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“My team do a lot of out-of-hours work. It was a nightmare trying to collate it all. Now the staff have to request lieu time and I can decide if it’s a priority or not. Sometimes I can schedule the work for the next month and it means I don’t have too many people out of the office at any time.”
Daniel Looney, Head of ICT
TeamSeer ticks all Douglas Borough Council’s boxes
“The ‘In Lieu’ module is incredibly useful.”
Douglas Borough Council on the Isle of Man, implemented TeamSeer’s absence management system in April 2010. The council employs around 350 staff. Of these, 50% are desk-based and the other 50% are manual workers.
Head of ICT, Daniel Looney, took up his position early in 2009. Included in his brief was the modernisation and update of some of the Council’s systems and procedures. One problem was the management of staff holidays. The existing paper-based system was time-consuming and costly. The processing of leave required ongoing maintenance and it was difficult to see how many staff were on holiday at any time. Each manager and departmental secretary kept their own records, which resulted in increased labour, printing and photocopying costs.
Working with the Council’s HR department, Daniel Looney researched different tools to streamline their absence management. The cost of the contract was below the level required for an official tender process, so Daniel created a matrix based on pricing comparison and functionality. TeamSeer scored highly in both areas. It also has the benefit of an ‘open-architecture’. This means the Council has access to the data in the future if it is needed, something very important to Daniel Looney. TeamSeer operating in ‘the cloud’ is another benefit to the Council. This means it doesn’t affect server load and performance, ensuring continuity of service and giving Daniel Looney peace of mind.
TeamSeer is used for both the desk staff and manual staff’s absence, although managed in different ways. Desk-based staff have their own login to TeamSeer, while the manual staff make holiday requests to their supervisors, who in turn log the leave on the TeamSeer system. Each supervisor has administrative access to their team’s accounts. By the very nature of their work, it is not practical for the manual staff to have direct access to the TeamSeer system. But managed in this way, the new process is considerably more efficient than the earlier paper-based method.
The implementation of TeamSeer took place prior to the start of the Council’s new holiday year in April. Information was provided to TeamSeer outlining all the staff details and the Council’s holiday rules. Once the base data had been entered, the HR department updated the records with any existing holiday bookings. Daniel Looney commented, “People would have been confused, so that little bit of extra effort made the roll-out easier”. He went on to say, “I was sceptical originally. We’re not as up-to-date as we could be. It needed a bit of a push to bring people on board, but it happened smoothly. The key factor is usability and the staff are embracing it.”
Daniel Looney, his ICT team, and members of the HR department had an hour’s online training with TeamSeer. “Our people are not used to interacting with online videos, so we held informal training sessions and workshops for the rest of the council staff. The HR department was also available on a ‘hot line’ basis, so the roll-out was smooth and quite comfortable,” said Daniel.
The first wave of implementation was for the desk-based staff. Once that was achieved, TeamSeer was made available to the manual workers. “I’d recommend a two-phase approach for anyone using TeamSeer in the way we do” said Daniel. “Because the manual staff’s holiday bookings are made by their supervisors, they already understood the system and we rolled it out, team by team.” The Council is in the early stages of using TeamSeer to manage sickness. At present, paper ‘return to work’ forms are still being used and TeamSeer is working towards developing this to meet the Council’s needs.
TeamSeer is integrated with Douglas Council’s intranet, which is created in Microsoft Sharepoint. They use a ‘single-sign-on’, which means no additional time is spent logging onto TeamSeer and there are no issues with forgotten passwords. Managers can authorise leave from their emails directly, with no time being wasted.
TeamSeer is also integrated into Microsoft Outlook. When leave is requested and authorised, it appears automatically in the Outlook calendars. Holidays can be seen at a glance by the individuals and their managers, giving total visibility across the organisation.
Douglas Council also opted to have the ‘In Lieu’ module of TeamSeer. Daniel Looney spoke of his own ITC department: “The ‘In Lieu’ module is incredibly useful. My team do a lot of out-of-hours work. Before, I had to go through paper forms and work out the lieu time taken every month. It was a nightmare trying to collate it all and I’ve only got six people to worry about. Now the staff have to request lieu time and I can decide if it’s a priority or not. Sometimes I can schedule the work for the next month and it means I don’t have too many people out of the office at any time.”
When asked about TeamSeer’s customer service and support, Daniel Looney said, “It might sound a bit cheesy, but they’re very good. Carol Kelly is a breath of fresh air and the tech support is very good. When we were setting up the single sign-on, we were back and forward a bit, but I expected that because we have different systems and security. We had some confusion with the lieu time and I asked if they could change it in the next update. But they actually did it straight away!
As an IT professional, I benchmark my team on support: it’s a key function and I measure every organisation we work with, and TeamSeer is right up there at the top.”
The Council is currently looking at HR systems, but Daniel Looney is adamant the leave element won’t be replaced because TeamSeer is so good. Daniel finished, “It’s all about their hand-holding support. And it’s really good technology and it’s very easy to use. TeamSeer ticks all the boxes: I’m really pleased.”
Single sign-on makes life easy
TeamSeer is integrated with Douglas Council’s intranet, which is created in Microsoft Sharepoint. They use a ‘single-sign-on’, which means no additional time is spent logging onto TeamSeer and there are no issues with forgotten passwords. Managers can authorise leave from their emails directly, with no time being wasted.
