Agency Brazil | Centralising HR with Employment Hero

Agency Brazil’s story 

The low down

Agency Brazil, established in 2003 in Oxford, has carved a niche as an innovative communications consultancy. This award winning comms and PR firm specialise in amplifying brands by aligning brands with evolving consumer values across multiple industries.

We sat down with Josh Van Raalte, Brazil’s CEO, to chat about his experience using Employment Hero and how our platform helps keep Brazil’s HR function neat, tidy and centralised, saving him heaps of time.

How it started

Too many platforms, too little time

Like many small businesses, Josh and his team’s number one focus is delivering the best service to their customers. With a dozen or so high-performing employees, hiring a dedicated HR professionale just doesn’t make sense. As a result, Brazil’s HR functions were either minimal or non-existent, leading to a disconnect between HR processes and the rest of the business. So Josh turned to us.

Before embedding our platform, Brazil used a variety of tools for HR, choosing their tech stack as they went. But as a business grows and things get busy, using too many incompatible platforms creates more problems than it solves.

Josh struggled with multiple platforms for managing holidays, reviews and appraisals, while keeping documents on a shared drive. The lack of centralisation made it increasingly difficult to stay organised. With each new hire, it got harder and harder to keep track of things like contracts, policies, leave requests and timesheets.

“We had one system for holidays, another for reviews and appraisals”, explains Josh. “Documents were centralised but using our company’s shared drive, but everything else wasn’t centralised at all.”

As the CEO, Josh’s time was stretched thin, and managing HR tasks like staff reviews and leave tracking became overwhelming. This stress meant he couldn’t fully focus on his team’s needs, especially as they transitioned to remote work.

How it’s going – one simple, centralised and efficient HR platform

By centralising all HR functions into one platform, we helped Josh reduce his administrative workload and ensured his team had everything they needed in one place. 

. “Without doubt, it sends a signal to staff that we are taking HR seriously,” says Josh.

“We have the systems in place to provide a good and constantly improving workplace. It has also been essential during a critical time for us as a business as we migrate from office to home based working.”

Now, all of Brazil’s HR functions are seamlessly integrated into our single, intuitive platform. It means less work for Josh and better benefits for his employees as everything they need to know is all in one spot. 

“We have one central place to find everything there is to know about our staff. It is easier for us to add more documents, guidance, new and updated policies and many other things.”

It has also helped streamline onboarding processes and saved time on holiday requests and performance review systems. 

“We estimate that it has cut down on at least 25% of admin demands and time-wasting.”

The benefits extended to Brazil’s employees as well. They can now easily access their performance documents and review past appraisals, leading to noticeable improvements in productivity and overall wellbeing.. 

“They take their reviews and appraisals much more seriously as they can review the previous documents.”

Keeping up with big companies

Despite being a small business, with us Josh knows Brazil can keep up with other big communications companies. “Employment Hero has helped us to replicate the functionality that big companies can afford so our staff are reassured that their wellbeing, motivation and career progression are taken seriously.”

Josh is also loving how simple and easy it is to give reward and recognition to his employees with Employment Hero. With difficult transitions during lockdown, it’s never been easier to recognise and reward achievements. 

Small change, big impact

By using our platform, Josh not only increased the efficiency of HR processes at Brazil, but also elevated his team’s wellbeing, happiness and productivity.. With easy access to essential documents and regular recognition, employees felt more engaged, valued and confident.

“It has also helped us to advance our HR offering; previously we were offering the basics, and now we can really add value to our staff’s experience. I am very happy with how this has evolved, and so quickly too.”

Our collaboration allowed Brazil’s HR function to evolve from basic management to adding real value to the team’s experience. The quick improvements keep Brazil competitive and free up Josh to focus more on delivering exceptional client service.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your business and be there for you as you grow – speak to one of our business specialists today.

Want to learn more about our products? 

Our next gen platform has arrived. Our all-in-one HR, hiring and payroll solution is built to flex with your business. From recruiting top talent and streamlining onboarding to automating complex payroll processes and boosting employee engagement—all supported by our dedicated UK-based team. Spend less time on admin and more time on what matters: your people.