Why Appogee Leave is a "no brainer" for FirstGroup

We spoke with Chris Poole, Group Digital Workplace Manager at FirstGroup PLC to talk about their experience with Appogee Leave.

FirstGroup PLC is a transport company with over 30,000 employees. The group encompasses the UK’s largest bus operator - First Bus, as well as multiple rail operators -  Great Western Railway, Transpennine Express, and Hull trains, to name a few.

FirstGroup has been using Appogee HR since 2017 to streamline its leave processes, initially starting with a small department and gradually incorporating the system across other divisions. 

We spoke to Chris Poole, Group Digital Workplace Manager about his experience, introducing Appogee Leave, absence management software to the group. 

“I am responsible for delivering new ways of working that enhance our internal ability to collaborate, communicate and perform processes more efficiently. Having used Appogee Leave at a previous company, there was no question about what system to introduce when I found out that our HR system wasn’t able to process leave & sickness”.

“The HR team had next to no visibility on the absences of our employees, which made it very difficult to run payroll and manage leavers. This in turn led to policy breaches and varied data stores and ways of tracking employee leave and sickness”.

Chris knew it was time to introduce a simple-to-use and easy-to-implement system. “Having already used it, I knew that it would be easy to deploy Appogee Leave and require very little user training. 

“We had some more complex requirements to ensure all types of employees were catered for (part-time allowances, for example),  but we had plenty of assistance from the Appogee HR team upskilling and tackling some of the more complex profiles. In terms of ongoing support, the technical team is always quick to respond and we have had very few issues or outages”.

In terms of how Appogee Leave has benefitted FirstGroup, Chris comments “Our HR teams love it as they have all the data in one place, Managers love it because they can approve with a few clicks, and employees can easily request leave, log sickness and see when others in their team are off.”

And finally, what does Chris say to others thinking about Appogee Leave? “Do a pilot, see how easy it is. It's a no-brainer.”

To find out if Appogee Leave can help grow your business start your 14-day free trial or book a demo with a friendly member of the team!