Ipswich Borough Council switches employee relations to the cloud

Replaces paper with Software Europe’s ER Tracker cloud solution.

Thursday, 9th February 2017 Posted 7 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Ipswich Borough Council has replaced its paper-based employee relations (ER) case management with a new cloud-based system to better manage cases in line with its HR policy. The new HR case management system, ER Tracker from Software Europe, enables the Council HR team to better track record and monitor employee relations cases such as performance, grievance, absence, and tribunals.

“ER Tracker is being used by the HR Team – three of them ‘super users’, who can run reports and make changes to the system,” comments Vicky Young, HR Advisor at Ipswich Borough Council. “Between the whole team it’s taken a little while to change the way we work – the training was straightforward and using ER Tracker is easier than you think it’s going to be. We’re an HR team not an IT team, so using new software isn’t in our area of expertise.”

Targets for managing specific cases such as disciplinary meant working to tight timeframes, something which was increasingly challenging to do using Ipswich’s previous paper and Excel-based processes.

“ER Tracker helps us to stay on track. It sends alerts and reminders when things are due. Additionally, colleagues can upload documents to the system and set up due dates on each other’s cases to help keep everything within time. Work on the cases doesn’t have to stop if you’re not there.”

Currently there are seven separate case types in use with ER Tracker; performance, disciplinary, grievance, absence, tribunals, and a bespoke case type specifically for Ipswich Borough Council.

As each ER case at the Council is unique, the seventh case type of, ‘miscellaneous’ is used to allow parameters, data and steps within a case to remain flexible and changeable as specific cases require.