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Good Life Gymnastics introduces children to gymnastics by offering recreational classes and holiday camps in a fun, inspiring and non-competitive environment.
Geoff, the founder, was an international gymnast himself and has always had a focus on putting together the best team of coaches who truly love what they do, all with a passion for gymnastics and working with children.
“Onfolk has given 25 hours per week back to our senior management team and has enabled us to focus more time on company culture and mentorship to enable our team members to grow their career within the industry that they want to be in”.
Turning payroll into a 5-minute job
Geoff went through his own personal journey with payroll. Initially his payroll was outsourced, but after experiencing constant delays, pay mistakes and slow response times (3 or 4 days), he eventually took it upon himself to learn payroll and run it himself with the help of his accountant:
“Payday is payday. You just can’t pay your team late as a business”
Running payroll himself took 2-3 hours across a whole week every month. Nevertheless the context switching energy spent that week, he’d also spend hours reconciling what was sometimes pennies that didn’t add up in the bottom line: “I’d go down rabbit holes trying to understand why someone’s pay was 20p lower than my calculations on Sage”.
A friend referred Geoff to Onfolk. Good Life Gymnastics joined Onfolk a month later.
Payroll now takes Geoff less than 5 minutes:
“As HR and payroll are synced, I barely have anything to do - just add one-off payments or deductions and do a quick check. Onfolk has been a wonderful tool to give us a professional and seamless feel to our HR systems while also giving us clear, accurate and on time payroll”.
Simple flows for employee onboarding and offboarding
Onboarding (and offboarding) consumed Good Life Gymnastics managers hours every week. Geoff recalls “our previous HRIS didn’t allow employees to complete their onboarding independently and managers would easily spend an hour for every new joiner collecting documents. As we operate across 30 different sites and with children, it’s important for us to collect these documents efficiently during onboarding”.
Onfolk’s employee onboarding flow involves both the employee and employer. On the employer side, onboarding takes a couple of minutes - you only need to put in basic employment information (name, job title, salary and start date) then the employee is sent an invite to complete the rest of their profile.
Geoff estimates managers now spend 5 minutes per new joiner on onboarding and offboarding tasks.
“I love the fact that Onfolk involves the employee for their onboarding. We run a people business and our growth comes from customer and employee word of mouth. Striking the right balance of professionalism and personal touch is key here. Onfolk has really helped with that - it does what it says, it’s simple to use even for our student employees, and doesn’t leave anyone stranded”.
Payroll and HR data synced automatically
Another big time sink for Geoff and his team was People/HR-related admin. “Being organised has always been a priority for us given we employ more than 50 people across 30 sites. This meant we had a need for our HR data being accessible from any of these locations that was also always up to date”.
Geoff used a HRIS tool for employee data and Sage for payroll, which meant both tools had to be manually updated throughout the month to ensure data accuracy at all times across both platforms.
Since Onfolk combines both payroll and a HRIS, data accuracy between payroll and HR is no longer a worry for Geoff’s team:
“All our employee data in now in one place. We get notified of birthdays, time off, new joiners’ first days, work anniversaries automatically too - data goes from one place to another automatically”
Insightful notifications about tax, student loans and more, automatically
Finally, Geoff’s favourite Onfolk feature - getting automatic notifications for changes in employees’ tax, student loans deductions and more.
Geoff recalls “one employee didn’t tell us about another job they had aside from with GLG. I got a notification from Onfolk letting me know that as they’d started another job before ours, their taxcode changed. Getting that easy explanation not only meant I didn’t have to go down a rabbit hole trying to understand why the tax didn’t add up like I used to, but it’s also removed the liability that comes from not being notified by employees”.
Another unexpected benefit Geoff mentioned was the eductional element that came from some of these notifications. “I’ve learned new things about how payroll works, and have passed it on to my team too. It’s been win-win”.
The bottom line
Since joining Onfolk, Geoff estimates he’s saved himself and his team 25 hours per week on HR admin, and has reduced the time to process payroll from 2-3 hours down to less than 5 minutes.
“Before my entrepreneurial career began I saw many errors like people not getting paid on time, complicated contracts or none in existence at all, let alone no HR process or dedication to a good company culture.
From day 1 this made me focus a lot on the people aspect of my business and most importantly my focus on building a working culture that aided in the ability for people to love their job and actually have a “Good Life”.
Onfolk has been a wonderful tool to give us a professional and seamless feel to our HR systems while also giving us clear, accurate and on time payroll”.
