iTrent saves Leicester City Council 74 admin hours a week

The local authority, which processes payrolls for more than 16,000 employees across the city and, over 1,000 workers across the local borough and districts, made the transition in partnership with the HR, payroll and analytics expert MHR, last year. The implementation of iTrent has replaced outdated processes with a new streamlined digital system to generate savings, increase efficiency and enhance the working experience for Leicester City Council employees.

iTrent has enabled the council to consolidate every task involved in the management of its people, such as HR, recruitment, payroll, time and attendance, and health and safety in a single integrated system. New digital ways of working are accelerating routine processes and delivering improved data accuracy.

The roll out of iTrent’s self-service functionality to everyone who works at Leicester City Council has also helped heighten employee experience, in particular among harder-to-reach teams such as school catering employees, road workers, plumbers and builders. Users are empowered to manage their data and perform tasks anytime, anywhere from their personal devices.

The system went live following a 12-week implementation delivered by a project team which included MHR’s experts as well as individuals from the council’s HR, payroll and IT teams.

Following the successful roll-out of iTrent, the council worked with MHR to implement a new automated Pensions Data Service. The service simplifies monthly data submissions to pension schemes, turning the typically time-consuming and admin-heavy task of processing thousands of employees’ pensions returns into a much more efficient process. It also mitigates the risk and fines that result from manual errors.

Cory Laywood, Corporate Pay and Benefits Manager at Leicester City Council, said: “We needed a state-of-the-art HR and payroll system to speed up processing time and generate efficiencies across the entire organisation.

“We switched to iTrent just twelve months ago, but it has already made a real difference to the way we work and unlocked tangible savings. In that time, we have managed to replace 500 paper timesheets with new electronic versions, saving considerable time and reducing the administration burden on our people, while streamlining everyday tasks such as absence reporting and holiday bookings, as well as contributing to our environmental commitment to use less paper.

“iTrent’s self-service functionality has positively transformed the way we work and has been extremely well received. Employees are pleased that they can access the system whenever they want to from their smartphones to check their overtime balance, clock hours and submit timesheets at the touch of a button, with holiday bookings automatically syncing with their Outlook calendar. It has really empowered our people and become a one-stop system for managing their working lives, while transferring many tasks to self-service has helped reduce the number of queries our HR team has to deal with on a daily basis.

“Additionally, the decision to purchase MHR’s Pensions Data Service will save us at least half of a full-time equivalent post”.

“MHR’s technical support and knowledge has been invaluable in ensuring both iTrent and the Pensions Data Service were delivered ahead of schedule so we can realise immediate benefits.”

Leicester City Council plans to further enhance the employee experience by implementing the iTrent chatbot, a virtual assistant which will enable users to gain answers to common HR questions via their smartphones.

Anton Roe, Chief Executive Officer at MHR comments: “It’s great to partner with a local authority which is actively developing the way it works to generate efficiencies and invest in the experience of its people. We are delighted to learn how iTrent has revolutionised the council’s HR and payroll by automating processes, making significant savings in the first year, while having a positive impact on employees, through self-service.”