Why INSELEC's Key
to Resource-Smart
Growth is Astute by Deel
Results at a glance:
INSELEC would need 3x the payroll team without Astute
Astute empowers 250+ staff to self-serve
134 rule groups and employees across NSW, QLD, SA, VIC, and WA
Meet the company
From its inception as a specialist in electrical workforce recruitment, INSELEC has always had ambitious growth goals. Today, the Brisbane-based recruitment partner is expanding beyond the electrical industry into construction, striving to provide quality, highly skilled staff for every job.
Payroll for INSELEC isn’t a straightforward matter. The electrical division has 200+ contract employees that are spread across five states, requiring an impressive 134 rule groups to interpret timesheets that are subject to varying pay and charge conditions. And as INSELEC branches out into construction, the addition of a new industry with different allowances, work patterns and other variables, is making things even more complex.
With so many rules and regulations, INSELEC needs an automated system that makes compliance simple for the payroll team.
Manual processes and mistakes
In the early days at INSELEC, the payroll team relied on a limited payroll system that often made their work harder, not easier. It had no capability to record rostered days off (RDOs), which required them to make multiple manual adjustments and checks on timesheets.
According to Chelsea Landl, Services Manager at INSELEC, one of the biggest problems with the old system was the risk of going over quota in Xero, which caused people to fall out of the pay run.
“I’ve used multiple different payroll systems and one of their biggest failures is not allowing multiple pay runs in the day. With Astute, there are no limitations on how many people we can put through payroll and how many payrolls we can do.”
A lot of time can be wasted fixing mistakes if the payroll team isn’t equipped with a flexible solution, which was the reality of life before Astute at INSELEC.
“It’s so frustrating to get all the way to the end and realise someone who shouldn’t get a public holiday has one. In many systems, you can’t go back and reopen those pay runs. You have to start from scratch,” says Landl.
"I've used multiple different payroll systems and one of their biggest failures is not allowing multiple pay runs in the day. With Astute, there are no limitations on how many people we can put through payroll and how many payrolls we can do."
Chelsea Landl,
Services Manager, INSELEC
A culture of accountability and self-service
In 2017, INSELEC made the shift to Astute, and, for its payroll processes, it was like switching on the lights in a dark room. The biggest change was removing the burden of collating timesheets from the payroll team and increasing the accountability of employees and managers to take better care of their data.
All 250+ staff are now empowered to log in to Astute and self-serve to complete their own timesheets. This is then automatically sent to the onsite manager for approval, which creates a timesheet that enters the pay run. From there, an invoice is sent with an approval-stamped timesheet.
This automated process makes for smoother payroll processing, but also easier data management, follow-ups and debt collection.
“This is such an asset to have because if there’s a mistake, you can always go to the approver and ask what happened. It creates a level of accountability for our business development managers and drives them to be proactive, so payroll can focus on processing the payroll against its time constraints,” says Landl.
Another benefit of Astute is the integration with JobAdder recruitment software. Recruiters can automatically push new candidates to the payroll team when they’ve been assigned to a job, so there’s no need to add manual rates and all the payroll team needs to do is check and validate the data.
“It reduces the touchpoints and room for error, and puts accountability on the recruitment consultant to enter the data correctly,” says Landl.
What were the
results?
Astute has helped INSELEC to increase their operational efficiency and maximise success.
In addition to saving time and headcount, the payroll team can regularly run workshops and professional development so they're always up to date, and can constantly refine their operations.
By spreading responsibility across the organisation to carefully enter data and equipping the payroll team with powerful automated features, INSELEC has been able to grow in size and success without increasing its payroll resources.
One of the ways INSELEC has been able to set itself up for maximum success is by taking advantage of the huge database of support materials provided by Astute. The payroll team regularly attends workshops as professional development to ensure they’re staying up to date and constantly refining operations and encourages anyone considering Astute to do the same.
According to INSELEC, thanks to the operational efficiency provided by Astute, INSELEC can manage with less yet continue to achieve more.
“Without Astute, we’d need a payroll team that was three times the size. As the business has grown we’ve been able to keep our payroll team the same.”
Have you got a similar challenge
that needs addressing?
Book a free demo today to learn how Astute Payroll can help.