Founded in 1832, Cumberland Pencil Company (Cumberland) make the world-famous Derwent Pencils, producing high-quality pencils from their HQ in Keswick.

Out with the old

Having used a manual time and attendance system for years, Cumberland were looking for a new system to take on their growing needs. “We were using an old basic system which only allowed clocking in and out data to be recorded. It did nothing with this data – it simply presented a list of times. We carried out our own analysis of the data which took a considerable amount of time. What we needed was a full system which would record the data, analyse this and present a wealth of timely management information, and Mitrefinch’s TMS system certainly fits the bill!” Della Parkins, Cumberland

System to fit the need

Cumberland has a workforce of 100, including factory workers, office employees and museum staff, who are all covered by Mitrefinch’s TMS time and attendance system. Four clocking terminals are located throughout the Keswick site, managing the clockings of 18 different shift patterns.

Producing reports

Cumberland found the reporting function within Mitrefinch’s TMS time and attendance system a valuable tool for creating management information. A weekly working hours report is generated which highlights absences and anomalies. To complement this a full anomalies report is generated. Supervisors can then authorise absences, explain anomalies and authorise overtime pay. Della continues: “We have found TMS to be an easy to use system which has a lot to offer. We recently attended the annual User Group Meeting and found new ways of using the system to help fulfil our requirements. One of these was specifically recording hours to help us comply with the Working Time Regulations, this system does this automatically for us, even for the most complex shift patterns!”

Founded in 1890, A Forsyth & Son has grown into an international engineering, fabrication and construction company at the heart of Scottish industry. Mitrefinch produce solutions for The Forsyths Group that:

• Are capable of handling multiple site data
• Produce real-time information data
• Improve HR efficiency

Dealing with multi-site operations: Forsyth Group was facing the challenges of having employees working across three different sites in Scotland. The company realised it needed to find a solution that would produce real-time information to accurately track staff movements. Additionally, a system was required that could handle a number of shift patterns with constantly changing information.

Mitrefinch engineers a solution

Mitrefinch was able to provide a solution that would allow easy clocking-in at all of their sites. The use of the Time Management System (TMS) meant it was straightforward to keep accurate records of staff, hours worked and any changes in working times. The Forsyth Group was impressed by how quickly workers and management took to the new solution and were particularly pleased how little training was needed before people felt confident using TMS.

Ongoing expansion

The Scottish firm is continuing to grow and develop, offering onshore and offshore products across a whole range of industries, including whisky and spirit distillation, paper production, petrochemical, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, fine chemicals, biotechnology, offshore oil and gas, power and utilities. As part of this expansion, the company has continued to work with Mitrefinch and has added regular user group sessions. Designed to keep customers up-to-date with software developments, the user groups are a great way to identify how Mitrefinch can further help improve efficiency and productivity. As a result, Forsyths has worked with Mitrefinch after realising the use of Human Resources Manager would work well alongside TMS to help generate point in time reports such as pay levels and automated changes of employee details.

Johnstons of Elgin, based in Scotland, specialises in the manufacture of cashmere and luxury fibres offering a wide range of men’s and women’s knitwear, accessories, home furnishings and fine fabrics to top designers, quality retailers and customers around the world. Johnstons use Mitrefinch’s Time and Attendance, Flexipay and HR Manager, which replaced the company’s previous in-house systems. Installed in 2002, the Mitrefinch systems cover the 800 employees based at Johnstons’ four sites and is used daily to observe access control and monitor staff attendance.

Improving efficiency

Mitrefinch was the provider of choice for Johnstons, as the systems allowed the systems to be linked saving valuable time and reducing labour costs. Mitrefinch’s time and attendance solutions enable businesses to improve time management and absences, enhancing security and staff safety. Gerry Skelton, Human Resources Director at Johnstons says: “The Mitrefinch package has provided the opportunity to integrate all of our personnel and payroll needs into one solution. With the package in place we can manage HR and time and attendance centrally from the Elgin site making significant savings on administration.”

International organisation Luxfer Gas are the world’s largest manufacturer of high-pressure aluminium and composite gas cylinders. Luxfer Gas’ Payroll Manager Christine Thompson shares how Mitrefinch have benefited the company. “We have just one UK site and we employ 220 employees, all of whom use the system. Our business is the manufacture of aluminium cylinders for medical, diving, fire and beverage industry. We went live on the system last May having chosen it because of its apparent ease of use and since then system has proved extremely successful. Each day we use the system to check overtime shift patterns and all the tasks traditionally associated with a small Payroll Department.” “Having the system installed has cut our workload considerably, both for us and our employees. A prime example of this is the overtime sheets which were previously completed manually by employees but can now be downloaded from TMS and signed off by the manager concerned. The same is said for shift payment as reports can be printed showing exactly what shifts have been worked and the information transferred directly into the payroll system. There are all sorts of reports and statistics that can be downloaded from the system, to be honest it has cut our working time by half!”

Effective payroll

“My role as a Payroll Manager has changed considerably now that the Mitrefinch payroll system is up and running. I can devote more time to ensuring the payroll is 100% accurate. When contemplating which system to use this was a vital concern as I had to ensure that my staff would also find the system easy to use. Training was on site, this was a bit of a rush job as the time frame for installation was tight but the trainer was really helpful and helped me set up everything. Since then the helpdesk has been absolutely magnificent, nothing is too much trouble for them.”

Benefits

“Benefits, well there are many. It is instantly possible to determine whether an employee is on or off site, whether they are good timekeepers, how many holidays they have left, details of sickness, fire drills, the list is endless.”

Yearsley Group, the UK’s largest provider of supply chain solutions in the frozen sector, has been using the Mitrefinch Workforce Management Solutions since 2000, opting for time and attendance and Mitrefinch’s payroll system, Flexipay. Mitrefinch provide solutions for Yearsley Group that:

• Give employees self-service to book absences, track allowances and update personal information
• Give the ability to request and swap shifts
• Allow employees to clock in remotely via mobile or tablet
• Produce fast and accurate payroll reporting

Stuart Carroll, Payroll and Systems Manager at Yearsley Group says: “Over the following few years, with Mitrefinch’s help, we put together a report to export most of the basic data we needed from the clock cards over into Flexipay, which has pretty much eradicated manual input. Since then we have kept up with the upgrades, got all of our 13 sites clocking in using the system and upgraded our TMS export to take things into account, such as, average pay/hours for four-on-four-off staff and shift premiums for various shifts – all with differing rules depending on which site and department the employee works from.” It means that we’ve cut the four hours of manual data entry each week in half! We now spend two hours each week checking the system to reduce queries, ultimately saving us a further two to three hours per week.” Stuart adds: “Another huge benefit is the function of automated reporting for managers to assess absence records, for instance, enabling managers to save further time on creating and populating reports and spend more time on their daily duties.” As a result of the Mitrefinch solutions, Yearsley Group have:

• Had an annual saving of over £3,500 on paper payslips
• Produced an annual saving of manager and HR of more than 4,000 hours
• Given employees a sense of empowerment and autonomy, resulting in improved working ethos and environment