When you start a business, you take on multiple roles: project manager, marketer, finance director, cleaner, the list goes on. When you start to grow and hire your first employee, you also become HR manager. And that’s where BrightHR can help.
The BrightHR software can help you manage staff holidays and absence, rotas and shifts, expenses and staff hours, all in one secure and easy-to-use digital platform. The BrightHR team of experts are also on hand to help with any questions you have on employment law, furlough or redundancies. They can provide HR document templates to set up policies that work for you, from small teams of three to large companies of more than 50.
Now that there is an integration with BrightHR available in the Starling Business Marketplace, you can link your account and keep track of key company indicators from within your Starling app. These include:
- Total company-wide working outside the usual working space e.g. working from home or on a client’s site.
- Total company-wide absence that working day.
- Total company-wide absence next working day.
Remember that this information will only be available to the business owner with the Starling app, secured by biometric security and passcodes. It won’t be visible to other members of your team.
What features does BrightHR offer?
The team at BrightHR are committed to providing digital tools and expert advice for all things HR. Their website is full of free resources, covering everything from the benefits of flexible working to the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace.
Some of the key features of the BrightHR software are
- Expert employment law advice, trusted health & safety guidance, and confidential wellbeing support.
- Shift and rota planner.
- A range of online tools to help you manage time off in lieu, furlough, back to work processes and redundancy.
- Online health & safety software that helps you create professional COVID-19 risk assessments and ensure your business is COVID-safe.
- Staff holiday calendar.
- Sickness and lateness log.
- Unlimited cloud-based document storage.
“Both apps I’d certainly recommend,” says Mike Blundell, who runs a service for schools that want to let out their facilities to local community groups. Along with his business partner Nick Bowen, he launched Edu-Lettings in August.
“We both lost our jobs in June when the business we worked for went under. So we took the plunge and started something ourselves,” he says. Neither co-founder had run a business before but both had experience in sport, lettings and working with schools.
“We offer local community groups spaces to organise activities such as football or gymnastics. And that generates some much needed income for schools. It’s a fully managed service, the schools don’t need to worry about staff, bookings or cleaning, we do that for them.”
Just a few months in, Edu-Lettings already manages lettings for 30 schools and employs 65 people part-time to help open and close the school facilities. “Because it’s really flexible, this job suits a lot of people,” says Mike. “We have lots of semi-retired caretakers who’ve been at a school for years, university students, parents looking for part-time work and young adults looking for a way into the leisure industry. It’s predominantly a customer service role, not a sports coaching role so it lends itself to a wide demographic.”
Both BrightHR and Starling are essential to the smooth running of Edu-Lettings. “We use BrightHR to securely store employee documents and school manuals,” he says. “We can upload digital copies of school manuals from our laptop and instantly update them if they change. It’s a huge timesaver for us.”
The integration between BrightHR and Starling means that Mike can check on how many people are planning to be absent that day or the next, directly from the Starling app. Employees can self-input, or directors can enter people as away or off-site in BrightHR and this will near-instantly reflect in the tile data, within Starling.
As someone managing a large team spread out across the UK, the feature gives Mike extra peace of mind: that whoever needs to open up or close a school sports hall or swimming pool, will be there.
Mike came across Starling after struggling to open a business account with a high street bank. “Starling was dead easy to set up. Since then, I’ve moved my personal and joint account too – I use it for everything now,” he says. “The massive selling point for us as a business is Spaces. It helps us to monitor the money we need to separate and help with our cash flow.” Spaces enables customers to ring-fence money for separate purposes, such as tax or VAT. “The app’s brilliant, it’s massively helped us out.”
How do I sign up to BrightHR?
To get started, go to the menu in your Starling app and select Marketplace. Click on the Browse menu and scroll down to the HR category where you’ll be able to select BrightHR. From there, follow the instructions to sign up or, if you’re already a customer of BrightHR, simply log in.
If you’re new to BrightHR, we’ll need a few details from you such as your name and address, which with your permission, Starling can fill in automatically. You can then choose the plan you’d like to sign up to, depending on which features you need and how much you want to pay.
How much does BrightHR cost?
BrightHR has three plans to choose from:
- Connect: Smart HR software with features to track holidays, log absences and plan rotas.
- Protect: Smart HR software plus access to a 24/7 employment law helpline.
- Prime: Everything in the Protect plan plus a programme to boost employee wellbeing and expert advice on COVID-19 health & safety regulations.
Prices range from £8 per month to £150 per month, depending on the number of employees you have and the length of contract you choose. Teams of 50+ can get in touch with BrightHR directly to discuss pricing. You can pay upfront, monthly or annually, with contracts of between 12 and 60 months.
To celebrate the launch, Starling business customers will also have access to a free dedicated support phone line, where they can speak to the BrightAdvice team during office hours.
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