Leeds City Council selects MHR for HR and payroll systems

HR, payroll and finance firm MHR has been selected by Leeds City Council, the second largest metropolitan district in England after Birmingham, as its new strategic partner for HR and payroll applications.

Previously, Leeds City Council had been using an enterprise resource planning-based system. But the complexity of the authority’s operations, and the fact it provides payroll services for 37,000 people and directly employs some 14,000 people, led council leaders to seek a more efficient system.

Leeds City Council has a huge variety of HR and payroll requirements with different pensions, pay cycles and contracts to account for, and the council decided that a digital transformation project that would ensure automation for several lengthy manual processes was required.

Market analysis and a formal tender process led Leeds to choose MHR’s iTrent solution because it met its strategic vision while providing out-of-the-box HR and payroll processes that will see all employee contracts and pension arrangements on one platform.

In addition to the core HR and payroll modules, the Council also selected additional tools including onboarding, the pension data service, e-signatures, interactive payslips and employee self-service and analytics. It is hoped the new system will help boost employee engagement and experience.

Andy Dodman, chief HR officer at Leeds City Council, said iTrent would enable the council to “automate key processes that we previously handled manually, enabling us to transform and modernise the way we work. The close relationship MHR has with Microsoft, and other key partners, along with expertise in integrations gives us confidence.”

MHR chief executive Anton Roe acknowledged that cost was at the forefront of the authority’s thinking and “rightly so”. He said: “Getting the implementation right in a seamless and efficient manner was vital and doing so has already enabled Leeds to massively improve employee engagement and process efficiencies.”

He pointed out that MHR now supported more than half of all local authorities in the UK.

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