Belden Universal is a leading manufacturer of power transmission products, including high-quality universal joints, drive-shaft assemblies, and couplings made to customers’ exact specifications.
Shortly after graduating from college, Cheryl joined Belden Universal as an accountant.
How did Cheryl get started in HR? Laughing, she recalls, “It was dumped on me!” Until then, HR had been more of a side job for a different Belden employee. When that person left the company (over 15 years ago), the company determined that Cheryl was the best person to take over the role. “Back then, HR wasn’t what it is now. I’m constantly trying to learn and grow in the profession.”
Before Namely, HR at Belden meant a lot of paper, poor communication, and little to no visibility. To request a day off, employees would submit a paper form to their supervisors, who then passed the form along to Cheryl. She would enter it into a system that only she and managers had access to. No one knew when their colleagues had time off.
Cheryl faced similar challenges when it came to benefits. “Employees would approach me all the time asking ‘what plan did I pick again?’ But it’s impossible to remember what 44 different people selected!”
As for payroll, employees would fill out a spreadsheet with their hours, and Cheryl would load that into ADP. This process required manual work, and employees did not have easy access to review their time submission.
“Our CEO is very big on technology—we even have a robot on the shop floor now! He’s always interested in using cutting-edge innovations in order to do things better. So when we saw advertisements for modern HRIS platforms, we knew our HR processes were in dire need of improvement and decided to invest.”
From handwritten performance reviews to time off requests, almost every HR process was paper-based and time-intensive. Cheryl knew she could save some trees and some time by going digital.
Even when everything was working as it should, information and processes were siloed. Time off was separate from payroll, which was separate from performance. Cheryl was desperate to have everything in a central system.
Most processes required Cheryl’s direct involvement, and HR data was only visible to Cheryl and a select few. Reducing employees’ reliance on Cheryl would not only save her time, but also empower everyone with greater access to their own employment information.
Belden’s CEO gave Cheryl the green light to find an HRIS that met the company’s needs. So she and a small team set out to research and demo Namely, BambooHR, Zenefits, and a few other HRIS companies. “When I saw Namely, it just had more. Everything was in one spot—benefits, payroll, time off, performance reviews, everything. It seemed that Namely had everything that we were lacking or that we wanted to automate right there, whereas the others were kind of all over the place.”
Additionally, Cheryl felt confident about choosing Namely based on what she had read in the news. “When I saw all of the funding Namely was getting, that was a positive indication to me that they would have the resources and drive to continue improving, whereas the competition seemed kind of stagnant.”
With that, she presented Namely as their top choice to the CEO, and he said, “Go for it.”
See why it was easy for Belden’s CEO to sign off on Namely. Schedule your free demo today.
Belden employees love the time off feature, including the ability to quickly and easily look up how many vacation days they have left (something they used to go to Cheryl for).
Belden has also been able to leverage Namely to support their “floating holiday” program. “We used to have Good Friday off every year, but the CEO wanted to move away from that. So now, we want to use up that day in a way that’s more beneficial. Sometimes, we’ll plug that day in around the Fourth of July to give everyone a long weekend. But on years where that doesn’t make sense, we have the employees vote on when they’d like to use it. Whichever date we settle on, we simply add it as a holiday in Namely. They really like having a say, and it’s so easy to implement in the system.”
Cheryl is currently spearheading the reorganization of Belden’s training system. “We’re ISO and AS certified, which allow us to sell our products to aerospace and other industries. Those certifications tell them that we abide by certain rules. For example, we might have an auditor go on the shop floor to see someone measuring a part. The auditor wants to know that the shop workers know how to do so properly. But we’ve found our quality management is not in great shape. So I’m in the process now of taking every training item that’s in that system, throwing it away, and creating all new training items—all so we can stay compliant with those certifications, which is critical to the success of our business.”
“With Namely, it’s truly like having a whole team on your side. First of all, the platform automates and streamlines so many processes on its own. But I also have multiple people at Namely who are there to help me. I didn’t really know anything about HR when I started, and I was mostly managing HR and payroll on my own. It’s so helpful to have that extra support.”
Just as Cheryl had anticipated through the HRIS buying process, Namely is always improving. “If something doesn’t work exactly the way you want it to now, chances are that’s going to get worked out in the near future. I think that speaks volumes about Namely as a product and a business.”
Belden Universal is one of 1,000+ companies that use Namely to streamline their HR, payroll, benefits, and time management needs.
Ready to see how Namely can transform HR processes for your company? Request your demo today.