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WorkWave empowers service-oriented companies to reach their full potential through scalable, cloud-based software solutions that support every stage of the business lifecycle. It is a trusted partner for thousands of customers across a wide variety of industries, including pest control, lawn care, cleaning, HVAC, plumbing and electrical, and last mile delivery.
Before diving into her first role as a Customer Service Representative at WorkWave, Kelly graduated from Georgian Court University with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Like many HR professionals, Kelly “fell in” to HR. After working her way up the company, Kelly spent five years as the company’s VP of Support, while WorkWave continued to grow. Before long, it was time for WorkWave to bring HR in-house and Kelly was asked to switch gears from overseeing Customer Service to building out the HR department. “For me it felt like a very natural transition because HR is like internal customer service. Before I was in charge of keeping our clients happy, now I have to ensure our employees are happy.”
Before transitioning to Namely, WorkWave was using a PEO solution. When looking for a new HR software, Kelly explained that “our one goals was bringing the HR function in-house.”
While looking for a PEO-alternative, Kelly’s main concerns were finding an HR solution that would give her more visibility into employee data, help improve employee engagement, and streamline manual payroll processes. Finding an HR solution that simultaneously solved these challenges was her top priority.
With the PEO WorkWave was using, Kelly and her team had issues pulling reports and using time sheets. She wanted to find a solution that could provide HR with such easy visibility into each employee’s information to simplify payroll and reporting.
Because WorkWave’s previous PEO was confusing to use, employees rarely logged in. When looking for new HR software, Kelly prioritized finding a platform that “employees would love using.” She wanted a user-friendly solution that would be easy-to-use and keep employees engaged.
WorkWave wanted a payroll solution that could accommodate all or their unique needs and cut down on processing time. “With our PEO, we actually had to create a Word Document of all our payroll exceptions and send them over to our account owner who would have to go in and manually add them. It was a very time-consuming and manual process that took my team away from other pressing matters” Kelly wanted a system that could pull in deductions and garnishments directly from an employee’s profile, enabling her team to process payroll internally, while saving them time and effort.
Throughout the search process, Kelly was determined to find the best fit HR solution for WorkWave. Kelly evaluated several solutions, including ADP, Paychex, and Insperity, but Namely is the solution that stuck out the most. “Throughout the sales process, our Namely sales rep was so genuine and straightforward about what the system could and couldn’t do. Working at a software company, we wanted to make sure we were getting what we were promised.”
When it came to evaluating the Namely platform, Kelly was impressed that the HR system was fully integrated. She recognized that Namely’s various applications, like payroll and timesheets, were “all intertwined in one application and each part of the system looked the same and was already communicating with each other.”
What was it that sealed the deal for Kelly? “For me, the selling point of the platform was the ease of use. I knew immediately Namely was going to be easy for our employees and HR administrators to use. That ease of use across the board was tremendous and made picking Namely a no-brainer.”
Kelly struggled to get her employees to embrace and use WorkWave’s PEO solution. To ensure employees hit the ground running with Namely, WorkWave planned formal training sessions to introduce the team to the platform and teach them how to use it. But Kelly was pleasantly surprised when she reached out to schedule the trainings, “Upon speaking with our employees, I found it was really wasn’t necessary to have a training. They were already using different features on the platform. Employees were filling out timesheets, submitting PTO, viewing our org chart, and more. Visibility and ease of use were the top areas of praise that we were hearing from our employees from the get-go.”
Before implementing Namely, Kelly struggled with visibility into her employee data. Namely’s in-depth reporting dashboards empowers Kelly to quickly pull reports on everything from employee tenure to work anniversaries, giving her team the information it needs to build WorkWave’s strategic HR initiatives and develop employee engagement programs. “It’s not just my team that benefits from Namely’s reporting,” says Kelly. “Sure we can pull reports to see where we are in terms of headcount, attrition, and more, but Namely allows our managers to make use of our employee data too. They can view their direct reports progress to their goals directly from their employee profiles, kick off performance management check-ins, and look into department demographics and metrics.”
Kelly expressed that she always hears “from new hires about how much they appreciate the Namely interface. It’s so important for us to make sure our new hires have a chance to learn more about the company and to get to know each department before their first day. New hires can access Namely to complete paperwork, view company resources, and see our org chart all before their first day. We’re able to give them that head start at familiarizing themselves with our business and culture before they even walk in the door.”
Before using Namely’s HR platform, WorkWave never had formalized annual performance reviews. While it was a big undertaking, Kelly wanted to develop an annual review program and leverage Namely’s performance review features to introduce the program to her employees. “We were able to transition over to Namely and launch HRIS, payroll, and annual reviews in about a 2-3 month span. To have one interface for everyone to go to share feedback for each employee and standardize our review process was a game changer for us as a company.”
Since adopting Namely, WorkWave recognizes that our top priority is ensuring our client experience is seamless. Namely makes it easy for clients to access our HR professionals via email, phone call, and the new Namely Help Community. “If we call the Customer Support team we receive great service, but we find that we rarely even have to,” said Kelly. “We can just send an email saying ‘here’s the issue we’re having’ and they’re quick to respond. They give you full details and instructions, anything from ‘the best way to handle something’ from a payroll perspective to ‘the quickest way to run a report.”
As an HR administrator, Kelly has seen several improvements since WorkWave implemented Namely. Since WorkWave’s previous HR solution made it difficult to view employee data, Kelly now loves having first-hand access to her employees’ data directly through Namely’s platform.
As for efficiency, Kelly vouches that Namely’s platform has increased her HR department’s productivity. “We use Namely’s task feature to prioritize my team’s daily to-do list,” says Kelly. “For example, when a new hire joins the company, we make sure that each person on my team knows what their action items are to get them up and running. From updating the seating chart to activating their building badge, we make sure everyone knows how they contribute to ensuring a new hire has a good and smooth onboarding experience.”
Since WorkWave is a global company, Namely’s HR solution also helps connect employees in different offices. When scrolling through the platform, employees can see what new hires are joining and who has upcoming birthdays and work anniversaries. Employees can also review the company org chart, look up their coworkers contact information, and share their appreciation for their teammates both near and far on the company newsfeed.