CASE STUDY
The Gunton Arms
A CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
hospitality
INDUSTRY
100+
EMPLOYEES
2
Locations
2021
USER SINCE
Opened October 2011, The Gunton Arms is a traditional pub with bedrooms in an extensive historic park near Cromer in North Norfolk. The park was created in the early 18th Century by the Harbord family and was comparable in scale to the great estates to the west, Holkham and Houghton. The Gunton Arms, originally Steward’s Farm, became the second house to Gunton Hall; and during the 1890s a frequent visitor was Lillie Langtry, actress, famous beauty, and mistress of the future King Edward VII. In the 20th Century the park declined into ruin, buildings were sold, the land ploughed up and the woods cut down. A fascinating history!
With an ever growing business, the team at The Gunton Arms raised a few issues such as scheduling, time and attendance and holiday management of employees. On doing some research, they discovered that Bizimply could be the answer to all their problems! Having previously used a different software to try to manage their workforce, they found it over complicated and simply not fulfilling what they wanted to achieve. We spoke to General Manager Simone to see how they were getting on.
The Challenge
The team wanted greater clarity and control over cost and the ability to easily build and publish staff rotas. They find that with Bizimply’s simple drag-and-drop schedule system, it makes it extremely easy to build and create a rota in minutes;
“Before, creating the schedules was complicated and took up to two days to put it together. This time has now been significantly reduced, it only takes a couple of hours to build, create and publish the schedule; such a difference we cannot believe the time we were wasting before” said Simone.
Scheduling wasn’t the only requirement for implementing Bizimply, Simone highlighted she wanted more accurate time and attendance of her employees for when they are onsite. Previously, Simone was relying on the honesty of her employees to tell her their hours worked.
However, she found this to be time consuming when coming to do payroll because the communication back and forth with staff was slow which delayed the time it took to do payroll.
The Solution
Since implementing Bizimply time spent on payroll has significantly reduced. Employees now have to clock in and out and using the Timestation App on the iPad, employees also have the option to clock in remotely on their phones if they have been given permission by the manager or supervisor. Having this feature means that every member of staff’s shift times automatically sends to the digital timesheets which can then be approved by the manager to be sent for payroll.
“The timesheet software calculates the staff’s wages for every shift and it even factors in the local working regulations, bank holiday pay and overtime rates. This saves me having to manually calculate this out and saves time having to wait on texts from staff to tell me the hours they worked”.
The team at The Gunton Arms used to struggle with holiday management of their employees. Similar to finding out hours worked, staff would just text the manager to request time off or else write it down on a sheet of paper which could end up lost or be time consuming to look for. Often this led to published schedules which needed to be adjusted, taking up more of the manager’s time.
With Bizimply, this process has been completely streamlined, staff can now request time off and input their unavailability through the desktop or the MyZimply mobile app which means it can be done on the go. All managers have to do is approve or deny the time off request, which can also be done on the desktop app or the Managers App.
“When I approve a holiday request from a member of staff, it automatically blocks them out on the schedule. This ensures I am not scheduling someone who can’t work or publishing a schedule that is going to have to be changed again, I love this feature!” Simone admitted.
Having started Bizimply with one location and expanded to two shortly after, Simone knew that she would need a system in place that would store all relevant documents that corresponded between the two locations. This was useful when it came to payroll, sharing of staff and other important information such as training and compliance regulations. With Bizimply’s internal storage system, Simone can now store all documents in one place and access them from anywhere;
“If I go to one location I don’t have to drag around folders of documents, I can simply log on to our Bizimply account and the files will be there for me, it’s very helpful and enables me to stay compliant too!”.
The Gunton Arms are loving Bizimply and we are delighted to have them onboard. Simone is proud of the progress her and her team has made over the past number of months and will continue to use Bizimply to help optimise and nurture their two locations.
