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From a humble home-based business to becoming one of Australia’s leading online party suppliers, has grown a lot in the past 10 years. The family-owned business is passionate about providing everything you could ever need for your party. This commitment to customer service is why Discount Party Supplies was recently named one of South Australia’s fastest-growing businesses in the — and they know their employees are a huge part of their success.

“A lot of businesses underestimate the difference between happy and unhappy employees when it comes to productivity and output,” explains Chantelle, Senior Bookkeeper at Discount Party Supplies. “It’s important not to underestimate that. To look out for each other and try to make everyone the best version of themselves. That’s important to us.”

There’s not many businesses that recognise how important employee wellbeing is to overall performance, so it makes sense that Chantelle would find an affinity with 91����. “91���� allows us to bring all that together and just make it easy.”

The challenge

Scalable processes for growing businesses

The team at Discount Party Supplies is continually adding headcount to their business and has big plans for the future. With such ambitious growth on the horizon, it was clear their HR and payroll processes needed to be streamlined.

“HR can be complicated and hard. When it comes to contracts and pay rises, it can be quite daunting. To keep it simple and all in one place, having a system and procedure is just really important. We’re growing as a business, so it’s important to have that.”

Paperless onboarding was one of the biggest draw cards for Chantelle. “Our payroll and HR was manual — paper spreadsheets and filing — which worked really well, but we need to keep up with the times. We’ve had a lot of new people coming on, so the onboarding process was one that got us really excited. Every time a new casual employee comes into the business, they can do their eTFN, their super, and sign their contract; it’s really great.”

We asked Chantelle how much time she thinks she’s saved with paperless onboarding. “Before 91����? If I knew a casual was starting next week, I’d allow two hours to get it all ready to go (including signing). Now, it’s maybe 15 to 20 minutes — a massive time-saving.” And it’s not just the time saved that’s a bonus for Chantelle. “All the paper and printing costs, and saving trees. We’re always thinking about the environmental impact, so being paperless is something that fits our brand.”

In terms of payroll, Chantelle was the only administrator up until a couple of months ago. They’ve since had another employee join who manages the function, but “prior to them joining, I was able to manage 56 employees via 91����, as just one person – that’s the only way I was able to do it. If it was manual, there’s just no way I could’ve done it. They would’ve needed three of me. I think the monthly subscription fees are just so reasonable for what you get out of it.”

The solution

Self-service access for employees and managers

When onboarding is done and dusted, Discount Party Supplies’ employees can access their policies and contracts 24/7 using either their desktop or mobile device. With this on hand, they don’t need to wonder if they’re doing the right thing or not; it’s all there in front of them.

“We have our handbook in 91���� as an HR document,” says Chantelle. “Before that, we gave new starters a manual copy. I know if it was me, it could be somewhere at home, in the office, or somewhere else. But it’s really easy to find in 91����.”

On top of making it easier for employees to find the information they need at a moment’s notice, it’s equally important that Chantelle’s managers have access to important details regarding their direct reports. 91����’s security permissions allows Chantelle to choose which parts of the employee file managers can see so they can react accordingly.

“We have multiple managers who need to access different parts of the platform. For example, warehouse managers need different access to different functions. It’s great that everyone can jump into 91���� and make notes when they need to.”

But it’s not just that, the mobile app makes updating team members easier than ever. Now that everyone is living with Covid-19, Chantelle says that “with 91����, we can let everyone know in real-time if there’s been a positive Covid-19 case in the team.”

Culture is king for Discount Party Supplies

Knowing how important the employee experience is to Discount Party Supplies, it’s no surprise that Chantelle has been utilising the platform’s employee engagement features, including Happiness Scores and Company Values.

“We’re big on culture and happiness, and coming to work happy and providing a really wonderful environment. We have our company values (SHINE – standing for Support Happy, Inspire, Noble and Excellence) on the platform, and that helps each of us with the reminders of values and culture. It’s there for everyone to see.”

They pride themselves on being a values-based business, incorporating them in everything they do – from leadership to all employees. “It’s how we hire our people and how we run our day-to-day. It works really well for us.”

They also have a fortnightly SHINE award, where they nominate peers who go above and beyond in their role. The winner of this receives $50 Hero Points in their account. “It works really well for us. Peer to peer recognition is sometimes underestimated so it really becomes about your team, your peers who help, and who support you. Having those nice words keeps you motivated and keeps you caring and connected to the business. Some people like to save them up and get something at Christmas time. It just pushes people forward to work hard, get to the goals that they’re wanting to get to, keep the motivation up and looking forward to coming to work,” says Chantelle

The team at Discount Party Supplies are invested in their culture, and ensuring their employees are happy is top of their list. “One thing we’ve used a great deal since joining is the Happiness Survey. We use it every month and the opportunity for employees to put anonymous feedback on that survey is really helpful. We want to provide a culture for honest and real-time feedback, even if it’s something that needs to be fixed,” says Chantelle.

They’re always looking for ways to improve their culture and 91���� helps with that. “We have an internal AFL footy tipping competition. We’re able to do updates on 91���� and we’ve seen so much growth in our culture. It’s a lot of fun and banter seeing who’s at the top of the ladder,” says Chantelle.

Remote ready

Like many companies, Discount Party Supplies has had to adjust to the challenges of the pandemic. Chantelle is grateful the team could use 91���� to adapt. As they continue to expand, Chantelle says “growing with so many people being onboarded, that just wouldn’t have been possible without 91����.”

“We use the dashboard and Company Feed frequently. That’s been great, especially since we’ve got some people working remotely. When everything was changing daily with the pandemic, without the Company Feed, it would have been quite challenging to let people know what was happening. To have that comms platform with everything central was great timing.”

Having remote access to the platform was equally as important to Chantelle as it was to her team. “Knowing that I can access contracts or see daily and hourly rates from anywhere… It’s the way everything is going and it’s amazing. When I think of the decision to work from home, it happened within a day, and I’m proud we could do that so quickly. I can’t imagine what it would have been like without 91����. It just shows that we’re a business leading not just in party supplies, but in operations too.”

The impact

The future is bright for Discount Party Supplies

As the business continues to grow and face new HR challenges, Chantelle knows her and the team will be ready — and 91���� will be ready to support them. If you’d like to know more about keeping your employees engaged and supported no matter when or where they work, speak with an 91���� expert today.