The Summer Berry Company: HR Resource Management

The Client

The Summer Berry Company is one of the largest producers of berries in the UK. They employ thousands of seasonal workers from overseas each year, on a number of farms across the south of England.

Their Challenge

The Summer Berry Company spent lots of their time keeping track of each person from the thousands of foreign national workers on their sites, from their application to working on site right through to their eventual departure. As the years progressed and the business grew, the process was proving to be an administrative ordeal.

The Summer Berry Company was burdened with multiple spread sheets, a rabbit warren of email trails and a whole host of other time-consuming manual processes. They needed a solution, and so they came to us.

Our Solution

We created an HR Resource Management system for The Summer Berry Company which used our core contact management and dashboard components combined with a number of bespoke features.

When a new seasonal worker applies via their website, their details are automatically sent to the Resource Manager for approval. Once approved, they enter a solid workflow process which allows The Summer Berry Company to track their staff as they arrive and leave the sites.

Farm managers use the system to make sure they have the right number of people with the right skills to meet the year’s work requirements. Staff can also maintain each person’s job roles and contact information from the system, as well as accommodation details.

The Benefits

All their HR information is centralised, so there are no longer any issues with duplicate data.

The Summer Berry Company now have total control of the workforce management process and complete access to all their data, which enables them to map resources against their harvest plan for the year.

They are also able to increase staff retention through system-tracked communications with staff on their return home. Managers now have a clear view of everything that’s going on at any given time, so key decisions can be made in a snap!