Places Leisure is a leading leisure and wellness partner, delivering fitness, sport, health and wellbeing. The organisation primarily works with local authorities to deliver the right kinds of health and physical activity outcomes that make a difference to the lives of people and their communities.
Places Leisure employs more than 6,500 people at over 80 sites in England.
Phil Bagley, head of payroll said: “We’ve worked with Quinyx for five years and haven’t looked back.”
Describing their previous processes as ‘clunky’ and ‘not fit for purpose’, Carly Horne, senior payroll, pension & benefits advisor, says: “Before Quinyx, we didn’t have a scheduling system in place, we had a self-service system - so all processes, like payroll, took much longer. Every session of overtime an employee worked had to be either written on a manual timesheet or submitted via our self-service portal and physically signed by a manager.
“It’s hard to compare then to now, as the two systems are so different - but the time saving over the years has been enormous.”
Initially, Quinyx was introduced at a small number of sites before being rolled out across the organisation, and by the end of 2018, all Places Leisure locations were using Quinyx.
Staff now use the Quinyx app to pick up shifts, request leave, view their schedules and ‘punch in and out’ at the start and end of each day. As many employees work across several Places Leisure centres, they can use the app to set filters that highlight all available shifts. Phil says: “We have around 2500 staff on casual contracts, plus full-time, permanent staff, so there’s a real mix of users – feedback on it is always positive.”
The QMail function of the app is also heavily utilised; Phil jokes that they have been accidentally invited to ‘numerous staff parties’ via QMail. Carly says it has boosted employee engagement and helped in communicating regular company-wide updates to all team members, especially those who were previously ‘hard to reach’.
She explains they are looking to increase their use of Quinyx’s communication functions, including employee Pulse surveys, in the near future. “We recently issued a big company survey through the new newsfeed publisher in Quinyx and had a much better response than we normally would have – and that’s without using push notifications on the app, which have since been added.
“We’ll also be discussing how we can use Pulse surveys to get sharp, quick employee feedback that will help improve day-to-day experiences for staff and customers.”
With more than 80 facilities across the country and employees often working between multiple sites, Phil and Carly agree that using Quinyx has been invaluable for Places Leisure in streamlining the scheduling process and providing a staffing overview of all locations in one place.
Phil continues: “Having all rosters and schedules in the system, just a couple of clicks away – it’s a massive advantage. Previously, each site did things slightly differently, which made payroll and other processes much trickier and more time-consuming. Now it’s streamlined, we have a much more consistent approach. It’s been a complete gearshift for us.”
Carly adds: “We love Quinyx! It’s made everything a lot easier, and we know there’s even more we can do in boosting both staff engagement and the service we provide.”