HR Director

Hertha Gentle

Industry

Education

Location

Belize

Employees

350

TLSContact

Technology: OrangeHRM - Personal Information Management

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF BELIZE 

The University of Belize (UB) is the national university of Belize, established in 2000. UB currently serves about 4,000 students and offers about three dozen four-year and two-year degree programs and seven certificate programs. In addition to its main campus in the capital city of Belmopan, UB has additional campuses in Belize City; a Central Farm campus in the Cayo District; and the Punta Gorda campus in the Toledo District, as well as marine sites at Hunting Caye and Calabash Caye. 

Background

Running an established national university requires the efforts of hundreds of people. One of the areas most crucial to the university's administration is its Human Resources. A highly functional HR Department serves every employee well, while unaddressed administrative challenges caused a dangerous and self-feeding downward spiral in employee productivity and job satisfaction. All of its major HR processes were managed manually, resulting in a highly labor-intensive and paper-driven organization. 

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

“Until 2009, the Human Resource Office of the University of Belize had relied solely on human memory and hands to deal with their day-to-day activities at the office. When OrangeHRM was introduced to us it was such a relief. So many manual things were eased and the speed of delivering tasks was amazing. Reports are generated in minutes, leave updates can be given via email in seconds and even our contracts and job letters can be accurately prepared using the system.”

All HR processes of UB such as hiring, training, retention, timekeeping, benefits administration, and leave accruals were all managed and tracked on paper. This approach created significant problems such as:  

  • Significant use of staff time on manual processes  
  • Human error.  
  • Physical data storage and retrieval
  • Duplication of effort   
  • Poor reporting capabilities  
  • Poor data for decision-making 

Complicating the problem was the fact that the University's IT staff was not prepared to deploy and support a modern, enterprise-level HR management system. UB needed a flexible, scalable human resources solution that would enable it to manage every aspect of employment online. 

Employee Management

The University of Belize handled all of its employee information manually. The slightest change in a particular employee detail would involve the following laborious process: the employee will inform HR Personnel and the relevant administrator will have to manually search for the particular employee’s record by going through thousands of employee records stacked into files, which is a time-consuming process. 

With Orange HRM's solution, the university could maintain all employee information in one central location and attach electronic documents to each personnel file as needed. Moreover, the employees can access the Employee Management module and conveniently make the relevant changes in their personal information records, while the system updates these changes concurrently.  

HR Administration & Document Manager

The university’s HR Department had to constantly produce reports such as full-time staff contracts, job letters, part-time contracts, student worker contracts, and tenure track contracts by manually going through data which resulted in many human errors. As a solution to this problem, OrangeHRM offered a valuable document management system. Through this tool, the administrator or HR Personnel is able to produce HR-related employee reports without the need to input the required employee details manually into a particular document template. The system automatically creates these letters by extracting the required employee criteria from the records and transferring them to the document template. 

Leave Management

The University of Belize comprised a complex and erroneous leave management system, where the leave accrual procedure was based on the employee’s designation, pay grade, and years of service. Based on the leave accrual criteria that needed to be considered, OrangeHRM offered a flexible Leave Management module, thus catering to a fully automated Leave Management System that takes off a huge burden from HR Personnel in manually calculating the leave accruals of each employee. All leave requests and approvals were automated and all accruable leave times were automatically calculated, updated, and reported whenever a change occurred. 

Recruitment

Recruitment, which is lengthy and yet an important aspect of HR management, was another complication that needed to be handled at UB. OrangeHRM’s Recruitment module enabled the university to manage and maintain the recruiting process for new hires and potential hires, including short-listing of the most desirable candidates; interview scheduling; and offer preparation efficiently.   

THE ORANGEHRM DIFFERENCE: EXCEPTIONAL ONBOARDING & TRAINING

“What is more amazing is that all this has been done electronically. At one single instance there was a face to face training but besides that all other trainings were done online: over the phone or over chatting, emailing, etc. Training classes has helped me so much that I think I would be lost if it wasn't for the trainings. I am very grateful for the patience and the time your team has had to walk me through all the aspects of OrangeHRM and training me to be an expert in the system” 

“At the University I am the only one who has been fully trained and who knows almost every single aspect of our system. With the training I have received from your team, I can train others here and we have planned to have a more in-depth training where all HR staff members will be able to use the system fully. I would like to encourage you to continue online trainings as it helps tremendously. Keep up the high quality of work and the patience to deal with so many questions and queries from us.”

OrangeHRM provides a complete and customizable HR solution that enables organizations to perform all HR operations with ease. An industry leader in human resource management, its secure web-based software helps organizations manage their people, talent, and HR processes across the globe.