
At a glance
Explore this case study if:
- You want to enhance employee shift scheduling
- You’re struggling with manual processes and compliance
- You’re interested in how HR, payroll and rostering software can bring time and cost savings
About Journey Indoor Cycling Studio
A boutique spin studio located in the bustling business district of Bukit Damansara, Journey Indoor Cycling Studio has nurtured a vibrant community of fitness enthusiasts over the years with their unbeatable energy, good vibes and incredible music.
Led by Amir, the Head of Operations, and Harris, the Co-Founder and Chief Motivation Officer, the aptly-named spin studio takes visitors on a journey that’s “more than just a ride”. Their emphasis on openness and inclusivity makes for a smooth and safe workout experience that puts their customers first.
With so much going on, Journey Indoor Cycling Studio knew that it was time to improve company processes to support their growth and transform their manual HR, payroll and rostering processes. That’s where Employment Hero came in. We spoke with Amir and Harris about their experience with Employment Hero and how it has supported the team thus far.
The challenge
As a service business within the health and wellness industry, Journey Indoor Cycling Studio’s employees work off shift-based and rotating work schedules. However, employee shift scheduling involves keeping up with many moving parts like public holidays and weekend shifts, which is prone to frustration and errors.
Before implementing Employment Hero, the team handled HR and payroll tasks manually using a combination of pen and paper as well as an assortment of data sheets. This wasn’t just inefficient and time consuming, it was also difficult to scale operations with the communication barriers and overwhelming complexity.
In Amir’s words: “[Our processes were] the personification of ad hoc. You think you know accounting and then someone throws you a curveball, and then you realise I can’t do it like this, and your sheet’s out the window – tedious. It was a complete waste of my time.”
As such, Journey Indoor Cycling Studio’s team wanted to digitise and automate their HR and payroll processes. Consolidating and streamlining their processes would help them reduce the amount of time, energy and money spent trying to manage their people well. They also wanted a rostering system that would give their employees more autonomy, enabling them to manage their shifts on their own.
Solutions
Streamlined and automated processes
Journey Indoor Cycling Studio’s team used Employment Hero’s HR management tools to collate employee information, upgrading to a centralised digital record keeping system from their previous manual approach.
They also used Employment Hero’s automated payroll platform to consolidate their payroll process, simplifying calculations and payment distributions so the team could better focus on the things that matter.
“If I know it’s a public holiday, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to pay someone double their pay and then having to pay them five days later. It just does it automatically and everything is calculated. And don’t get me started on the calculation because I don’t have to do the maths anymore.”
“It’s all Employment Hero. There’s proper accountability, proper autonomy, [and it] streamlines my payroll from 1.5 to 2 hours to just 30 minutes or less on a good day.”
Simplified employee shift management
Journey Indoor Cycling Studio transformed its employee rostering with Employment Hero’s time and attendance software and mobile app, Swag. Team members are now able to self-serve and organise their shifts, manage their time off and have their variable pay rates calculated all through their phone.
“The contracting system on [Employment Hero’s] HR is great. It provides autonomy. If someone can’t make it, they don’t have to text me anymore. They can just request on the app for someone to cover them.”
A central source of truth
Journey Indoor Cycling Studio’s previous HR, payroll and rostering systems meant that the team was managing employee details, onboarding and contracts manually, making it difficult to communicate and collaborate across different functions.
But after implementing Employment Hero, employees, managers and HR alike can now easily access the information they need through the all-in-one platform, allowing them to delegate tasks and expand the team with peace of mind.
Harris says – “We wanted processes to be easy. We wanted it to be much more quick as well. I noticed that it took a lot of time, especially somebody like me who really isn’t good with those kinds of things. Like I just needed it simpler because it was hard for me to understand. A person like Amir can understand it much easier.
But once he introduced Employment Hero, that kind of bridged the gap between a person like me [where it’s] a little bit harder to understand it, and a person like him who can understand it really quick. It gave us structure and it eased communications between the both of us as well.”
“It just makes everything much simpler. I can focus on what I’m good at. The processes are up to date also, keeping it in check. So once we set something up, it’s there, you know, we don’t have to use many different little programs, everything kind of all in one as a whole. It just keeps everyone within that one space.”
Effortless compliance
With Employment Hero’s HR, payroll and rostering solutions, Amir and Harris can rest easy knowing that they will be compliant with statutory and regulatory requirements – no matter how complex and challenging.
“The great thing about Employment Hero is [that] it got me into the accounting process unintentionally because they play hand in hand together. For a good 1.5, maybe close to two years, we’d been recording claims wrong.
But if you put in all the right variables, all the right options in your claims process to show to your staff [and] your employees, everything is just done with due process. You just export it, you know it’s gonna upload properly, you know it’s compliant, and you know nothing’s gonna go wrong.”
Better recruitment and onboarding
Previously, recruitment and onboarding for Journey Indoor Cycling Studio was a manual process that involved collecting staff details in a database.
With instructors constantly joining and leaving the studio, filling in different sheets quickly became a messy and unwieldy task. Thankfully, Employment Hero’s onboarding features transformed the process and made onboarding a breeze.
“The main part of [the] onboarding [feature] which helps is collecting their details in a database, so I don’t have to rely on a separate sheet [that I] fill in myself. But I think the contracts part and the contracts template is the game changer.
Honestly, we just don’t have to think about it anymore. We just have to set [up] the interview, send them some stuff, [and] they onboard themselves.”
Prompt support when needed
With a growing team and so many moving parts, Amir and Harris had their work cut out for them — but Employment Hero supported them throughout their HR and payroll journey with guides, resources, FAQs and a robust Help Centre.
“No one teaches you this. You know, when you wanna run a company, no one gives you the handbook of, hey, don’t worry, you need to do this, this, this and this, [Employment Hero] tells you things no one’s gonna [tell] you. It gets you doing the right things, and then once you do the right things, when you go into the next thing, you realise, okay, everything’s been done properly and it makes my life so much easier.
People can understand [when I delegate] because they [have] support articles for everything. If someone asked me how to do something, I just linked them to the support article. This is how I did it. I read. So you read, you learn, you do. And I know I can just hand it over to anyone I hire, or anyone who works part time for me who wants to do some extra stuff.”
Journey Indoor Cycling Studio is ready to accelerate their growth with Employment Hero
“What Employment Hero does is it just puts all those little nitty gritty things that you do have to do, things that you must do as a business — it keeps it in one place [and] creates a structure for you. It’s a one stop shop.”
“[Employment Hero] frees up so much of my time just because it has the infrastructure for me. So with that time, I can actually hire a team. I think the one thing you can see is I’m not afraid to hire people now because I know exactly how to take care of them.
And in hiring that team, we can do a lot more things. Just a one stop shop. I just don’t have to think about HR anymore, you know, I don’t have to worry about front desk availability, if anyone’s gonna show up, it fixes all my small things.
It just accelerates all our initiatives. So it helps accelerate the scaling, the growth of it all. It just makes the business a bit more business-y. It is how a business should be run.”
Now that they’ve invested in the tools they needed, the team at Journey Indoor Cycling Studio is keen to further engage their people and develop their business. With Employment Hero as their trusted partner, they can now work easier and more effectively, and use their time savings on more strategic initiatives.
If you’d like to learn more about how Employment Hero can help transform your organisation, speak to one of our business specialists today.
In addition, take a look at our return on investment (ROI) report to check out how much time and money you can save with Employment Hero.