The Writer

“If you're using paper or spreadsheets, drop them and use Breathe. For a small monthly cost you have a one stop shop to securely store employee data, and you'll save hours of time”

The challenge

The Writer is a creative design business that works with companies all over the world to get their words working harder, help them stand out from their competitors, shape their culture, improve how they talk with their customers and ultimately save them cash.

With employee numbers sitting in the 21-50 bracket, HR Director Garry was finding his processes stressful: manual methods just weren't working. Whilst Garry was already utilising an HR software package, spreadsheets, files and other manual methods were still part of the overall process, not to mention the copious amounts of paper that was swallowing him up on a daily basis.

Garry had come the conclusion that he needed a solution that simplified his HR processes, kept everything in one place and provided a lot more security when it came to employee data, so he began to look at his options.

The solution

Garry began to search online to see what options were out there, which was when he came across the Breathe website. The opportunity to try Breathe for free for 14 days immediately intrigued him and gave him peace of mind, so he decided to give it a go.

Once Garry had begun his free trial of the Breathe software, he immediately noticed how intuitive it was and loved how easy it was to navigate and create records. He felt as though he had control of where information was stored and no longer had the worry about pieces of paper being lost. He managed to get the hang of Breathe very quickly due to the consistency and simplicity of the layout.

Garry found numerous features within Breathe useful, particularly the holiday calendar tool, sickness management, employee directory as well as the recruitment module.

The result

Even after two weeks of using Breathe, Garry could already see the HR processes at The Writer becoming much smoother and less time consuming, so he decided to go for it and sign up for a Regular monthly plan once his free trial came to an end.

Now that The Writer have been using Breathe to manage their HR admin for just over a year, they’re reaping the benefits of having a single secure place to store sensitive employee information. They now have a simple overview of each employee, along with their holidays, objectives, absences, salaries, job roles and personal information – and all of this is just a few clicks away at any time.

Since implementing Breathe within the business, it’s been noticed that managers are taking more responsibility for making things happen when it comes to people – whether that’s recording sickness properly, noting one-to-ones or approving holiday quickly. Ultimately, Breathe has meant that HR can move into more of a business partner role within the business rather than time-consuming administration, and that more time can be spent focusing on strategy and training managers to better their people-management.

It’s not just Garry that’s loving Breathe though – it’s going down a treat with employees too. Numerous members of staff at The Writer have commented on how much easier it is to book holiday with Breathe, as well as well as how useful it is that one-to-ones are being recorded as notes within the system and can be accessed at any time.

Managers have also expressed how much the sickness module is benefiting them - it allows them to easily keep track of sickness trends as well as nip potential problems in the bud rather than waiting for HR to tell them there’s an issue.