How IMMO Capital is using Sapling to support doubling its workforce

The challenge  

When Luke Moss joined IMMO as the startup’s first HR team member, the organization had no system in place for managing HR or onboarding. They lacked a strong onboarding program to engage new hires and had little cross team visibility of task ownership. This resulted in inefficiencies all over the business, including setup of new starters, buying equipment, and welcoming new team members.  

As the first full time HR team member, Luke knew he needed to create HR processes that are easily repeatable and not dependent on him being the key source of knowledge. He also wanted to standardize the onboarding process for all new hires. 

Luke did his research and looked at a few different providers. He found articles online about Sapling and was interested in learning more. His goal was to find a provider with a strong bespoke onboarding experience. IMMO is an innovative startup and Luke wanted to work with a similar size company, like Sapling, where he knew IMMO would get the care and attention required to help him reach his HR goals. 

The solution 

Prior to Sapling, IMMO’s HR tech stack was very disconnected.  Their aim was to move off of spreadsheets and eliminate manual data entry. The company had been using Greenhouse ATS and spreadsheets.  

They regularly had challenges with new hires not getting access to key systems right away to do their jobs. Now through Sapling workflows they easily add new hires to slack channels and Google Drive folders on their start date.  

After evaluating IMMO’s key needs, Luke’s focus was to have a platform that can offer a bespoke experience to support his team members regardless of their international location. IMMO selected Sapling in February 2020 due to the amazing red-carpet onboarding experience they offer, and Saplings’ ability to support global connectivity. IMMO did not need all the bells and whistles that some other providers have and chose Sapling as it could be customized to his team’s needs. 

In the twelve months before implementing Sapling, IMMO’s team was very busy with admin work. Since implementing Sapling, IMMO initiated workflows to eliminate problems before they happen. For example, they put the job offer into their ATS (transitioned to Workable from Greenhouse), when approved and signed it triggers a chain of commands in Sapling so Luke’s team gets notified when they need to do certain tasks such as sending a new hire a laptop. Sapling helps IMMO to run monthly payroll reports, it notifies managers of triggers for promotion and it tracks important offboarding documentation. If someone resigns they get notified to fill out certain forms.

IMMO use Sapling to automate all of their HR information and to store all important work information. They have different workflows for onboarding and offboarding based on location as start dates, tax paperwork and equipment, which vary for their team members depending on international location. They can easily send pre and post boarding information to new hires as Sapling is integrated with their ATS. 

With Sapling, IMMO’s onboarding process is constantly evolving. “Onboarding has been 1,000 times better than it has ever been before”, Luke said. 

The results 

Luke noted that since implementing Sapling his time spent on admin has reduced from 10-15 hours per week to just 3 hours at most. Sapling helped transition IMMO into an organized outfit with much happier staff. Their employee experience has improved due to having a consistent and repeatable onboarding program using Sapling. This has also helped reduce churn of new headcount by 50%. 

Saplings People Operations Platform enables IMMO’s HR team to be strategic by taking so much admin away from the day to day. Luke can now be a business partner focused on OKRs as opposed to being swamped with admin work.

IMMO’s team members also absolutely love Sapling. The directors use Sapling regularly to check team members and their direct reports at the company’s various locations. They love having a central location to track vacation time and sick leave. This eliminated many headaches for Luke and other managers, especially during the current COVID crisis.

The biggest benefit to IMMO of selecting Sapling is having a single source of record for all their HR data, workflows and processes rather than being reliant on one team member. This more rounded system has helped business efficiency increase. Now Luke can comfortably grow the business without worrying about the business. 

So what’s next for IMMO? The team is planning to more than double its global workforce from 45 to 100+ in the next twelve months. As they grow Luke wants to leverage Sapling more for D&I initiatives. Using IMMO’s HR data housed in Sapling, the team can easily dig into various metrics to support their future hiring, promotion and career growth initiatives. They also have 22 current job openings!