Success story: Wilmington plc

Wilmington came to Access with the intention of onboarding one specific product, and the project somewhat grew from there!

Here, Head of People Operations & Services at Wilmington, Esther Osborn FCIPD shares her experience of working with Access, and how they came to implement: PeopleXD, Talent Management, Access Learning, Access Personalised Learning, Access Payroll, Access Screening and EarlyPay, all within our unified Workspace platform.

Wilmington has also invested in our Premier Customer Success Plan.

The Wilmington plc family work with individuals or companies who operate in regulated industries and markets. Wilmington helps them ‘do the right business in the right way’ by providing them with accurate and timely information, data, and insight, and by providing a safe training and education environment to support them embed a culture of business conduct that is compliant with those regulations, with appropriate governance and risk management.

Its brands include the International Compliance Association, Wilmington Healthcare, Health Service Journal, Mercia, Axco, Bond Solon, FRA/RISE, and Compliance Week.

“We’d actually started looking for a talent & engagement solution and a learning management system at the outset,” Esther explains. “But we were having issues with our core HR system as well. There were inaccuracies and an inability to adapt to our set-up of different companies each with their own rules and processes. So that difficulty led us to consider Access PeopleXD as well.”

Esther goes on to say, “Access was very much the right fit for our organisation. The key winning aspects of the Access system is that it’s really intuitive and easy to use, it’s flexible, and we can add to it if we want to as we have with EarlyPay, which is really attractive. And the cost wasn’t at all prohibitive.”

Every company’s needs are unique - in Wilmington’s case it’s comprised of several companies each with its own set of unique needs - so when you approach us with a challenge, we’ll treat your business not as a sale, but as a solutions partnership. So, let’s take a more detailed look at the solution we implemented at Wilmington:

• Intuitive, flexible HR with PeopleXD

Access PeopleXD is a mobile-first, end-to-end HR solution designed to help you transform your people strategy. It provides a unified suite of Payroll, People Management, Workforce Management, Talent Management, Digital Learning, Recruitment, and Analytics software, all accessible on the Workspace platform.

Wilmington’s challenge was to find an HR solution that could cater to the varying rules of its numerous companies. PeopleXD delivered this solution as well as host of other benefits, including:

• Managed payroll

“100% the biggest improvement for us has been our payroll. We went for a managed payroll service and the accuracy is a world away from where we were with our previous supplier. It’s a much slicker process, both for the people who do the work within Wilmington, and for our employees who don’t have to experience all the pitfalls of when things go wrong,” Esther told us.

• EarlyPay

Having embedded its new managed payroll service, Wilmington then added EarlyPay as an offering for its people. EarlyPay is our on-demand pay solution which gives employees instant access to pay they’ve already earned. Esther says, “EarlyPay has been a real benefit for us. We’ve just been through Christmas and January and people have found it hugely helpful, especially with the cost-of-living crisis”. In fact, 93% of people say on-demand pay has helped them through the cost-of-living crisis.

• Talent Management

One of the requirements that kick-started Wilmington’s search was to find a talent management and engagement solution, which is now managed in PeopleXD. “We didn’t have anything, short of Word documents or Microsoft forms, for all our talent and engagement,” says Esther. Now with our software embedded, they’re in a strong position to build a future-ready talent pool, and enhance the employee experience.

“When it comes to the talent piece, just having the ability to record objectives and do regular check-ins has made the process so much more efficient. And our managers now see that as a really positive experience, rather than one you don’t look forward to, or even dread,” Esther told us. “Likewise with annual reviews. We’ve got them to look back on, and to make sure we’re targeting the areas we need to target as a business.”

• Analytics

PeopleXD Analytics has given Wilmington the ability to turn its complex data into easy-to-understand charts, dashboards, and tailored reports.

These powerful tools support Wilmington by demonstrating return on investment, offering a better understanding of workforce trends and performance metrics, informing decision-making, and identifying areas for improvement. They also future-proof the organisation by delivering forecasting and justifying future initiatives.

Watch 4 min demo: Discover how PeopleXD can benefit your business

Learning management software is essential for organisations that want to deliver effective online training, and it was one of Wilmington’s initial requirements when searching the market for a solution. “All our training was being recorded in Excel spreadsheets or worse, in emails!” Esther told us.

Our LMS has delivered the solution Wilmington needed by working in tandem with our talent management software to empower and engage, elevate performance, and track compliance.

Learn more about how Access Learning can help you deliver effective learning throughout your organisation.

“Investing in a success plan is worth it! We’ve been able to make tweaks that have improved things for us. You don’t know what you don’t know! And if you realise there’s a better, more effective way of doing things, having that resource is really useful,” Esther says.

Businesses have different wants and needs when it comes to a support plan, so Access offers 3 different options to cater to your preferences. Our essential plan is designed for those who mainly want to self-guide, but also want online technical support. Our standard plan offers phone and live chat options, as well as periodic check-ins. And the premier plan Wilmington chose helps you to maximise the return on your investment with a designated Customer Success Manager who aligns with you on your business goals, plus access to a designated Lead Technical Support Engineer. 

Find out more about our customer success plans.

Esther is currently looking into upgrading Wilmington’s benefits offering from its current supplier, to Access. This will allow them to integrate a new, wider range of benefits into their managed payroll service, all available on-the-go in our app.

As well as benefits, the platform includes an employee reward and recognition function. Managers and peers can recognise achievements and behaviours digitally, driving effective reward and recognition throughout the business.

Find out more about our employee engagement and benefits platform.

The Access Group's HCM division, Access People, offer an unrivalled suite of solutions for businesses, including HR and Payroll, Absence Management, Workforce Management, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent, Learning, Employee Benefits and Engagement, Health & Safety, all of which are underpinned by the powerful Access Workspace platform. 

The Access Group is one of the leading providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, and Asia Pacific. We help over 100,000 customers across commercial and not-for-profit sectors become more productive and efficient.