parkrun: An absence management tool you can’t be without
Now in its 20th year, parkrun spans over 2,400 locations in 22 countries with more than 9 million people registered, and counting.
OVERVIEW
Now in its 20th year, parkrun spans over 2,400 locations in 22 countries with more than 9 million people registered, and counting.
As a rapidly growing charity with employees across multiple countries, their absence management requirements were starting to outgrow their email calendar solution. When they onboarded a new People & Culture Coordinator, who had previously worked at edays customer SharkNinja, she knew the software to recommend.
Rolling edays out at parkrun
THE CHALLENGE
As a small dynamic organisation, parkrun had previously been managing their team’s annual leave through a homemade form-and-calendar solution.
Employees would submit a form and then the annual leave would go into a shared calendar to be viewed by the team.
They also had a challenge with managing TOIL. As a weekend events-based organisation, parkrun employees don’t always have the chance to work their standard contracted hours from week to week, and frequently need to work on weekends. This wasn’t being managed in the shared calendar, and employees were left to manage their own TOIL.
Emily Lenderyou
People & Culture Coordinator
The old process was mostly working okay but it left everyone to manage their own time off, and my concern was that people weren’t taking enough. parkrun is a very trusting organisation who put their employees first, but without visibility we were worried this time off wasn’t being utilised or enforced enough.
THE SOLUTION
Previously at SharkNinja, another edays customer, Emily advocated for our software.
She knew that it could assist parkrun as they continued to rapidly grow worldwide and would support with a more automated platform to future-proof their time and processes.
parkrun therefore rolled edays out across all of the countries where there are employees, and added on the Time Tracking module to assist them with complying with local working time directive laws in countries such as Ireland.
Emily Lenderyou
People & Culture Coordinator
Something I always really liked about edays and one of the reasons I brought the software to parkrun was because the service is really good. The implementation, onboarding and training process was all really smooth and helped us to get up-and-running quickly. The team are great and always happy to jump in and help me when needed – they often go above and beyond.
THE IMPACT
While their previous system provided the record and visibility of absence and leave, by implementing edays, parkrun were able to centralise the whole process and take the burden of management away from the employees.
Instead of having to each keep a record of their own remaining entitlements, overtime worked and TOIL taken, our software was able to automate the whole process and provide the People & Culture team the ability to report on everything.
The main impact at parkrun wasn’t necessarily in the here and now, but in the future-proofing it offered to the organisation. While they may have a manageable employee count now, the organisation is rapidly growing in size and across multiple countries so streamlining their approach to absence, leave and time early will prove to save them from headaches down the line.
Emily Lenderyou
People & Culture Coordinator
I’m really glad I could introduce edays at parkrun. The flexibility and customisation is great, as is being able to manage those more obscure requirements. The employees all really like it too and all find it so much easier having everything all in one place!
CASE STUDIES
