Darwin Escapes found themselves without their usual in-house payroll expertise at short notice. With over 700 employees waiting to be paid within a few short weeks, they turned to Phase 3 for some emergency interim payroll support, to ensure business continuity and crucially, happy staff.
Darwin Escapes are a popular holiday park operator with over 20 park resorts in beautiful locations across the UK. Offering holiday home ownership as well as self-catering holiday stays, their varied accommodation options include luxury lodges, static caravans, cottages, beach huts and even tree houses.
Unforeseen circumstances meant they were without their payroll expert.
We mapped their processes to understand the work required.
Our extensive iTrent payroll experience enabled us to hit the ground running.
All staff were paid accurately and on time.
Darwin Escapes faced the sort of situation that no company wishes to find itself in; their Payroll Manager was unavailable at short notice, with the remaining team not sufficiently experienced to complete the next pay run.
With no existing business continuity plan in place for this kind of event, they contacted Phase 3 to enquire if our payroll team would be able to help and take over their payroll operations for a short time.
We first mapped Darwin Escapes' payroll processes, to understand how best to replicate them. Once we had a good understanding of the task at hand, our iTrent payroll team were ready to step in and handle the current month's pay run. With healthy collaboration with the the Darwin Escapes team, and clear planning and delegation of individual tasks, we were able to accurately pay their sizeable team; who were largely unaware of the challenges payroll had faced that month - a true testament to the success of the project!
We were ready to take over operations within 2 weeks
Careful project management throughout
Payroll was completed on time and with no errors
A handover from us assisted the onboarding of the new Payroll Manager
A process audit provided opportunities for future optimisation
Emergency payroll cover, or business continuity payroll, can be set up at short notice as in this instance, but we can also be a constant part of your contingency planning. For a small retainer fee, our experts remain on standby and familiar with your set up so should the unexpected happen, we can step in immediately to take over as much of the payroll as you need us to. From staff absence, system outages or even hardware failures, we can step in to make sure your payroll remains operational - and therefore maintain staff morale.
