Acoerela empowers industry innovation with Employment Hero

About Acoerela

A startup from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Institute of Functional and Intelligent Materials, Acoerela delivers optical probes for life science applications.

Its founding team consists of academic researchers from diverse scientific backgrounds such as materials chemistry, biophysics and life sciences, equipping it with the expertise required to empower chemical innovation for research and clinical diagnostics purposes.

Its flagship product, membrane labelling dyes, help to detect specific organic lipid nanoparticles (LNP). Identifying these extracellular vesicles (EVs) and exosomes present in human body fluids serves many uses, such as the development of non-invasive diagnostic tools and therapeutic drug delivery.

With ambitious goals to make sure that every single scientist in exosome-related fields is using its dyes, Acoerela needed to hit the ground running. The moment it started expanding, the team knew they needed to set themselves up for success with efficient and effective company processes to support its growth. That’s where Employment Hero came in. We spoke to Acoerela’s CEO and co-founder, Bay Sie Lim about the team’s experience with Employment Hero and how it has supported them thus far.

The challenge

As a startup with a lean team, Acoerela needed intuitive HR and payroll processes to support it, so the team could focus on their day-to-day operations. They also needed an all-in-one system that was agile and adaptable, in order to keep up with the rapid changes that came as they continued growing their biotech business.

Acoerela’s team members previously grappled with outdated paper-based procedures and tedious manual admin. Without a dedicated HR professional on board, they also found themselves worrying about whether they were compliant with Ministry of Manpower (MOM) regulations and HR best practices throughout the employee lifecycle.

They wanted to take the guesswork out of HR and payroll management as well as standardise, automate and consolidate their processes. This would help them reduce the amount of administrative work they were doing, allowing them to work on more strategic and useful tasks related to their biotech research.

Solutions

Streamlined processes

Acoerela’s team used Employment Hero’s HR tools to manage its processes, shifting from manual paperwork to digital files that let them keep track of employee information in one central location. They also used Employment Hero’s intuitive payroll platform to help them consolidate payroll processes like expenses, claims, leave calculations, approvals and timesheets. Streamlining processes made Acoerela more efficient and effective at doing the work that matters.

“As a small organisation, we like things to be as efficient as possible. If we can automate things [on a HRIS platform] and it helps us with our daily operations, I would definitely consider it. I’ve been on the other end as an employee where I had to submit things manually, and it’s a pain. I’d rather spend my time being a lot more productive and growing career-wise. Employment Hero gave me a really good package and therefore I did not hesitate to go ahead with it.”

Easy submission and approval of claims

Bay Sie sought to modernise the approach to claims processing, aiming to streamline outdated methods such as manually scanning paper receipts and inputting data into Excel. With Employment Hero’s Expenses feature, Acoerela’s employees now have the convenience of swiftly capturing receipts through the platform, eliminating paperwork and minimising the risk of overlooking receipts.

“At another entity, I would end up consolidating my expense claims and doing it every quarter because I didn’t have the time to do the paperwork. Even then, I would still sit in the office for one whole day to comb through every single receipt that I have, and I’d lose some of the receipts in the end. But with Employment Hero and the Swag app now, I can approve claims quickly and my colleagues can capture their expenses without worry.”

A user-friendly experience

Things move fast in a startup, and Acoerela is no exception. Thankfully, Employment Hero’s intuitive, AI-enhanced user interface meant that it didn’t take long for them to get familiar with the HR and payroll features that would help. Bay Sie was happy with how smooth the onboarding process was, and the fact that she had a small team also made it easier.

“It’s quite seamless and the features are very easy. It didn’t take long for me to familiarise myself with the whole set of features.”

Prompt support when needed

Growing quickly also comes with inevitable hiccups — but Employment Hero supported Acoerela through implementation and beyond with guides, resources, FAQs and a robust Help Centre. Bay Sie could rest easy knowing that any global expansion plans for Acoerela in the future would be supported with the Global Teams Employer of Record (EoR) feature.

“Employment Hero is quite prompt if I reach out and I need help. When for some reason the Swag app was not working, I reached out to the team via WhatsApp, and with a few steps, they told me what to do and it was resolved immediately.”

“I remember I was considering hiring someone overseas and I wanted to understand the implications or the complications involved, and I was provided with suggestions and guides on what needed to be done. It’s nice to know that eventually when our operations are big enough that we have to expand to another country, we know that Employment Hero can support us with that.”

Standardised onboarding and MOM-compliant contracts

Having Employment Hero’s templates on hand meant that Acoerela’s team didn’t have to come up with HR policies and employment contracts from scratch on their own. This didn’t just save them massive amounts of time and money as compared to hiring a lawyer or a HR professional — using the templates provided also meant that all their bases were covered whenever they had a new hire, granting them peace of mind.

“I’m not an expert in HR and I’m not a trained HR manager, I won’t have the bandwidth to draft up or whip up my own contract that I know would be compliant to MOM. Having all of these templates within Employment Hero has helped me a lot, saving me money in terms of getting a lawyer to draft me a particular contract. I mean, hiring a lawyer to come up with a contract that you can use over and over again is not cheap, it’s not something that we can just splurge on like that, so having those templates are very useful.”

Simplified time tracking and compliance

With Employment Hero’s HR and payroll solutions, Bay Sie can rest assured that they’ll be compliant with statutory and regulatory requirements from MOM, CPF Board and IRAS. When Acoerela’s team hires employees with specific employment rules, they can ensure compliance with management tools like electronic timesheets and key date reminders.

“We had this person who was coming in as an intern, and I encouraged him to make sure that whenever he was working, we were also compliant with the MOM rules. You cannot go more than 16 hours per week as an international student, so we used the time sheet function a lot to make sure we didn’t go over.” 

Acoerela is ready to continue growing with Employment Hero

Now that they’ve invested in the HR and payroll tools they needed, Acoerela is keen to further develop its business and empower scientists in their respective fields. With Employment Hero as its trusted partner, the team 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.