At a glance
Explore this case study if:
- You’re currently scaling your business
- You’re struggling to bring in new employees quickly and efficiently
- You’re looking for ways to improve your HR processes
About Behemoth Brewing Company…
Behemoth Brewing is an innovative and bold beer company, with a home base in Auckland’s Mount Eden. Established back in 2013, they’ve crafted 350 unique beers and counting. They’re appreciated by beer fans for their humorous creations and dedication to great flavour.
We spoke to Behemoth Brewing about the team’s experience with Employment Hero as they look ahead to a busy summer season.
Challenges…
A fast-growing team
Behemoth Brewing was started by Andrew Childs – a lawyer who decided to leave the corporate world behind and give brewing a go in 2013. Starting as a contract brewer, the products took off and the company moved to its own Auckland premises in 2020.
Behemoth has become… well, a bit of a behemoth in the last couple of years. Over time, the team grew quickly from 8 people to over 50 strong, and continues to grow. The company operates a production brewery, brewpub and an additional site in Titirangi.
With that in mind, Behemoth Brewing knew they had to scale their HR capacity to match the growing team.
The need for rapid onboarding
The hospitality side of the company is coming up to the exciting summer months, where tourists and locals will descend on their premises. As a result, they’re bringing on casual and contract employees to match demand.
This means that they have to onboard new employees quickly and efficiently.
Compliance at pace
Along with bringing in new team members, there was a need for careful compliance in the business. Supporting compliance, alongside all the challenges of rapid business growth, is right where Employment Hero came in.
Solutions…
A quick onboarding process
Behemoth Brewing has been using Employment Hero for over a year now. One of the aspects Behemoth Brewing found the most useful as the team expands has been the streamlined onboarding process.
“I just did a quick onboard for a contractor who will be working with us. We left it to them to fill out their information independently, so they could be quickly brought into the team. Also, having the KiwiSaver and tax declaration options in Employment Hero means we don’t need new employees to fill out those extra documents because they’re already there.”
Clear and simple HR policies
Behemoth Brewing has found the policy feature in Employment Hero invaluable when it comes to supporting their compliance. For new employees, Behemoth Brewing has found that:
“When we have a casual employee start, all I do is set them up either beforehand, or on the day. Then the process of gathering payroll information on the first day takes about 10 minutes and they’re completely compliant.”
It’s not just handy for new employees. When new company policies need to be brought in or existing ones updated, the Behemoth Brewing management team appreciates the real-time visibility.
“Having the policies in there, and the fact that they are digitally stamped when they’ve been signed by employees, means that I’m across the whole team. It’s fantastic.”
A unified team over multiple locations
The team at Behemoth Brewing work in a variety of locations, whether they’re pulling pints in the brewpub or concocting new IPAs in the brewery. As a cloud-based system, Employment Hero offers a single solution for sending out information, regardless of where the employees are.
“Most of the stuff that we need to do with employees is the same, but the location often varies. So you can tag them in new information across different locations and teams, or you can send out notices to a certain team. It gives me that flexibility but I can also streamline things as I need to.”
Crucial employee autonomy
While Employment Hero has been of huge support to helping scale the team, Behemoth Brewing also love how much autonomy it gives to the wider team too. As the team pointed out, getting people to use the platform has been important as “the more people learn how to use it, the better it is.”
The team also appreciate that the platform gives employees the chance to get their own information without having to request it.
“I think sometimes when people need to look at their information like their contract, it can be awkward for them to ask. And that’s not necessarily because they’re searching for another job – they might just want to look at a clause or condition. But knowing that it’s there, they can freely access it and it’s not awkward for them…we love that.”
A platform with the perfect blend of features
Employment Hero has worked to solve the key HR challenges that fast-growing businesses like Behemoth Brewing face everyday.
“Every other company I’ve ever worked at has been so large, they’ve not had a single HRIS. That can make storing information a little difficult to manage and we often would rely on shared drives. I prefer using Employment Hero, because it has the most important information in one place.”
We love hearing about the impact Employment Hero has made for the team at Behemoth Brewing, as they continue to innovate and grow their team.
If you’d like to learn more about how Employment Hero can transform your HR processes, speak to one of our business specialists today.
