes for employees who use the system on a self-service basis to request time off. Breathe also helps Lisa keep track of employee birthdays and work anniversaries from the HR-admin dashboard.
“Over the years, these time savings add up and mean we can all focus our time working more productively, efficiently and effectively. Our employees love the simplicity of the system and they have all the information about how much leave they have left for a year at their fingertips.”
Lisa Oakley, Finance Director
Lisa also likes the fact that employee data and company documents are stored centrally and securely within a single system. This is especially important since the introduction of strict General Data Protection (GDPR) rules in 2018. Businesses found to be guilty of mismanaging data now face considerable fines.
The rules became stricter in 2019, when legislation around Subject Access Requests (SAR) changed in the employees’ favour. Each employee has the right to ask for a copy of all documents, emails and personal information ever recorded and stored on the company’s system. For most businesses, who have yet to invest in a cloud-based HR solution, it’s no mean feat.
Businesses that fail to manage an employee’s SAR within 30 days, again face considerable fines. This applies to companies of every size.
With Lisa taking care of every-day HR and the wider teams happily using Breathe’s self-service functionality, Jo can focus on employee performance and development.
“When I first became Posture People’s director, I quickly noticed that the company’s goals and our team members’ objectives were not properly aligned and this was impacting on our effectiveness and efforts to grow. Since using Breathe, I now have far greater visibility of what people are working on and how this correlates to their performance goals and objectives. This is incredibly useful and essential for strategic planning.”
“I think Breathe is excellent value for money. At £10.00 per month for a 5-user system, investing really was a no-brainer. During the time we have used the software, it has paid for itself many times over.”
Jo Blood, Managing Director
Jo was so impressed with our software that she then joined Breathe’s partner programme. She now recommends Breathe to her clients as a means of managing their employees and recording information about the Display Equipment Assessments (DSEs) the company provides.
“This is important information that’s essential to ensuring the ongoing wellbeing of a company’s people. It’s great to offer an effective system for storing and accessing this to the businesses we work with. Having initially started our journey with them as customers, we’re very pleased to now have the title of Breathe partners.”
Jo Blood, Managing Director
Keen to recommend a multi-award-winning cloud-based HR software to your clients? Book a Partner demo to find out more on how you can become a referral partner. Or, contact our helpful team today.
