Wittner

About Wittner

Wittner is one of Australia’s leading footwear brands, originating in Australia in 1912.

From humble beginnings as a family-owned business to one of the most successful retail stores in Australia and New Zealand, their team of 380+ specialists across 50 stores and concessions in Myer and David Jones, are a true testament to their quality designs.

Boasting a legacy of more than a century in the shoemaking industry, they’re dedicated to making beautiful, comfortable and high quality shoes that instil confidence in women.

In recent years, Wittner has experienced a dynamic period of growth, marked by the opening of more stores and a surge in online orders. This growth called for a significant scaling of their operations, upgrading their paper-based processes into powerful digital systems capable of supporting their 380-strong workforce.

We spoke to Steffi Pereira, HR Manager at Wittner Retail Australia about the impact Employment Hero has had on their businesses and how their HR and payroll processes have transformed.

Challenges….

Admin-heavy, paper processes that were inefficient and time-consuming

Prior to Employment Hero, the Wittner team were relying on manual and paper-based processes to manage their HR and payroll operations. Whether it was paper timesheets and rosters, long email chains or paper contracts being issued, these time-consuming processes were becoming overwhelming to manage, especially during a period of growth.

Rewind 2 and a half years and Steffi was brought on board to change all of that. With years of HR experience under her belt, her mission was to introduce an HRIS and focus on the digital transformation of Wittner’’s HR and payroll processes – and she did just that.

A clunky onboarding process that would take one week to organise

Bringing new people into the business is an exciting time. However, before using Employment Hero, it was an administrative burden for Steffi that would consume her whole week. Managing contracts, policies, training and collecting personal details was completely manual and an extremely time-consuming process.

“If I told you what I used to have to do to get someone onboard, it took at least a week’s worth of time”, Steffi said.

Luckily, Steffi has cut down her time spent on onboarding admin and can organise their new hire onboarding in just a few clicks – a true game changer for their business.

Solution…

An employment solution that ticked all the boxes, whilst being great value for money compared to competitors

With multiple HR and payroll software solutions on the market, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Once Steffi compared the business needs of Wittner and took all platforms into consideration, she landed on Employment Hero, stating it was “great value for money”.

From hiring and onboarding through to learning and development, Steffi knew that Employment Hero could transform their internal processes and give their employees a great experience at work. Better yet, they could use one platform across both their Australia and New Zealand teams, making the management of their team much easier and streamlined.

Increased visibility over important HR information for everyone in the business

When Steffi first started at Wittner, it was hard to have visibility over important details and HR documents. With paper-based processes for rosters and leave management, combined with long email threads over HR and payroll questions, it was hard to stay across everything.

With Employment Hero, Steffi and the Wittner team now have visibility over all of the important details such as when people are going on leave, rostering, contracts and so much more. It’s completely transformed the way they communicate and document their people processes.

“I’m able to see everything. The timesheets, the rosters, the spend, and cost. Having that transparency has been amazing. Plus our team has access to this in the palm of their hand”, Steffi said.

Transformative rostering and easy timesheets

Managing not only an office of employees, but also over 50 store locations across Australia and New Zealand is no easy feat. That’s why having a powerful system that could manage their retail stores made up of full-time, part-time and casual staff was critical when assessing suitable HR software.

With Employment Hero, the entire Wittner team can clock in and clock out before and after their shift, making timesheets and rostering a breeze. This is especially important as previously, all stores and timesheets were managed on paper; making it an admin nightmare.

Easy recruitment

For Steffi and the Wittner team, streamlining their recruitment process was a top priority. With such a big team across different locations and countries, they wanted to make it as easy as possible for those involved in the process.

Within the Recruitment module in Employment Hero, they can manage the entire hiring process – from posting a job ad on their careers page to making an offer, and then straight through to onboarding. The hiring team can add notes, send emails directly from the platform and give visibility to everyone involved. It’s their single source of truth for recruitment and they’re excited at the prospect of using SmartMatch when it comes time for their next round of hiring.

A seamless onboarding process that’s organised in record time

One of the things that Steffi loves most about Employment Hero is how little time it takes to onboard new employees and organise contracts.

“The biggest improvement I’ve found is the contracts. I now look forward to onboarding people; it’s so easy and so seamless. We’ve even had new hires tell us how easy it was from their perspective too – which is a great first impression of their new job.” 

Now, everything is in one place for Steffi; documents are ready to be issued and new hires can have all their documents signed before their very first day. They can also access training modules, check their roster and access all the information they need for their employment at Wittner.

“I don’t even have words – it’s just so good. It’s so easy, so user-friendly”, Steffi said.

Checking the work eligibility of candidates is now a quick process

Ensuring the people you bring into the business have the correct work eligibility is an essential part of HR compliance, and one you don’t want to get wrong.

Luckily, Steffi can now easily check this with our work eligibility and VEVO checks. They run a check on the potential candidate who is not an Australian or New Zealand citizen, ensuring that they have the correct visa and have the right to work in Australia.

You can also use this feature to add, view, and delete any required documents, plus also use this feature to edit an employee’s passport number.

“I’m loving the work eligibility and VEVO checks. As a HR manager, I can’t be across everything and having this has been so helpful as I’m a one-woman band”, Steffi said.

Employment Hero is helping growing businesses achieve their HR, recruitment and payroll goals 🚀

For Steffi, she achieved her goal of implementing a powerful HR and payroll system that would streamline their once manual and paper-based processes. Beyond the implementation of Employment Hero, they’ve been able to improve every aspect of the employee lifecycle – from recruitment and onboarding, to training and development, engagement and even their payroll management.

“Implementing Employment Hero has been so incredibly beneficial for us at Wittner”, Steffi said.

But it doesn’t stop there, Steffi is keen to take advantage of all of our new features, tools and upcoming product releases so she can even further streamlined their processes.

We love hearing about the impact Employment Hero has made for Steffi and the team at Wittner. If you’d like to learn more about how Employment Hero can support your team and transform your HR processes, speak to one of our business specialists today.

If you’d like to see how much time and money you can save with Employment Hero, take a look at our return on investment (ROI) report. 

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