Background:

The Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria (ICA) is an organizations that arose to help immigrants to Canada integrate successfully into their new Canadian home. Like most similar organizations, the association is a non-profit, charitable establishment. And like all profit and non-profit organizations, it must spend its money wisely and manage its resources, including resources of the human kind, effectively.

ICA provides a wide variety of services to immigrants. Services include settlement and integration counseling, translation and interpretation, English classes, mentoring, job search help, peer support, and volunteer matching.

The association also educates the community about immigrants. There are workshops on anti-racism, multiculturalism, diversity awareness, immigration and human rights. Some arts programs are also developed and delivered.

Such a broad agenda requires a staff of seventy or more. The staff includes paid professionals and volunteers. They may work on different projects and change direction often. Employee accountability is important. ICA is funded in part by donations and grants. Documenting the wise use of financial resources is important for the association’s financial credibility with funding agencies and individuals.

Problem:

ICA’s Brian Burgess described their situation and their solution, “We had been tracking attendance for a staff of more than 75 with paper sign-in and sign-out on a clipboard. We knew this was not accurate and we also knew we had to know where people were. We house in a public building with safety rules and regulations to observe. And we want to make sure our people are safe.”

Search:

The association made the decision to track employees more effectively through the use of up-to-date technology, both software and hardware. ICA found a number of time tracking and payroll systems through an internet search. They decided, however, that what they wanted and needed was a strong attendance and employee accountability system. They found what they wanted with Savance Workplace solutions.

Solution:

The Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria is housed in a church, using the basement and the second floor. With two locations, two kiosks were installed, both used for staff check in and check out. The lunch room is also on the second floor, so staff can check in and out to accommodate their unpaid lunch period. A large screen display in the lobby provides at-a-glance information on all employees. Finally, HID card readers are used with Savance Electronic In Out Board, EIOBoard, allowing employees to quickly sign in and out using their employee badges with the readers. At some point, cards may be provided to volunteers as well, in order to track their whereabouts, primarily for emergency and safety concerns. ICA sees greater use of the system in the future as applications and processes are developed to work with other needs.

• Payroll Integration
• Employee self-management and scheduling like vacation requests and training requests.

Both these areas of use could easily be accomplished by using Savance’s Time & Attendance module.

Results & Benefits:

By their very nature, non-profit and charitable organizations do not run on a profit and loss basis. They cannot show the fiscal accountability that profit making ventures report to owners and the public. Non-profits, however, must be accountable and transparent. They must manage their resources, human and capital, in a way that translates into both mission success and fiscal responsibility. Brian Burgess describes: “EIOBoard provides us with the information we need and the confidence that we are meeting our duty to our employees and to local authorities.”

The largest resource and expense for non-profits like ICA are staff, both paid and volunteer. In choosing Savance Workplace solutions, Brian Burgess recognized how it could fundamentally affect the way ICA accounts for its use of human and capital resources. He related, “With EIOBoard, we know where our staff is, what they are working on, and how to apply their time to individual projects. Members of our staff can work on more than one project in a given span of time. Those projects may have different funding sources and compensation rates. With EIOBoard, we know just how to apply staff time to each project.”

Burgess further explains that ICA obviously has a strong obligation to staff safety. “Whether it is a scheduled fire drill or a real emergency, we know where our staff is with EIOBoard and we can make sure they are counted under our emergency procedures”. Furthermore, he says, “We can analyze work patterns, schedule compliance with all regulations, and we know who is in the building and where. Doing these necessary tasks accurately was almost impossible with our antiquated pencil and paper systems.”

ICA is very happy with the Savance solution. “Tech support is great. We like the various ways we can access the system. We are also looking forward to using more of Savance’s extensive features like tracking our volunteers, more use of tablets, Visitor Management, and Emergency Mustering when the staff must leave the building in an emergency.”

In conclusion, ICA highly recommends the use of Savance Workplace solutions. Burgess states, “If you are accountable for tracking staff and visitors, have multiple points of entry and egress, need to apply staff time to payroll and various projects, you’ll find EIOBoard a great improvement over the old pen, paper, and clipboard methods.”